In January 2019, amid a 0-10 Big Ten start that very nearly got Patrick Chambers fired, the Penn State men’s basketball coach had a talk with his freshman guard Rasir Bolton.

He had played Bolton only six minutes in a 71-56 home loss to Michigan State after having given the freshman from Petersburg, Va., ample floor time consistently between 20 and 35 minutes through the first half of his inaugural college season.

Bolton had played very well in some games, especially for a rookie, but had struggled more recently in his first consistent encounter with Big Ten competition. At some point during the conversation, Bolton later told his father Ray that Chambers rationalized his decision on a momentary dip in playing time this way: “I’m just trying to get you to quit playing like you have a noose around your neck.”

In April 2019, when Bolton entered the transfer portal, his father told me the noose story off-the-record during a phone conversation, but declined to back it up with his name and asked that I not print it. He seemed to just want to vent that it happened, but didn’t want to possibly complicate Rasir’s transfer to another school with an inflammatory story about the school from which he was departing.

Apparently, that time has passed. Recently, the Boltons decided to relate the story to The Undefeated’s Jesse Washington and it was published Monday morning.

“I don’t even know where it came from,” Chambers told the outlet.

“It’s not a word that’s in my vocabulary. It’s not something I use often. There’s not a moment that goes by that I don’t want to reflect on that choice and, you know, I’m growing from it.”

Rasir Bolton released a statement on Twitter with details:

Why I chose to leave Penn State. pic.twitter.com/uszEPPJZPM

— ? (@rasir_9) July 6, 2020

Soon after the 2018-19 season’s end, Bolton was granted an immediate transfer waiver to Iowa State and played for the Cyclones last year during their disappointing 12-20 season. According to The Undefeated, Chambers’ noose comment was the reason for the waiver, so he did not have to sit out a season as most undergraduate transferring student-athletes do. He commonly played more than 30 minutes per game and averaged 14.7 points on an Iowa State team that finished ninth in the 10-team Big 12.

Without knowing the context in which it was said, you could judge it as an unfortunate slip of the tongue or something that reveals more deep-seated feelings by Chambers.

While he privately seethed to me about Chambers, Ray Bolton would only say this much to me for print in an April 26, 2019 story:

“At this point, I want to give Penn State a chance to respond. I can tell you it’s a non-basketball related issue. Right now, we’re just trying to get through the process clean and move on to the next destination.

“School was great. Academically, the support system was tremendous. There were just some situations that went on throughout the course of the season that were just hard to come back from, as a family.”

I expressed an interest to Ray Bolton in speaking with Rasir about the incident, but such arrangements were never made.

Though any sort of overt racism by Chambers is not a characteristic with which I’m familiar in him, I have had my own various misgivings about some of his behavior. One of those was Chambers’ physical encounter with then-fellow-freshman Myles Dread on Jan. 3, 2019, in a 68-55 loss at Michigan — which, as I understand, was actually before the noose comment. Ray Bolton was livid about Chambers entering a players’ huddle during a timeout and shoving Dread in what appeared to be a response to something Dread said to teammates. I personally thought it was a despicable show-off display by an insecure coach and wrote as much the next morning in a column.

In the postgame news conference, Chambers apologized for his behavior, for which he was suspended for the next game by athletic director Sandy Barbour, and he promised nothing like it would ever happen again. To my knowledge, nothing ever has.

But the subsequent noose comment festered with at least one important member of the team — senior winger and captain Josh Reaves.

The Big Ten’s defensive player of the year that season and an honorable mention All-Big Ten selection, Reaves has been training recently with the Dallas Mavericks as a member of their expanded 17-man roster for their return to the NBA season in Orlando. He was scheduled to fly there on Wednesday.

Reaves spoke to me on July 1 by phone from Dallas. We agreed that his thoughts about the noose comment would be published only if and when the Boltons had made the story public.

Reaves said that he was told about the comment by Bolton shortly after it happened. I asked Reaves about his initial reaction:

“I don’t know if I’m allowed to curse. It was just f—-ed up, to say the least. Saying that, in any type of context, is wrong. Regardless of how you try to make it seem like you’re speaking, what type of tone you’re trying to take. Regardless, it’s wrong.

“And to say it to a young Black kid, in thinking about a thing you want him to do, that’s kind of messed up.”

Reaves said he was soon after called by Chambers in an apparent attempt at damage control:

“I remember when it happened, he called me into a meeting with him. I don’t know whether he was trying to cover it up, or what he wanted to do. But he called me into his office asking me to, like, help clarify what he was trying to say. And then, he just made it worse. Because he then told me something that wasn’t as bad but still bad.”

Which was what?

“He ended up saying: ‘That’s not what I meant to say. I tried to say, I wanted to be in the field with him.’ Which really isn’t any better because that’s just dumb.”

I wasn’t certain how Reaves interpreted that because I was a little fuzzy on it myself. Like a fellow slave in the cotton fields?

“I guess so. I don’t know. That’s how I took it, how I interpreted it. Which was wrong. It’s just wrong. And if you can’t understand that, then I don’t want to speak to you. I don’t have anything to say to you.”

Reaves said he spoke to no Penn State administrators about the incident but understood they had been informed by the Boltons and expected some sort of action.

“Nothing happened. That’s a big deal. Just to hear somebody say something like that is a big deal.”

I offered to Reaves a devil’s advocate question, that some old white guy like me might say: Well, it was just an expression. Chambers couldn’t have meant it literally. How could it be taken that way? Reaves responded:

“It’s not just an expression because you’re still talking about a young African-American man, coached by a white man. History isn’t too kind to stuff like that.

“Especially being African-American and hearing something like that is… (Reaves paused, struggling to express his emotions.) It just makes you feel like you’re not worth anything.”

Reaves said the ample and well-documented history of hangings by racially motivated lynch mobs in America should be enough for any informed person to avoid using a noose in a metaphorical comment:

“Just the history that African-Americans have gone through, it’s not something that’s taken lightly. It’s taught to everybody. Every history book has it in there.

“To be able to say that, with a clear conscience but knowing what you’re saying, that’s messed up. It’s wrong. It’s dehumanizing. (Bolton) is a person, not somebody you can just speak like that to. Whether it’s in the right context or not, that’s wrong.”

Though Bolton transferred out, Lamar Stevens and Mike Watkins both opted to remain at Penn State for their senior seasons last year and sophomore Myreon Jones emerged in Bolton’s place as a 3-bombing sparkplug. The Nittany Lions had their second-best Big Ten season ever, began 20-5 and 10-4 in the Big Ten, and entered March with a chance to actually win the league before blowing a 19-point lead to lose at home to Michigan State. Hurt by Jones’ late-season bout with mononucleosis, they staggered to 1-5 down the stretch and finished in a four-way tie for fifth, but still certainly would have made their first NCAA tournament in nine years if not for the covid-19 pandemic.

If there was any undercurrent of resentment about racism among Chambers or his staff, it did not show up on the court.

But Reaves believes the public revealing of Chambers’ comment now and the athletic department’s handling of it after it happened will have ramifications:

“I’m mad, because the university kind of swept it under the rug and just let everything go how it was. Which is worse. Because, how nowadays are going with everything going on, it’s just going to make it worse not only on (Chambers) but the university.

“It’s not going to be pretty in State College. Because, given the number of athletes that they have, and the university kind of covering it up or whatever, it’s not going to be pretty.”

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