College basketball rankings: No. 2 Alabama returns to action amid new developments involving Brandon Miller

Alabama is returning to the court Wednesday at South Carolina as the Crimson Tide look to improve to 14-1 in the SEC. Presumably, Brandon Miller will be in the starting lineup for the 28th consecutive game.

But should he be?

It’s a reasonable question to ask after police testified on Tuesday that the Alabama star brought his former teammate, Darius Miles, a gun that was used just minutes later by a man named Michael Davis to shoot and kill Jamea Harris, a 23-year-old mother, hours after the Crimson Tide beat LSU last month.

Alabama coach Nate Oats on Tuesday described Miller as simply being in the “wrong spot at the wrong time.” Hopefully, with the benefit of hindsight, Oats now realizes that’s a wildly inaccurate way to describe Miller’s alleged role in this senseless tragedy.

Wrong spot at the wrong time?

No.

If you’re at a party, minding your own business and having a good time when somebody pulls a gun on the other side of the room and starts shooting, definitely, you’re in the wrong spot at the wrong time — but this was not that. Miller was not in the wrong spot at the wrong time as much as he was literally the person who helped create the wrong spot by bringing a gun to Miles per his request in an act that led to a shooting that left a 5-year-old little boy motherless.

I’ll keep this simple: If you get a text from a friend involved in some sort of altercation after midnight who is requesting that you bring him a gun, it is foolish and reckless to take it to him, period, particularly if you happen to be a projected NBA Draft lottery pick worth millions of dollars. Frankly, I’m unqualified to say whether Miller is a good man who made a poor decision or a troubled man who is about that lifestyle because, well, I don’t know him like that. So I’ll let others make that call.

Either way, what I am comfortable saying is that what Miller did that night undeniably played a role in the subsequent incident that left a young mother dead. It’s an act that will impact the way NBA franchises evaluate him in advance of the 2023 NBA Draft, and the fact that Alabama is comfortable playing him with no punishment to date is shameful, especially when you consider student-athletes are sometimes suspended for things as small as breaking curfew or smoking weed. Still, to date, there’s been absolutely no punishment for Miller at Alabama. It’s a privilege a lesser player wouldn’t be afforded, I’m certain.