Paul Shirley, former Iowa State basketball player, author and creater of his own website, www.flipcollective.com, was released by ESPN as a contributor Wednesday.

Shirley posted an entry regarding his opinion on the earthquake and disaster in Haiti on his site, stating that he wasn’t going to donate money to relief efforts because responsibility ultimately should be held by Haiti and the education and financial state of the nation.

Shirley had been writing for ESPN about music and cultural musings since 2006, and his book, “Can I Keep My Jersey?” was published in 2007.

The entirety of Shirley’s blog entry and other entries can be found at flipcollective.com.

The blog post was titled “If you rebuild It, they will come,” and detailed responsibility from circumstances following the earthquake that has left at least 150,000 dead on the Caribbean island.

“My wariness has much to do with the fact that the sympathy deployed to Haiti has been done so unconditionally,” Shirley said in the Tuesday morning post. “Very few have said, written, or even intimated the slightest admonishment of Haiti, the country, for putting itself into a position where so many would be killed by an earthquake.”

Packing more than 9 million citizens into an island nation approximately the size of Maryland, Haiti has been through repeated political upheaval in the last decade, and its average gross domestic product is $1300.

Shirley,  a mechanical engineering major from Iowa State, acknowledged that his view of Haiti caring for itself was in the minority, but attempts to justify his statements throughout.

“I don’t mean in any way that the Haitians deserved their collective fate,” Shirley wrote online. “And I understand that it is difficult to plan for the aftermath of an earthquake. However, it is not outside the realm of imagination to think that the citizens of a country might be able to: A) avoid putting themselves into a situation that might result in such catastrophic loss of life. And B) provide for their own aid, in the event of such a catastrophe.”

Shirley was unable to return calls Wednesday, but on Tuesday afternoon, defended his views over the phone following a few comments, before the blog exploded and became a national sub-headline.

“I think if you were 14 years old, and you saw one of these crises hit, your instincts would be, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe this, I need to do whatever I can.’ As you get older you start to see these things happen, and then you see the aftermath and you kind of see a pattern that goes on here,” Shirley said.

“There’s not really much problem solving that goes on, there’s a lot of caterwauling and hand-wringing and reactionary behavior, but there’s not a lot of rational thinking, ‘But why did this happen, and is it a good idea if we continue to make these same mistakes?’”

The comments made about the 2,000–word piece have drawn more than 700 posts to the message board, and CBS basketball analyst Seth Davis said, “Paul, I think you’re a dumbass,” on his Twitter.

ESPN said in a news release, “Paul Shirley is no longer a part-time contributor to ESPN..com following his Haiti writings. The views he expressed on another site of course do not at all reflect our company’s views on the Haiti relief efforts.”

Currently located in suburban Kansas City, Shirley said Tuesday that he was still working out in preparation for a potential future basketball contract, and that he had also applied to graduate school for creative writing.

The 6-foot-10 basketball “mercenary” played for Iowa State from 1997–2001, and has had basketball stints with 13 different teams internationally.