Welp.
According to NBC Charlotte, Jeff Taylor of the Charlotte Hornets has been arrested on domestic violence charges:
A current Charlotte Hornets player was arrested early Thursday morning in Michigan on the charge of domestic assault.
Jeffery Matthew Taylor, 25, was arrested at the East Lansing Marriott at University Place around 1 a.m. Thursday.
Taylor is charged with one count of domestic assault, assault and malicious destruction of property.
His bond was set at $5000.
Details will continue to emerge, and more context is needed, but this isn’t good.
Plenty of light is being shined on the NFL for its losing battle against off-field violence. The NBA, meanwhile, has spent its summer being glorified for how it handled the Donald Sterling debacle. It’s like new commissioner Adam Silver has given the league new, impenetrable armor with his swift, deliberate, unforgiving decision-making. Not even the Danny Ferry mess in Atlanta has been enough to derail the league’s momentum.
Now this, after Silver planned on reviewing the league’s domestic violence policies, showing the preemptive initiative the NFL never did.
Before jumping to any conclusions, though, CBS Sports’ Matt Moore made some nice points on Twitter once the news broke:
https://twitter.com/HPbasketball/status/515255008124616704
https://twitter.com/HPbasketball/status/515255989042294784
https://twitter.com/HPbasketball/status/515255192724320256
If the allegations prove true, and they’re not diminished in significance by weighing the actual events against the language used to describe them, attention will likely shift to the NBA and whether or not it, too, has a problem. We can’t be too sure what’s going to happen at this point.
Taylor isn’t a high-profile player like Ray Rice or Adrian Peterson, and the NBA isn’t the ubiquitous NFL, so response could be limited and tapered. None of which is an excuse or meant to downplay the significance of what’s happening. All it means is that, as of now, we’re in a holding pattern.
Hopefully, though, the NBA—regardless of severity and legitimacy of these claims—handles the issue at hand much, much better than the NFL.
