Mike Boynton Talks With Media About Weathers’ Return, Handling of Suspension

STILLWATER — About two months after being suspended from the Oklahoma State basketball team, Michael Weathers was reinstated, it was announced Thursday.

Tuesday, Weathers pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of knowingly concealing stolen property. Mike Boynton met with the media Thursday. Weathers was unavailable to the media, but media members were told Weathers would be made available at some point.

“I can’t speak for him, and just so you know we’ll have him out here at some point, I don’t know when,” Boynton said. “I don’t know if today was necessarily the best time, he hasn’t done anything. He doesn’t deserve to talk to you guys.”

One of the more interesting tidbits Boynton hit on Tuesday was Weathers’ situation compared to Davon Dillard and Zack Dawson, who were dismissed from the program last season.

“If this was a pattern of behavior, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, and I think if we’re honest, I’ve tried to handle those situations very openly and honestly,” Boynton said. “We’ve had a couple kids before who it wasn’t, like, the day we made that decision was the first time those kids had had some issues. They had been suspended, they had been suspended, and so you get to a point where you keep saying, ‘Hey, these are the things that we’re about as a program, and although we care about you individually, we can’t let those things start to fracture because then we can’t have a program that’s well respected by the group,’ and so, again, you make it a point that, A, this can’t happen again, and Michael knows that he doesn’t have a second opportunity to screw up.

“If he does anything close to what he did, he won’t have another opportunity with our program, so that’s the message. ‘Hey, you’ve got another chance by grace, and now’s the chance to do the right thing with that second chance.’”

Weathers’ reinstatement doesn’t necessarily mean he hops right back in the lineup. Boynton said Weathers has relatively stayed in shape in his time away from the team, but in his opening practices back, Weathers will have to catch up on what he missed and regain the team’s trust.

Thomas Dziagwa, Weathers’ roommate, said he has talked to Weathers every night. Dziagwa put emphasis on the team “welcoming him back with open arms.” Weathers returned to practice Wednesday, where Dziagwa and Lindy Waters said Weathers’ high-energy attitude was noticeable.

As part of Weathers sentencing, he had to complete 100 hours of community service something he completed before his Tuesday hearing. Boynton said it was good to see how seriously Weathers took it, but didn’t give him too much credit because it was a situation Weathers put himself in.

“I think pretty quickly, he realized that he made a big, big mistake and that he was gonna do everything possible to win back the grace of people who are decision-makers around here, and he did that, and I think, actually, he went well over 100, so that shows that it mattered,” Boynton said. “It wasn’t something that he took for granted. He didn’t act like it wasn’t a big deal. It was a big deal, and he knew that, in a lot of ways, he kind of gave up his ability to control his own fate, and so I’m proud that he took it seriously and did those things with as much diligence as he did, but that was required of him, so in some ways, he doesn’t get too much of a pat on the back because he’s also the one who put himself in that situation.”

Boynton said in conversations with the team, he used Weathers’ situation as a learning tool.

“We’re all one bad decision away from having things in our lives completely change, and like I said, he hasn’t been a kid who’s been in a lot of trouble,” Boynton said. “Doesn’t miss class. He’s not a straight A student, but he goes to class. He does his work. So, the message is, we all need to learn from Michael. We all need to be conscious of the decisions we make and the position we put ourselves in and as importantly is, we’re representing everybody here.

“When we go out as the Oklahoma State basketball program, we’re not just representing the 13 guys on the team or our coaches; we’re representing Burns Hargis, we’re representing Mike Holder, we’re representing our fans and we have a responsibility to that.”