With the start of the new season, aside from all the talk about new balls, there’s been on-going attention paid to the new dress codes (no wrist bands above the elbow, for instance) and, especially, new rules about arguing with referees (Michael Wilbon says the over-under on Rasheed’s technical foul total this year is 47). The new rules are part of Commissioner Stern’s and the league’s on-going quest to successfully walk a complicated line – selling a product 78% of whose featured attractions are young, African-American males to an audience that is overwhelmingly White.
Sports Illustrated’s preview issue last week featured prominently the three new stars of the game – Le Bron, ‘Melo and DWade and described them in glowing terms as exemplary ambassadors for the league, a positive contrast to a previous generation of failed would-be ambassadors such as AI and Kobe.
It’s clear that the NBA remains on a short leash, however. SI writer Jack McCallum wrote three weeks ago that the NBA’s image problems were out of proportion to the actual behavior of its players. McCallum noted, for example, that NFL players have proportionally more run-ins and dust-ups with the law than do NBA players. But, the NFL is simply not hounded by the same image problems as is Stern’s fiefdom. And, in a discussion with Mike and the Mad Dog on Wednesday, McCallum acknowledged that a lot of readers wrote to complain about SI’s decision to spotlight the three young superstars, especially ‘Melo. Why? Because Carmelo wears cornrows. And, you know what that means.
In the same interview with McCallum, both Mike and the Dog wanted to talk about whether the NBA’s image was really enjoying a comeback. Mike began by saying “the rejuvenation of the NBA, everybody wants to sell that…”
McCallum related that this was the biggest challenge facing Commissioner Stern and recounted that on Stern’s recent tour of Europe, which McCallum covered, Stern’s constant message was: “we are good guys and everyone cares..” about winning back the fans. McCallum observed that “any of the pr problems that we have over here with the NBA do not exist over there…it’s a league held in very high esteem” in Europe. McCallum added that “there are good guys in the league, better guys than the public perception but it’s still an uphill fight.”
When it comes to the NBA, Russo is - how shall I say this - a skeptic. He told McCallum “well, Stephen Jackson doesn’t help…when he’s shooting shots in the air outside a strip club in Indianapolis.”
After a discussion of the prevalence of gun ownership by professional athletes (side note: it would appear that, at least when it comes to pro athletes, Russo is a big advocate of gun control), Russo responded to McCallum’s efforts to put the league’s behavior issues in context with the following:
“I agree, but see the average person, who sees Stephen Jackson and Carmelo Anthony, and is so-so on the NBA, who wants Larry Bird back, that’s going to bother him…that’s all there is to it…it’s not going to work, that’s all there is to it.”
Now, one can choose not to see these comments in racial terms, but one would have to shut one’s eyes pretty tight to miss that context. As I have commented before, one reason why it’s difficult to talk about race in sports conversations is that there is a tendency to view racism in Black and White terms, if you’ll pardon the phrasing. That is, if an incident or conversation does not involve overt, cross-burning, N-word using racism, then talking about race at all is unfairly injecting it where it doesn’t belong. The recent incident in Orlando, when a fan called Dikembe Mutombo a “monkey,” prompting that fan’s banishment from all NBA games this season, reinforces such an all or nothing understanding of race. Incidents like that are a no-brainer, an easy way for the vast majority of people who are not overtly racist to distinguish themselves from those who are. The fact that such overt displays of racism are as swiftly and roundly condemned as they now are act as a salve to our collective conscience about how far we’ve come. As Mutombo’s said after the Orlando incident: “We are not in the '60s. People have paid the price for us to be where we are today. For him to call a black man a monkey in the middle of the game, he was in the second row, for him to stand up and call, 'Mutombo the monkey,' is an insult. It insulted my integrity, my body, my family, my race.”
But, while overt and egregious forms of racism are still more prevalent than most of us would like to believe (witness the recent spate of campaign commercials in places like Tennessee and see BlackProf’s recent posting on this http://www.blackprof.com/archives/2006/10/more_racism_in_sports.html), it’s the more subtle forms of racialized thinking that most characterize our current cultural state. This more subtle racially-tinged environment was brilliantly captured by Jeffrey Williams, in a 2005 UCLA Entertainment Law Review article titled, “Flagrant Foul: Racism in the Ron Artest Fight.” (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=911321) Williams was a 26-year old attorney and frequent contributor to the excellent Sports Law Blog who died suddenly a few days ago from a subdural hematoma.
Law review articles are long and copiously footnoted, but his is worth a read. A few key points stand out:
1) Commissioner Stern understands the racial nature of the challenge he faces. As quoted in a Washington Post story in November 2005, Stern said: “I think it’s fair to say that the NBA was the first sport that was widely viewed as a black sport and…will always be viewed a certain way because of it. Our players are so visible that if they have Afros or cornrows or tattoos – white or black – our consumers pick it up. So, I think there are always some elements of race involved that affect judgments about the NBA.”
2) The NBA has played a problematic game – profiting commercially by selling a particular image of its players while recoiling at the perceived excesses of that image. Williams writes: “[t]hough its dimensions are complex, the cultural authenticity commercialized by the NBA and industry affiliates represents a racist device because those cultural dimensions are closely associated with race.” Williams continues: “the NBA and its sponsors did not create this problem – but they did regard it as a commercial opportunity. This facet of league business is not overt or intentional racism. Yet only the naïve would believe the cultural overtones of the NBA’s marketed image were unknown or only understood by league management. This device was in effect the knowing exploitation of the respective industry markets. Neither overt nor covert, this form of commercial racism is just as real…”
3) Following the Artest brawl, prosecutors clearly deemed the fans, especially John Green, culpable. In fact, prosecutors thought that Green was “single-handedly” responsible for the brawl (and Green had spent eight years in jail previously). The league’s record suspension and fine of Artest, notwithstanding that he was deemed to have a valid self-defense legal argument for his behavior were a capitulation to a fan base already suspicious of the league’s black players. In other words, the suspensions of Artest and his teammates were a capitulation to commercial realities that reinforced the disturbing racial currents that underlie the league’s understanding of its fan base’s wishes.
4) The new NBA dress codes, instituted in 2005-06, especially in the ban on “unapproved head gear” and “chains, pendants or medallions” had unmistakably racial overtones, targeted as they were at the aspects of dress most obviously associated with hip-hop.
5) Matthew Dowd, a former Karl Rove associate, was brought in specifically to consult on the new dress code, in order to help the NBA better reach the “red states.” This was part and parcel of a strategy that indulged and reinforced the perceived link between certain kinds of appearances on the one hand and “professionalism” and proper conduct on the other. Such a capitulation by the league also indulged the fear of, in Harvey Araton’s words “the imagery of large black men beating on defenseless white fans” while ignoring “the too widely accepted pastime of affluent whites feeling empowered to verbally abuse half-dressed, sweaty black men.”
6) Tellingly, the dress code did not apply to owners, like the t-shirt wearing – and constant league gadfly - Mark Cuban. (though the league is now trying to rein in his courtside antics). As an aside, on tonight’s PTI, both Kornheiser and Wilbon applauded Cuban’s latest sarcastic stab at the commissioner and his attire this week – a t-shirt with the words “he fine me” on the back. Kornheiser described Cuban as a “burr under Stern’s saddle” and saw that as a positive necessity for the league.
7) Williams concludes by arguing that leaving punishments for incidents like the famous brawl “to the forces of the market serves to entrench the harmful ideologies that riddle American society.”
If the league continues to face –and accede to - a level of scrutiny for its players’ transgressions that is out of proportion to those of players in other sports, it would seem difficult to deny the on-going role that race plays in judgments of the NBA.
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