THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION has had better weeks in the sports department. First, it discovers they’ve got a salty old columnist running around the back offices demanding that we stop being nice to the Japanese. Now they’ve pulled down their paean to their brand new Mr. Georgia Basketball within hours of posting it to their Web site after he’s accused of a drive-by BB gun shooting.

(Image courtesy Gwinnett County Detention Center)

Ronnie Ramos, the senior sports editor at the AJC, told his own paper that they’re reconsidering the honor. His hand was forced when reports of the arrest of Al-Farouq Aminu, one of the top high school basketball players in the nation and a Wake Forest recruit, started trickling in Friday.

The Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Department claims Aminu shot a woman from a vehicle with a BB gun on March 14th and turned himself in for arrest Friday. It is unclear if the AJC was aware of the March 14th incident before its final decision on the Mr. Basketball award.

However, they still have not formally announced any change in their Boys’ Player of the Year award, issued March 23rd to Aminu. In that article, the AJC refers to his “selflessness” and provides the following quotes from Aminu:

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” - quoting Martin Luther King, Jr.

“When I talk to kids and they say, ‘you’re my favorite player,” I think about them reading the paper and if Al-Farouq does something bad, they’ll say, ‘man, that was my favorite player.’ So I try to keep my nose extra clean.”

As of Friday night, Aminu was still being held on $4,500 bond.

(Additional reporting by Matt Sussman)