Michigan Has Suspended Juwan Howard For The Remainder Of The Regular Season
This is the hard part of the job. I like Juwan Howard and think Juwan Howard is right for the job. I know everyone's going to push back against that because it's effortless to take somebody's lowest moment and amplify it in a way that makes them seem like a punk, but I like him, and I want him to be the coach at Michigan long term. With that said, there's no spin zone for what happened on Sunday. It was an embarrassing and disappointing moment in a season full of disappointing moments. You could argue it's the lowest point Michigan basketball has had over the last decade. Regardless of who started it and the circumstances, the visual image of a coach slapping an opposing team's assistant coach is a terrible look. Disciplinary action needed to be taken, and Michigan believed the five remaining regular-season games on the schedule would be enough.
People (and by "people," I mean myself and likely nobody else) will probably wonder if I, a Michigan fan, believed this suspension is harsh enough. My honest opinion is "no." Juwan probably should've been suspended for the remainder of the season, including regular-season games, Big Ten Tournament games, and potential postseason games, whether the NCAA tournament or the NIT. Outside of just holding him accountable, I feel like when Juwan does come back for the first game of the Big Ten Tournament, all it's going to be is just one giant distraction. It'll be a circus, which I've had just about enough at Michigan. We can't talk about Michigan football anymore. We have to talk about their football coach and his month-long game of tiddlywinks where he tried to go to the NFL before not getting offered a job he thought he had. We can't talk about the basketball players anymore. We can't discuss guys who have worked their asses off, like Eli Brooks and Hunter Dickinson, who chose to come back for another year to be a part of this program. No, we have to talk about the right hand of their coach who slapped an opposing assistant coach in the face, BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I LIKE! SPORTS ARE FUN!
I believe Juwan Howard will learn from this. In the future, though, an incident like what happened on Sunday cannot happen again. Last year there was a dust-up between Juwan and Mark Turgeon at the Big Ten Tournament in which Juwan got ejected. At the time, I chalked that up to a lot of bad blood between the Michigan and Maryland programs. It was a scuffle, but nobody got hurt, slapped, or punched, unlike they did Sunday at the Kohl Center.
It can't happen again. There has to be a zero-tolerance policy from Warde Manuel and the administration for the remainder of Juwan's tenure. It would break my heart as someone who respects what he's done so far at Michigan, but if there's another incident like this, firing him will be the only course of action. I'll continue to believe in him.
As far as what this means for the actual product on the floor, it's hard to tell. Michigan has what is essentially a must win game against Rutgers coming up on Wednesday in which they'll be without their coach, without one of their best players in Moussa Diabate, and without one of their best bench pieces in Terrance Williams. Unless we get a miracle, the 2021-2022 Michigan basketball season will likely go down as one of the most disappointing in the program's history. This preseason top 5 team has done almost everything except winning meaningful basketball games. I truly hope they find some spark through this controversy, but my optimism remains low.