OT: Oh, That Ruben

Yes, he might still be in the league, making big bucks, if not for this. When the Blazers got rid of him, he was at least as effective as Batum was last year, because of his physical play, which is what we have lacked for several years. Dumping him cost us wins.

But to haters, losing millions of dollars isn't enough. Some hypocrites we know too well even pretend to be on the left, but never post about the widespread use of torture by Bush and Obama.

 

I agree. Ruben was a very efficient and productive player.

Um, yeah. Seems like an OT issue to me.

 

I found Jesus one time. I was still young and my manager at McDonalds told me to go get him as he was ten minutes over on his smoke break.

 

I lost all respect for Whoopie after that bullshit and about half of Hollywood as well. Fucking sick society we live in. I could take this on an additional tangent here, but I won't.

 

What does race have to do with the Kobe case?

 

Don't forget the claimed right to assassinate Americans!

Thread to OT section in 3...2...1

 

From Out of Bounds by Jeff Benedict

Jenny Stevens, a white 23 yr old, was the nanny for the family. After Ruben's wife had cosmetic surgery, Jenny was staying overnight and went into his room to retrieve one of the kids. Ruben was masturbating and completely nude.

A third party was in the room when Jenny told Ruben's wife what happened. She went crazy, beating Jenny up. But, she called Ruben's agent and told him that she was divorcing him.

You can read more in the book. Almost half of it is about former Blazers.

 

I looked it up yet again. I remembered it right from several years ago, except for these details. The maid lived there, and it was in the bedroom, not the kitchen. As for her race, I was sure it was black when I researched it years ago, but I can't find it now, so maybe she was white. She was 23, not 24. And people in this thread said he got no jail, but he did. Here's what the Seattle Times and P-I say.

A deal was reached with the prosecutor, but the police department didn't like it and released false information, lying in order to influence the case. They were never held accountable, of course. His lawyer described the police misconduct and the prosecutor agreed it had happened.

For 3rd degree attempted rape, Ruben got 15 days in jail plus over $10,000, the league suspended him several games without pay (that's like $300,000) and fined him over $100,000, and the woman made money off him in a civil suit.

His wife (and he) said that the sex was consensual and she was angry at the prosecutor, ready to hit her. (From what I've read of the wife she was always a very aggressive person. A few years later they divorced, but not over this.)

Sly, you post a lot of slimy sarcasm (you often sound like something related to this is your profession), but my version wasn't horseshit. My point was that he has received enormous punishment, while everyone was saying he got off so easily.

 

Thanks for the non-sarcastic information. I hadn't heard of Jeff Benedict. He teaches English at a Mormon college in conservative Virginia. His books choose political targets he feels are bad guys. He has a special interest in fighting Indian casinos. The quotes you gave may or may not be based upon the false information the police department fed out. The media didn't tell what that was, so there's no way to know.

Amazon says Benedict wants "to detail what he calls "the rash of lawlessness that is currently gripping the NBA." Benedict exposes how life as a touring player in the NBA offers vast amounts of free time and sex, encouraging criminal behavior and leading to a warped perception of women and their availability, as well as producing an environment "hot-wired" to produce incidents of sexual assault."

Anyway, my point is that contrary to what this thread was saying, Ruben did indeed receive much punishment and a severely decreased quality of life for the rest of his life--far more than he inflicted.

 

Amazing how jlprk "knows" all these facts that were not presented in court. And that the man who says women should not be allowed to speak on politics poses as a defender of women, and rapists too. It is true that well after the fact some people mistakenly suggested the woman was under age, which she was not. News flash; it's still rape if she's over 21.

BTW it is Whoopi, not Whoopie. But it was not a typo typo.

And she was essentially doing what jlprk and the defenders of Patterson and Bryant (and others) do. He's talented (not to mention rich and powerful) so it's not really rape rape. I mean, doesn't every domestic worker "really" want to screw her employer's husband? Doesn't every 13 year old "really" want a 40 year old man to dose her with drugs and alcohol and have forced vaginal and anal intercourse while she cries and pleads with him to stop? Doesn't every hotel waitress really want a basketball player to make her kiss his dick?

 

He was masturbating in his own bedroom when his nanny, who he had a long affair with (the affair was over at the time of the incident) interrupted him. They had sexual relations. According to Patterson and his wife, the sex was consensual. He pleaded no content, he and his wife didn't want the thing to get dragged out. This is not similar to the Kobe case at all.

It's pretty close to the difficult cases of marital rape. Many rapist have many victims. To lump Patterson with these is unfortunate. It happened in the Jailblazer era.

 

The court records are that he forced her to have sex. There was no mention of an affair. That was invented years later. You know, like Al Gore saying he invented the Internet and Saddam Hussein's illegal weapons. Repeat enough and someone will think it's true. Nothing difficult unless you really really want to believe poor l'il Ruben was the sad victim of a scheming bitch.

And Patterson had/had a long history of violent actions starting at least in college. That's why he was drafted in the 2nd round; talent-wise he would have been a first round pick but teams were wary. Turns out they were right. So I really can't cry for a millionaire who can't keep his overpaid ass out of trouble. He's not unfortunate; he has been more fortunate than 99.9% of the world's population.

 

I remember reading it in an oregonian article at the time, not years later.

Not unfortunate? He's a moron without the life skills you and I take for granted. Life has a way of punishing people like this repeatedly, whether they have $ or not. I don't particularly feel sorry for RP, but I don't think he should be lumped in with most multi-victim rapists.

 

I don't think multiple assault is a lack of life skills. Some people without life skills are depressed, or reclusive, or have 50 cats,or walk around talking to themselves, or are homeless. Assault takes more than a lack of life skills.

This may, obviously neither you or I know, be his only rape offense, but I don't think someone gets a free pass for one rape. And it was certainly not his only violent act.

 

That was my thinking. Other points that stood out for me was that the book claimed that the nanny had not previously spent the night without Ruben's wife there and that a third party witnessed her telling the wife about the assault. The author is definitely trying to prove a point and will slant facts to support his claim, but those seem like they would be easy to sue against for libel.

Agree that Ruben paid a price since his name is always brought up as Ruben Patterson - Registered Sex Offender. However, financially it was not that bad. He got a full MLE deal with a trade kicker. I doubt that he could have gotten a better contract at the time. He wore out his welcome at many stops after the Blazers and was deemed uncoachable.

I loved his effort on the court. There were just too many off the court incidents for me to cheer for him without feeling guilty.

 

Sly said twice that no one pleads guilty unless they're guilty. Actually, prosecutors routinely put up every charge they can think of (to see what will stick), with half of those charges gross exaggerations, to motivate the plaintiff to plea bargain and save the taxpayers money. A person who is guilty of half the charges, must plea bargain guilty to them all, if his plea is to be accepted. In these cases, the standard penalty (be it 3 years or whatever) exists only to scare the person into plea bargaining down to (something like) 10% of the standard penalty. During the Reagan years, penalties were greatly increased. The effect (and possible purpose) was to get more plea bargains accepted and save money. Also, some people say we should look at the police report to find the details of what someone is really guilty of. But police reports are not neutral. They are constructed as slanted tools for one side, the prosecution, and wordings are often tilted.

So I don't know whether Sly is right that no one ever pleads guilty unless they're guilty, but a more sophisticated rendition is that many plead guilty to double the charges of which they are guilty.

Response to Charcoal Filter's posts: This is a debater I can respect. No hatred, no sarcasm, no hysterical emotions, has perspective.

 

This pile of BS is an example of throwing out charges to see what will stick (what the defendant will be too tired to defend). Now that Crandc has put all this BS up, I have to spend 20 minutes to write about it. This is how those in power stay there--by lowering a debate to personal attacks. So I have to respond point by point to this minutiae of crap.

Crandc lies when she insinuates I have ever defended Kobe Bryant. In fact, in this thread I compared how his acts were worse than Ruben's.

Crandc lies when she says I am "the man who says women should not be allowed to speak about politics." Can you show me the post, liar? I have voted for many, many women over the years. I believe in absolute equality of the sexes (and also of sexual orientation) and have spoken to my own detriment in job situations when the group including the boss was telling jokes. I will guess at the source of her confusion. In one thread, Crandc criticized what she called "anarchists" rioting in the streets as "cowboy behavior." As usual, I went easy on her, not noting her sexist analogy. And I didn't mention Stonewall. I said that 40 years ago (she's maybe 3 years younger than me and she know this) before the left was run by feminists, demonstrations (and yes, a few riots) were more commonplace. But after women took over leftism, such actions in the streets are now called "cowboy behavior." I was putting down her use of the word "cowboy," while gently not calling her out for being sexist. She then knee-jerked that I was sexist for saying "when women took over." She survives by capitalizing upon the niceness of her male opponent. So based upon that exchange, she now throws BS up onto the wall to see whether it will stick--"the man who says women should not be allowed to speak about politics" gets only my contempt. She's lower than I thought. After Hillary Clinton lost to Obama, I politely asked her on BBB why she and feminists hadn't pushed for Hillary (I had stated several times over the months that I was for Hillary over Obama, while Crandc remained silent) she said that feminists couldn't get excited over someone like Hillary. I politely didn't say--Okay, but you can sure get excited about hating men.

The "cowboy" post was the only time I have ever debated with her. Oh yeah, the one other time was at the start of the Iraq War, when she and her pro-war pals kept starting war threads on ESPN to ferret out us antiwar posters and intimidate us (she didn't make death threats, but a few did on other team boards--on the Blazer board a few [not she] only talked in general about making violence against us). In one thread, after an American civilian mercenary had been killed (who knows who was fighting by then--the Iraqi Army had been defeated within a week), Crandc criticized the Iraqis defending their country from foreign invaders for not obeying the Geneva Convention about civilians not being attacked. (Half of Americans there were civilian contractors, including mercenaries, bounty hunters, etc. The biggest Iran-Contra hearing discovery was that American wars now heavily use civilians as cover from Congressional laws regulating military behavior.) Her stupidity was flabbergasting, but typical from her pro-war friends in those threads. She never helped the antiwar side. (Half the time her purpose was to convert the thread into talking about gay issues.)

As for "amazing how jlprk knows what was presented in court," as I explained, my source was that I reviewed the Seattle Times and P-I before posting. She hints that I made it up. I didn't say it was presented in court (although his attorney might have said it in the courtroom after the hearing, the article doesn't say the exact room). Contrary to Crandc's emotional style in her personal accusations, I was careful not to word it as saying that the prosecutor overtly agreed, and I specifically said that the prosecutor did not deny Ruben's lawyer when he noted that there was police misconduct.

http://www.seattlepi.com/basketball/23174_sonx16.shtml

Crandc derailed the thread into false personal attacks, forcing me to spend an hour defending myself, which is the goal of her age-old ad hominem technique--to reduce and tire your opponent by arguing about nothing. As usual, the method succeeded.