Former Bucks player Charlie Villanueva, himself afflicted with alopecia, offers view on Will Smith incident at Oscars

JR Radcliffe
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Bucks forward Charlie Villanueva plays at the Bradley Center in 2006.

Former Bucks forward Charlie Villanueva, who played for three seasons in Milwaukee from 2006-09, had a unique take on the Oscars moment that had everyone in the country talking Monday morning.

Villanueva, as many fans remember, is afflicted with alopecia, an autoimmune disease that can cause dramatic hair loss. When comedian Chris Rock made a joke Sunday at the Academy Awards equating Jada Pinkett Smith, Will's wife, to "GI Jane" — evoking the visual of a woman with a shaved head — Smith marched onto the stage and slapped Rock on live national television, then shouted at him to "keep my wife's name out of your (expletive) mouth."

"For someone who's at the stage where they're still struggling with it, they're very vulnerable, and it's a very slippery slope," Villanueva said in a video posted to his Instagram page. "I've heard a lot worse things in my life, especially after I accepted it. For someone who's dealing with alopecia and hasn't accepted it, and people crack jokes — regardless if it's a comedian or regardless of who it is — that (expletive) hurts. At the end of the day, Will reacted because he saw his wife's pain."

Villanueva said he doesn't condone violence but categorized Smith's reaction as "human."

"You have to be careful on how you address people, on how you want to crack jokes on people, because you don't know what they're going through," he said.

Villanueva averaged 13.5 points and 6.3 rebounds during his years with the Bucks, part of an 11-year NBA career that ended after the 2016 season. He's been dealing with alopecia for more than two decades and has served as a spokesman for the National Alopecia Areata Foundation.

"Hopefully, throughout this whole ordeal, I hope alopecia wins," he said. "What I mean by that (is), I hope it created more awareness for alopecia and people understand what alopecia is now."

JR Radcliffe can be reached at (262) 361-9141 or jradcliffe@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JRRadcliffe.