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Rumors certain to follow North Carolina's Graves this season

Will Graves looked comfortable at North Carolina's basketball media day last week. He lounged in the Smith Center seats wearing his light blue No. 13 uniform, smiling and joking with reporters, eagerly answering every question that came his way.

Except one. What did you do back in January that prompted coach Roy Williams to suspend you for the final 18 games of the season?

"I did some things a Carolina basketball player is not supposed to do," Graves responded. "I gave my statement. Coach gave his statement. We’re just trying to move forward from there."

Those statements were issued in a press release Feb. 3, which was handed out to reporters covering the Tar Heels' blowout victory over Maryland. They didn't say much. Graves' one-paragraph statement said he was sorry, although it didn't specify for what. Williams said the guard from Greensboro was suspended, but not kicked off the team.

So Graves, the former Dudley star who was the News & Record's 2006 high school player of the year, sat and watched the rest of the season unfold. He practiced with teammates and traveled with the Tar Heels every step of the way to a national championship. He didn't talk to the media, and all interview requests made through Carolina's sports information office were graciously and politely refused -- even after the season and throughout the summer, when Graves said he scored two A's in a pair of communications classes in the first summer semester.

The official explanation is always the same: "a violation of team rules."

Teams in every sport at every level use those same words, and I think that's wrong. They'll tell you they're protecting a person's privacy, and I understand that. But they're also planting seeds of suspicion and innuendo that could follow the player the rest of his life.

Look, I've heard all kinds of rumors. Some are plausible. Some are off the wall. Some are from outer space. But all of them are out there, and they'll always be out there. Is it fair? No. But the only way to make the rumors stop is to come out and say what happened.

Until then, we'll continue to hear the whispered speculation from people who know someone whose best friend's cousin's niece dates a guy who plays intramurals against a guy who lives with an ex-roommate from two years ago who swears he knows what happened.

In the meantime, Graves is back, and he's ready to be a key contributor to this year's Heels. He probably won't start -- the point guard job is Larry Drew's to lose, and fifth-year senior Marcus Ginyard is a lock to start at the other guard spot -- but Graves could fill the instant-offense, sixth-man role that has been a staple of Williams' teams since his days at Kansas. It's a role Danny Green filled, coming off the bench to put up shots and score points, until Ginyard's injury last season made Green a starter.

But, fair or not, everything Graves does this season and beyond will be followed by rumors about what he did last season.

-- JEFF MILLS, Staff Writer