If you want to re-route some misplaced anger toward an NBA player today, Andre Drummond should be your guy.
The Detroit Pistons center not only Snapchatted a picture while driving on Saturday, completely stupid and reckless to begin with, but the photo he picked showed him driving 96 and soon to be 97 miles per hour on a highway with a 70 mile an hour speed limit. Drummond even decided to add text and an emoji to his post – again, while driving – and the photo even reveals that Drummond wasn’t even wearing a seat belt at the time.
Again, incredibly, incredibly stupid. From Reddit:
Do we really have to get into how dumb this is? Well, judging by just some of my interactions on the road on Monday, yes.
Don’t use your phone while you drive. You’re not good at it. You think you are, because you haven’t gotten into a wreck yet, but you’re not good at it.
This isn’t just aimed at people Drummond’s age, or younger. I’m talking to you, bank teller and mother of two. I’m talking to you, contractor in a van following up on a parts order. I’m talking to you, Aunt Cheryl who didn’t even have a cell phone until four years ago. Talking, texting, Facebooking – you are terrible at using your phone while driving, at any speed, and you aren’t even noticing because nothing short of a wreck is encouraging you to put your eyes back on the road.
Just pulling out the phone to access the camera, something that is illegal in Michigan (as it should be illegal nationwide; all forms of phone communication save for emergency calls should be) was wrong enough. The fact that Drummond accessed his Snapchat application, typed out a message and emoji, and sent it out? Even if he was going 46 in a 45, this is about as idiotic and dangerous as these things get.
Drummond wasn’t going 46 in a 45, though. He was going 96 in a 70. Without his seatbelt on.
As the weekend moved along, Drummond was asked about his screwup, and he apologized. From David Mayo at MLive.com:
"I own up to it," Drummond said. "It's a silly mistake. Just got to move forward from it. It won't happen again. That's really it."
Snapchat, a photo-sharing site, is popular partly because images posted there are designed to vanish after a few seconds.
Drummond’s coach, Stan Van Gundy, was also asked about the photo:
"I know you're young and you think you're indestructible, but for the people that care about you, it's scary as hell," Van Gundy said before Sunday night's game against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
"I don't want to wake up and read about Andre Drummond in an accident. That's the issue to me."
We’re coming up on the 15th anniversary of Bobby Phills’ death. Drummond and many other players his age may have never heard of Bobby Phills, but he was about as respected as NBA players came during that era, a heady contributor that coaches and teammates adored.
Phills died in a car accident because he was racing teammate David Wesley on his way home from practice, driving 75 miles an hour at the time, endangering two other drivers who were also involved in the accident as Phills swerved into oncoming traffic. Bobby was driving a Porsche 911, a car known for its precise handling despite its rear drive setup, and working on a clear day with good visibility. He wasn’t driving some honking Mercedes SUV going nearly triple digits, while taking photos and tapping out captions.
The extent of Drummond’s recklessness is, indeed, scary as hell. However, slower drivers need to understand that they’re closer to Drummond’s brand of lawlessness than they think any time they decide to whip out their phone when their hands should be on the wheel and/or gear shift instead.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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