Jim Boeheim On Reporter Who Questioned His Coaching: 'Never Played Basketball and is 5-Foot-2'

Jim Boeheim is a very tall man who knows a lot about Syracuse basketball. He doesn't know a lot about Syracuse basketball because he's tall. And he's not tall because he contains so much Syracuse basketball knowledge. These things are unrelated. My source on that? Science.

What is related? Being a cankerous son of a gun and his commentary during a media session last night. After answering a question about the defensive improvement shown by Jesse Edwards and Kadary Richmond, Boeheim addressed a tweet sent earlier this week sent by The Athletic's Matthew Gutierrez suggesting the Orange would be in a much better position had the duo played more minutes sooner.

"Boeheim's answer seemed complete – the media relations person had even started to call on the next reporter – but then he interjected with his shots at Gutierrez. "But if I played Jesse (Edwards) and Kadary (Richmond) we'd probably be 22-2 now," Boeheim said. "I just didn't see that, I couldn't figure that out by myself after 45 years. "I needed a reporter to figure that out who's never played basketball and is 5-foot-2." "

Here's the tweet that got Boeheim, who is still sitting on one championship after 44 years at the helm in Upstate New York, all riled up.

And here's Gutierrez distilling the very dumb situation down to its basic terms.

Now, clearly this isn't the end of the world and pretending to be upset on the behalf of journalists is only going to result in a post steeped with disingenuousness but it is instructive to see how the mind of a college basketball coaching legend works. These guys all share the same proclivity toward bullying the media — only to varying degrees. One is left to wonder if decade upon decade of being unchecked and revered as a god by 99 percent of the people they come into contact with has some impact on their worldview and perhaps emboldens them to come off petty and, in this case, ironically small themselves.