The NBA in Vegas?

Forget all the issues of gambling & sin, forget "What happens here stays here," the reason that the NBA shouldn't be in Vegas is because that city is the anti-thesis of professional basketball. The excitement of the N.B.A. comes from (1) player personalities & idiosyncrasies (see: Arenas, Gilbert) & (2) player spontaneity & creativity. Vegas offers neither. Everything is lit-up, pre-fabricated choreography. Turns out that the NBA is living that up : having a poorly-programmed, broke-down cyborg mouth a mash-up of Vegas classics during introductions & having scantily-clad, but static & bored women appear. No doubt the players felt it : their body language expressed indifference & suppressed personality. &, lest you think players just don't care about introductions...see the 2006 All-Star dance-off or the 2005 All-Star introductions.

&, as Mark Stein points out, the absense of some of the guys who create the in-game spontaneity - Kidd, Nash, & A.I. - might hurt the game itself.

Call me old-fashioned, but I hope this is the last we hear about the league in Vegas.

peace love gap
Johnny Hatchett

Free Tim Hardaway(?)

Editor's Note : Free Tim Hardaway? What?

If there is such a thing as a definitive take on Tim Hardaway's homophobia | p.r. gaffe : (depending on how you look at it) : it might just be Sports on My Mind's
Tim Hardaway and the Language of Hate; Chris Broussard is LZ’s Good Buddy (as long as LZ Doesn’t Check out his Johnson in the Shower, That Is). (God I love that title.)

Sports on My Mind offers a good summation of Hardaway's comments & apology, & ties it to ESPN's Chris Broussard's equally asinine, yet less publicized, message of born-again, Christian love.

Apparently, SoMM notes, the N.B.A. removed Hardaway from all league-related appearances. To be brief : I'm fine with that. Hardaway has a right to believe what he wants & speak what he wants, but he, of course, has no inherent right to a league position, nor access to the public airwaves that disseminate his hatred & paranoia.

The thing is, I don't think that this (legitimate-form-of-)censoring Hardaway is an adequate response. It seems to me that the solution de jour of an ambiguous mixture of media mouths & the masses for the expression of hate, stereotype, racist, or offensive discourse is ... simply ... fire him/her. See: Michael Irvin, see: John Edwards' bloggers. (Neither Irvin nor the bloggers was fired, though those bloggers may as well have been. Looks to me like they took one for the team.)

I do not condone Hardaway's beliefs, nor do I think that he is a victim of some panoptic, prohibitory p.c. police force. But, by calling for the banishment or actually banishing a single voice, I speculate that the following occurs :

• We mistake the production of silence with the production of an "aware," "tolerant," or, even "gay friendly" league. Of course, a locker room filled with hate speech can't contribute to any of those things. But will a locker room of stifled hatred either? (Perhaps Broussard is over-estimating who's "with him," but he seems to think that most players feel like he does about gay people.) In other words, the homophobia doesn't go away; the environment might simply be hateful-1.
• Confronting homophobia isn't only a p.r. move. Hardaway showed his hand, apologizing for saying that he hates gay people, not for hating them.

  Yes, I regret it. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said I hate gay people or anything like that,” he said. “That was my mistake.”

  It's not at all disingenuous; he's apologizing for exactly what got him in trouble in the first place. &, I think, by engaging in this cycle of speak-(apologize)-&-fire, we tend to diminish non-speech related contributors to homophobia.
  
• This narrative, now common : speaker says something asinine, public & other media mouths call for firing, speaker is fired or resigns : is particularly easy to understand & easy to broadcast. ESPN can run the whole story through its nauseatingly repetitious Sportscenter machine thanks, especially, to the fact that we get a neat ending. There's no wider discussion; the words Hardaway spoke are his problem, we disavow them, & he's been taken care of, in one way or another. I know the job of ESPN isn't that of sociology, nor is it David Stern's work to conjure the ghost of C. Wright Mills, but let's dig a little deeper. For example, let's wonder what Hardaway's remarks have to do with Broussard's & what do both of them have to do with Tony Dungy's public support of an anti-gay organization? The N.B.A. Commish has some remarks credited to him about when the league's "inquiry" about its players end: right about when the players put the ball on the floor (so long as you have played one year in college, & abide by the dress code, & stay away from the clubs). But let's not buy what Stern is selling without investigating the evidence. For example, dig around, ESPN, to find out whether the NBA & its union provide the same benefits to a married, homosexual couple as it does a married, heterosexual couple. (It hasn't happened yet, so I'm talking about a theoretical couple ... & the league's complicity with heterosexism.) But, more importantly, let's strive to generate a real conversation : not only Amaechi's powerful biography & critiques narrating us through other player's soundbites.
  

I hate what Tim Hardaway said. But that's not the end of this story...

peace love gap
Johnny Hatchett

Boston wins?

This is a premature post. With just under 3:00 left in their game, the Boston Celtics are leading the Minnesota Timberwolves. If Boston hangs on & wins - a huge IF since this team can't seem to succesfully draw up & run a play in the final minute of a game - then the T'Wolves will have done the impossible : ruined a 17 game winning streak (the Suns', on Jan 29th) & a 17 game losing streak (the Celts').

Here's hoping.

David Stern's airball

Sports Media Review has a few days worth of discussion on John Amaechi's revelation that he is a retired NBA player and a gay man.

Meanwhile, Sports on My Mind offers a review of player, coach, & Commish reaction to the news on Amaechi.

Specifically, Commissioner Stern has this to say.

“We have a very diverse league. The question at the N.B.A. is always, ‘Have you got game?’ That’s it, end of inquiry.”

It's goofy how disingenuous this statement is. Stern has presided over some recent rule changes that are decidedly not about the question "Have you got game?" In fact, the implementation of an age-limit runs counter to Stern's logic. Prep-to-pro ballers frequently have game; some of them - LeBron, Amare, Dwight, (Durant?) - have game-in-excess. But, at least in this case, that wasn't the end of the inquiry.

Briefly, two additional critiques of Stern's public statement.

• As proof that "Have you got game?" is not the end of the N.B.A.'s inquiry, I point you to one reality of the N.B.A. - its dance teams - that is (again) decidedly not about the question "Have you got game?" and is (obviously) about other, more messy questions, such as gender in sports, (hetero)sexuality in sports, etc.
  
• While it is important that all players, regardless of race, class, religion, sexuality, get a fair shake in the league, this is only part of the discussion. The excerpts of Amaechi's book indicate that he had a mixed experience in the league. Certain players - namely Greg Ostertag and AK47 made Amaechi's time in the league bearable, others (Amaechi names coach Jerry Sloan as one of those others) did not. The conversations journalists, players, and bloggers are having about Amaechi are generally not about whether gay men should be allowed to play in the league, which, if that was our question, Stern's statement would be an adequate response. Rather, people are wondering about the personal, psychological, & social costs of being gay in the N.B.A., as well as the possible hostilities and acts of generosity that a publicly gay N.B.A. player might experience.
  

peace love gap
Johnny Hatchett

Mike Golic on European basketball players

Editor's Note: Johnny Hatchett fusses over a few words.

Frequently, comments informed by "common sense" & anecdotal data say a lot more than their speaker intends for them to say. Take Mike Golic's claim in THE network's January 1 edition of their magazine.

"... the fact that kids coming out of high school here are not as prepared as the Europeans. They're more polished over there. They can shoot and are extremely fundamental."

Let's ignore that Golic describes European players as fundamental and focus on his claim that European players are "more polished over there" and are more prepared than are high school players to play in the NBA. Golic offers little in the way of data to back his claim, just that European players "can shoot." This, I suspect, Golic has learned from watching a few NBA players - say, Dallas' Dirk or OK City's Peja - and believing that the perimeter games of these two are pretty standard for European ballers.

But, as of today, of the NBA's top-twenty three point shooters (by percentage) only Mehmet Okur was born abroad. Several high school to NBA players make this list : Boston's Gerald Green, the Pacer's Al Harrington, and Portland's Martell Webster.

So much for that.

Are European players "more prepared" than high school players to make an immediate impact in the NBA? While I don't have the statistical data - say, the numbers put up over the first three years by both group of players - my hunch is that Dwight Howard's, LBJ's, and Amare's immediate achievements give the high school players the statistical edge over Euro ballers.

Golic's claim is convincing because it appeals to what many of us believe about European basketball - it emphasizes fundamentals, passing, and shooting - while American-born players are schooled to play recklessly & with more stylistic skill than "fundamental" skill. This is why, we're told, the American teams sent to compete abroad consistently underachieve.

But Golic's claim also speaks a second language. It is a language that Tommy Craggs hears in sport culture's worship of John Wooden.

"He is their reminder of a time that never really was, a Hummel figurine of the hardwood. "[S]ometimes," Rick Reilly wrote in Sports Illustrated, "when the Madness of March gets to be too much—too many players trying to make SportsCenter, too few players trying to make assists, too many coaches trying to be homeys, too few coaches willing to be mentors, too many freshmen with out-of-wedlock kids, too few freshmen who will stay in school long enough to become men—I like to go see Coach Wooden." You don't exactly need a decoder pin to get his drift."

It is the language that convinces Michael Wilbon that the NBA ought punish African-American players in order to ameliorate white America's anxieties.

It's a langauge that blends paternalism with moralism and stereotypes and allows the NBA to enact dress code and age limits on some of America's most well-paid and highly-visible employees.

& It's a language that has William C. Rhoden worrying that the NBA is phasing out its black athletes.

In other words, it's a language that uses common-sense stereotypes to justify critiques of African-American athlete's performances and cultures & to support league policies & actions that restrict their rights.

peace love gap,
Johnny Hatchett