Royce White on NBA mental health

[NorthCyd]

There are a lot of people on here who would get in a lot of trouble as employers telling people they can't do certain jobs. There are things called reasonable accommodations that most employers are required to do for someone with a disability. If Royce was saying he can't ever fly for a job like that, yeah, that isn't a reasonable accommodation. However when he is just asking to be allowed to take ground transportation when it will work out with the travel schedule it is an accommodation that will likely be upheld as reasonable. In my experience if this went to court it is likely they would find for the employee.

Yeah, but Royce almost instantly tried to make this a public cause. I'm sorry, but Royce likes the spotlight and he seemed hell bent on making this whole thing as public as possible. Based on what has been said about his time at ISU I have no problem believing he was a real headache to deal with. I support his cause but no one will ever get anything changed the way he went about it. He made himself way to easy to dismiss.

 

[Angie]

Right, I am scared of heights, it freaks me out. I am not going to complain that I cannot do the job of replacing light bulbs on top of TV towers, I am just not going to apply to do that. You know that in the NBA you have to travel. Either deal with it, or don't complain.

I think that's what it boils down to.

Should people with mental health issues have reasonable accommodations made? By all means. But dude was in the NBA, you're going to have to travel. And there just IS some team-building on flights and such. I think the NBA could have tried harder, but it's also sort of one of those situations where you knew what it was coming in.

 

[CyJack13]

True. But he wasn't asking to never fly. He was only asking to be allowed ground transport where it would work. I remember him talking about flying and saying he could do it but he was so physically and mentally exhausted when he got there that it often affected his game. You would think that a team might want to limit the amount your prize draft pick is negatively affected for a game.

This is all information just some fans had about the guy. If the Rockets were doing their homework before they drafted him they would have known all of this and so much more.

I'm not a Royce apologist, but he does have some points about the team having every opportunity to 1) know what they were getting with this draft pick. 2) work something out that would work for both sides and make him an asset rather than a lost draft pick.

As far as the team and NBA waffling about what they couldn't and could do and being difficult to work with - I have no doubt.

Royce could have made sure he was comfortable with the situation before signing a contract. Instead he was quick to sign and start getting paid before working out all his requested arrangements.

 

[Angie]

There are a lot of people on here who would get in a lot of trouble as employers telling people they can't do certain jobs. There are things called reasonable accommodations that most employers are required to do for someone with a disability. If Royce was saying he can't ever fly for a job like that, yeah, that isn't a reasonable accommodation. However when he is just asking to be allowed to take ground transportation when it will work out with the travel schedule it is an accommodation that will likely be upheld as reasonable. In my experience if this went to court it is likely they would find for the employee.

What I was trying to say is not that he can't do the job, but that as an at-will employer, unless he's a superior candidate to another in measurable ways, I wouldn't think it's impractical to not want to take on an employee who is already a question mark in some of the measurables for the job (remember how he was such a tweener?), AND have to make expensive, difficult concessions. My commentary was on the fact that the NBA likely just didn't see his potential, non-guaranteed upside as worth the struggle in this arena.