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]. |