As Meek Mill begins his 2-4 yr stint in jail, Michael Rubin, co-owner of the 76ers, has visited him 4 times and praises his positive spirit.
“His spirits are about as good as they could be in jail,” Rubin shared. He made his most recent trip to see Mill last Thursday (Dec.14) and shared details of his visits with Billboard. “He’s smiling, he’s positive and he’s really very appreciative of all the support he’s gotten… from Al Sharpton, Colin Kaepernick, Kevin Hart, all these people supporting him on social media.”
“We met four or five years ago at an NBA game when my daughter and I sat next to him and his ex, Nicki [Minaj], and once he figured out I was one of the owners of the Sixers and some other pretty big, internet companies he started asking me 1,000 business questions, ‘How do you do this?’ ‘Why’d you do this?’ ‘Did that work out?,” Rubin says of the spark that lit their now-close relationship. “I liked him. I would have had the stereotypical view, this guy is a hardcore rapper… I didn’t know who he was or what he did. But once he started telling me about his career I thought he would have an interesting business.”
Over the past 2-3 years, though, Rubin says Meek became among his closest male friends and they grew to mutually appreciate their different world dynamic, learning about each other while hanging out.
And then, over the last year or so, they would talk on the phone almost every day for a few minutes, often late at night, or run into each other at Sixers games or events as their friendship grew. “Today I consider him to be one of my closest 10-20 guy friends, someone I really care about, someone I believe in, someone I think has a great career ahead of him,” Rubin says.
“He’s very positive, I just can’t believe Meek is in jail for popping a wheelie on a closed street where he was filming a music video and for breaking up a fight he didn’t start and all the charges were dropped against him,” Rubin adds about the two parole violations — reckless driving and a fight — that Meek pleaded out of and performed community service for.
“This is a great example of how broken the criminal justice system is,” he says. “He’s been on probation his entire adult life… he will have been on probation for 16 years. I couldn’t be on probation for 6 years. If you’re 5 minutes late for a meeting with your probation officer they can put you in jail. I feel confident he’s going ot be home soon and this is a great injustice that’s going to be fixed.”
(source: billboard)
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