The Average Joe loves the movie “Office Space.” Apparently, I’m not alone.  This week’s column comes from the How To Get Yourself Fired department.

Our first victim is the lovable, fun-timing Jason Williams.  No, not the Jason Williams who shot his limo driver and was acquitted of manslaughter, but the other NBA Jason Williams, the soon-to-be former Grizzlies guard.

Williams, who has been known during his career for his flashy play and propensity toward turnovers and quick threes as much as his dependability, blew up at a reporter in the Memphis locker room following Sunday’s season-ending playoff loss to Phoenix.  Williams, who was angry over a column Geoff Calkins had written, yanked the pen out of Calkins’ hand after the game and followed Calkins around the locker room, yelling and telling other players not to talk to Calkins. 

“You can talk to TNT, but don't answer this [reporter’s] questions,” ESPN.com quoted Williams as saying. “I’m not letting him write anything. I didn’t do anything. I just took his pen.”

J-Will had to be pulled off Calkins by Grizz guard Mike Miller, and later was escorted out of the locker room by a team official after he started back in on Calkins.  Apparently, the source of Williams’ anger was a column that ran last week in which Calkins questioned the desire of some Grizzlies players, and Williams was quoted as saying, “I’m happy. I go home and see my kids and my wife and I'm OK. All of this [stuff] is secondary to me.”

Good job, Jason.  The Memphis front office is about to clean house, and Williams’ future has been in question for some time.  These don’t sound like the actions of a man who’s worried about keeping his job, do they?  Maybe J-Will had been watching “Office Space” recently.  When your job is in danger, just do the opposite of what you think you should do.  Maybe Jerry West will decide Williams is a straight-shooter with upper-management potential.

Yeah, right.  Williams will likely be on the next train out of town.  He can sit next to Bonzi Wells, whose ouster from the Grizzlies is so set in stone that coach Mike Fratello asked Wells not to come to the playoff game at all.  If you’re facing elimination and you tell one of your players not to even show up, something’s rotten in Denmark.  After West brought Wells in despite his troubled times in Portland, he told fans that Wells would not be a problem.  Looks like Bonzi may be a cancer after all.

But enough about the deep problems with the Grizzlies.  Hell, what else did we expect from that franchise?  The fact that they’ve made the playoffs two years in a row is a step forward.  They’re not the only ones with trouble.  I realize that college baseball barely registers on the national radar, but did anybody see the story about the resignation of Oklahoma baseball coach Larry Cochell?

Cochell resigned after it became public that he made racially insensitive comments about a black player in his team to a reporter.  During an off-camera interview, Cochell, speaking with ESPN’s Gary Thorne about outfielder Joe Dunigan III, who is black, said, “There’s no n----- in him”.  While Cochell meant this as praise in a crazy old white man way, what kind of idiot says something like this to a reporter?

Apparently, Cochell made similar comments to another ESPN analyst, Kyle Peterson.  When Peterson and Thorne figured out that Cochell was saying these kinds of things repeatedly, they got together and had the network inform the university of it.  Cochell apologized, and Dunigan and his parents accepted, telling newspapers they didn’t want the coach fired, but the damage was done.

Here’s a note to coaches out there.  Making racist statements is not cool.  If you are just trying to get fired, though, making them to a reporter is certainly a good way to get the job done.  Once again, I’m calling in the “Office Space” defense.  Maybe Cochell was just looking for a way out.  Guess what, buddy?  You found it.