Note: This column is 200 words shorter than usual
because Billy Hunter lost 25% of it in the NBA's new Collective
Bargaining Agreement.
The world be an incrementally better place if the Detroit Pistons
had won the NBA championship. I believe this even though their
Game Seven loss to the Spurs meant that we've been spared a Mitch
Albom column about his experience watching the game with Isiah
Thomas, John Kennedy, James Naismith, and Morrie.
The world would be better. But not because
the Pistons are a terribly appealing team. Center Ben Wallace
shoots free throws like he is
trying to smite errant pigeons. The Detroit bench is so shallow,
Kelly Tripucka and Earl “The Twirl” Cureton played in game six.
Their best player is named Chauncey.
No. A Pistons win would have been a delicious
slap in the face to what was becoming a well-orchestrated Pistons
Backlash. The
Pistons had become a team that people hated, and seemed to enjoy
hating, a little too much. The vibe was not dissimilar to how some
people talk about the city of Detroit itself: a little too "street," a
little too "hip-hop," a little too "urban," all
of which are code words for a little too Black.
One nationally syndicated columnist, Michael
Cunningham, called the spindly Tayshaun Prince a "Whining Pterodactyl" that "should
be extinct." He then described Rip Hamilton as having "Tap-Dancing
Tantrums;" Ben Wallace's reactions to fouls were called the "Afro
Pout" and Chauncey Billups had what Cunningham called a "Woof
Whine." This kind of commentary boggles the mind. Was there
no one to advise Cunningham that comparing NBA players to tap-dancing
animals might be a bad idea? Who is Cunningham's editor, Trent
Lott? Jesse Helms? Bill Cosby?
Standing up to the Piston's backlash meant standing up to this
tide. It also meant standing with perhaps the most maligned player
in the NBA not named Ron Artest: Rasheed Wallace.
A second Wallace championship would have been
a sweet sight indeed. Last year, there was perhaps no greater
moment in sports than seeing
Rasheed Wallace stand triumphant next to seething NBA commissioner
David Stern. Imagine George W. Bush's face if he had to give the
Congressional Medal of Honor to Moqtada Al-Sadr, or if Ariel Sharon
was forced to host a tribute to Edward Said. That was Stern's reaction
to celebrating 'Sheed. This is animus writ large – rife with reverberations
that extend far beyond a clashing of personality and ego.
It was only 18 months ago when Wallace laid
a verbal smackdown on Stern, saying, "I see behind the lines.
I see behind the false screens. I know what this business is
all about. I know the
commissioner of this league makes more than three-quarters of the
players in this league... They look at black athletes like we're
dumb-ass n------. It's as if we're just going to shut up, sign
for the money and do what they tell us."
Stern, who is challenged about as often as
Vito Corleone in an Olive Garden, shot back, "Mr. Wallace's
hateful diatribe was ignorant and offensive to all NBA players.
I refuse to enhance
his heightened sense of deprivation by publicly debating with him.”
This year, it would have been even more fun
to see an encore. Recently, Stern has been hard at work alongside
Republican arch-strategist
Matthew Dowd about how to "help the NBA's appeal in the red
states." Wallace, meanwhile, visited the White House last
year along with the Championship Pistons, stopping just long enough
to say, "I don't have shit to say to [Bush]. I didn't vote
for him. It's just something we have to do."
Herein lies the heart of the Stern/Wallace
conflict. It is really about the future of the NBA, and whether
the league will adapt
to a right wing climate in the country by muzzling its players.
It doesn't matter that Wallace is a skilled big man willing to
take big shots in the fourth quarter, play tough defense and be
entirely unselfish with the ball. Stern wants him to go away because
he represents a block against what NBA suits want the league to
become.
The Stern Agenda of a sanitized, 21st century
NBA loved and supported by alums of both Bob Jones University
and the Belmont Street Projects
alike, is a Park Avenue pipe dream, and something we should oppose. Journalist
Scoop Jackson likes to say, "Basketball isn't a metaphor for
life, basketball is life." Life right now is polarized, racialized
and divided. So is basketball. As long as that's the case, I know
whose side I'm on - and it ain't David Stern's.
Dave Zirin's new book "What's My Name Fool? Sports and
Resistance in the United States" will be in stores in June
2005. Check out his revamped website edgeofsports.com.
You can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by e-mailing
edgeofsports [email protected].
Contact him at [email protected]. |