Diamond Crooks Takin Over

DONTE'S DRAMA

I don't know how closely you guys follow news out of Buffalo, but Bills' free safety Donte Whitner's home was robbed this weekend, and the thieves, who were probably "friends" of Whitner's, took $400,000 worth of jewelery.

Sonny Cheeba? Geechy Suede? Y'all got my ice? I spent a lotta Lucini on that!

Whitner's business spokesperson, Patrice Horton, won't specify what pieces of jewelery were stolen, but does confirm reports that the total value of what's missing is $400k.

Damn.

I feel bad for Whitner, but would feel worse if he had lost $400k in the stock market, or in real estate, or in bad investments with Bernie Madoff. If those things happened I'd know that he was at least trying to make the money he works so hard for ($2.7 mil per season) work for him. But to take the equivalent of 15 percent of you pre tax income and sink it into jewelry is unthinkable to me.

Now, I'm not judging too harshly. It's not like I've never spent money foolishly. I've got Camp Lo's second album, so I know a little about bad buys.

Somebody pulled a heist, but they just don't know who. I wonder how we do heistin' jewels, how we do!

I could see dropping that kinda of money on an artifact that would will increase in value, but I suspect those thieves didn't steal $400,000 worth of antique jewelery. And, really, what is the resale market like on medallions that spell DONTE in diamond-dipped platinum?

It's pretty soft, I'm guessing.

But what really rattles me about this whole affair is that Whitner's "business spokesperson" is the person who confirms the initial report of the theft. So Whitner has the foresight to hire (what we can only assume are) professionals to help handle his "business," but lacks the vision to store his jewelry stash somewhere other than a safe deposit box?

Makes no sense.

I'd like to think this robbery will teach athletes across the country to guard their goodies more carefully, recent... history...tells us that athletes have been and will continue to be targets for robbers. So if Whitner didn't learn from those before him to keep his treasure chest someplace secure, we can't assume anyone will learn a thing from what happened to him.

We can only hope, then shake our heads when it happens again.