 Rough Day For Christmas Less than 36 hours after being released by the Sixers, Dionte Christmas has bigger things to worry about than his basketball career. According to the Daily News, Christmas was pulled over tonight in Philly for driving erratically. He was apparently driving Marreese Speights' car, and had a loaded weapon in the car. A 9MM handgun, with 7 rounds of ammunition. I feel bad for the guy, and I'm wondering why the hell Marreese Speights let a gun, registered in his name, wind up loaded in a car with a teammate who had just been cut. To top things off, Christmas was also driving without a license. I really feel for Christmas, I can only imagine what he's going through, the day after his dream was squashed, at least temporarily. Hopefully he'll be able to drag himself out of this mess. As far as the team is concerned, this is truly the first hint of an off-court problem, and while no current player was directly involved, it worries the hell out of me that Speights was careless enough to leave a loaded gun in his car. You have to question Speights' maturity level, if the facts have been reportedly correctly, and I hope the team will take some action to make sure nothing like this happens again. I'm not talking about suspending or fining Speights, I'm talking about educating him. 
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a good bitchslap to the back of the dome might do the trip
and by trip I meant trick.
Apparently it is not so uncommon for professional atheletes to carry guns around due to the fear that they are sometimes targeted for robbery (the Antoine Walker incident is one example but there are others). I remember a news feature on this about five years ago where numerous atheletes were interviewed. One who was not sympathetic to this need was Karl Malone. His attitude was that a professional athelete shouldn't be frequenting places where they might need a gun for protection. After all, when you're a millionare you should be able to limit your nightlife to places that keep out the riffraff.
Agreed.
Still if you feel you need to carry a weapon, you need to go through the proper channels, complete the proper paper work and be granted that privilege by the state. You should also be held responsible for not being responsible with the firearm.
It just amazes me constantly how often athletes make such poor decisions. I know if I made 7 figures a year and knew certain things could ruin that, I would be more responsible. Hell, I make a working man's salary and won't drive after I've had 2 beers, because I don't want to lose my job, and i don't want to hurt anyone either.
I don't begrudge the guy having a gun, it's his right if he went through the proper channels to obtain it. But owning a gun carries a level of responsibility with it. Leaving it loaded under the seat of your car while someone else is driving your car without you in it is so unbelievably irresponsible, and illegal. I mean, even if Christmas stole the car (which I haven't heard that he did, I'm just using this as an example), the gun shouldn't have been in there.
I'm pretty sure you need a concealed carry permit to have a gun in the passenger section of your car at any time. Speights may or may not have one.
The point is, (a) the gun shouldn't have been out of his control, (b) the gun shouldn't have been loaded just sitting around.
Do we know that it's Speights's gun and not Christmas's?
That was the report. It was a gun legally registered to Speights.
Not that I own a gun, but why exactly does owning one make Speights immature? It is an obvious lapse of judgment to let someone else drive your car when you left a loaded gun in it, but that is the only obvious inference I take from this.
I never said owning one made him immature, in fact, I said specifically that owning one was neither here nor there. It's his right. What was incredibly immature was allowing his loaded gun to be under the seat of a car he was not driving.
not that this really means anything, but the game i wrote about against memphis last year where i had the courtside seats, i was amazed by how childlike speights acted during timeouts & breaks. he was basically not paying attention & horsing around w lou williams the entire game, and he kept playing around with one of the ballboys, throwing gum at him. it just reminded me how young some of these guys are. and considering some of the situations some of them come from (from what i've heard speights had a very rough upbringing), we have to keep in mind that it's likely no adult has ever sat him down & told him it's probably not a good idea to carry a gun in your car.
not that this really means anything, but the game i wrote about against memphis last year where i had the courtside seats, i was amazed by how childlike speights acted during timeouts & breaks. he was basically not paying attention & horsing around w lou williams the entire game, and he kept playing around with one of the ballboys, throwing gum at him. it just reminded me how young some of these guys are. and considering some of the situations some of them come from (from what i've heard speights had a very rough upbringing), we have to keep in mind that it's likely no adult has ever sat him down & told him it's probably not a good idea to carry a gun in your car.