Light a candle with a prayer to heal the nation after tragedies in Dallas, St. Paul, and Baton Rouge

News that is more important than basketball...

Contributed By:Tommy Williams

I had this column all figured out.

Our weekly one way conversation was actually planned as early as Tuesday morning.

I was going to talk about how NBA fans, maybe even you, had some gall getting into Kevin Durant's business; that if the man wants to continue his career in California, that's his business, not ours.

And all this mumbo jumbo about him taking the easy route to winning a championship, well, again, go back to the previous sentence.

I was going to mention that it was years ago when the Detroit Red Wings hockey team were coming off back-to-back Stanley Cup championships when they hit a rut... so they decided to go after some serious talent to get the Cup back to the Motor City.

So, a team that already had no fewer than five future hall of famers signed three new guys. All three were hall of fame caliber. And two of the three, goalie Dominik Hasek and forward Luc Robatille, had never won a cup in their long careers.

Sure enough they won the title that season, and no one accused Hasek or Robatille of taking short cuts, as NBA fans are saying about Durant. They were celebrated and... whoops, wait a minute. I am giving you the column I planned on writing. Sorry, lost my train of thought there.

Anyway, I had planned on doing a column on whiny NBA fans until Tuesday night when I saw a post on Facebook from one of my media colleagues, Vernon Williams, who did some excellent work for the Post Tribune back in the day and is doing the same in Indianapolis these days.

Williams' post dealt with how we were getting all bent out of shape with where Durant was headed, while in the real world, an African American male was gunned down by police.

The very next day came the same scenario, right around the time former Miami Heat guard Dwayne Wade decided to come back home and play for the Chicago Bulls.

Which made me wonder? As an African American male, is it my duty to talk about candy store stuff when there is a non-sports pressing issue dominating the news these days. News that is more important than basketball, more important than my Pittsburgh Pirates’ strong last two weeks to get themselves back in the National League MLB playoff race, and more important than counting down to football season.

(Oh, and this isn't exactly original stuff I'm doing here... WSCR-Chicago sports talk radio host Jason Goff knocked it out of the park conversing on this subject during his mid day show Thursday).

Bottom line is this (at least to me, of course): There needs to be a change of game plan when it comes to ending this. But before I tell you what needs to be done, let's talk about what isn't working.

Rioting is not very smart because all you're doing is tearing up your own neighborhoods. Coming up with slick slogans about whose lives really matter will sell you a bunch of t-shirts, but that ain't working either.

Snipers ambushing policemen, like the situation in Dallas Thursday makes you no better than the policemen who killed those two black men this week.

And if nothing else, you might wind up killing a "good" cop, and yes, there are some very good cops out there. Dare I say there are way more good ones than bad.

Picketing is a time honored way to show your displeasure; but we've seen a lot of picketing, from Trayvon Martin to Alton Sterling and what good has it done?

To me, there is only one way to counter the shaky relationship between police and the black community. It's called prayer. Yes, that simple! Prayer.

You know that thing we used to be able to do before it became illegal in our schools (and how's that working for us, may I ask)?

Forgive me for going Reverend Ike on you, but prayer does work. It has in my life in far less serious situations than police shootings and quite frankly, it’s the only viable option left.

OK, this is a sports column, so let’s use sports situations: You are down by a run in the bottom of the ninth with a runner on and your first two hitters strike out badly. Meanwhile you have a Willie Mays/Roberto Clemente (you knew I had to get a Pirate in there, right?) or a Babe Ruth talent on your bench and you refuse to go to them.

Not exactly a wise game plan. So, at the risk of turning a few people away from this column, my thinking is this: Prayer changes things. Please don't leave your best chance to change things in the on deck circle, OK.

Now, that's that for this week. Next week, back to the candy store!

Story Posted:07/08/2016