You Herd Me!: I'll Say It If Nobody Else Will (12 page)

This metaphorical virus was contracted and spread by a very small number of black athletes. In the NBA, unlike any other professional American sport, the actions of a few speak loudly for all the players. They all get lumped together, no matter how unfair or downright stupid it might seem.

During roughly the same time span since the Malice at the Palace, the Indianapolis Colts had twenty-three arrests. Doesn’t matter—people still pay big money to fill Lucas Oil Stadium every time the Colts play. It didn’t hurt that their star of stars, Peyton Manning, was a white quarterback who looked like he could have lived down the block from a large majority of the season-ticket holders. The Colts, however, were in the upper echelon of NFL teams when it came to arrests during the 2000s. There’re no long-term repercussions, though. There aren’t even short-term repercussions—it’s the NFL, not the NBA. Fans don’t see the faces
or the tats or sit close enough to feel the heat coming off their bodies. The NFL is detached, impersonal, a bunch of pads running into each other for entertainment and gambling purposes.

Here’s another stat: the NFL had twenty-seven arrests in twenty-three weeks—twenty-three
weeks
—in the off-season following the 2012–13 season. That’s more than an arrest a week. But it doesn’t stick to the NFL. They don’t lose advertisers, we don’t judge them, we don’t refuse to show up to local games. Nobody in Indianapolis seems to say, “I’m not going to watch the Colts this weekend because several published reports have linked Marvin Harrison to the 2008 murder of a man named Dwight Dixon in Philadelphia.” No, because what’s happening with the Pacers is almost unheard of in American sports. They’re winning in a boring two-team-market town and nobody is going to the games.

Outdrawn by the T-Wolves.

Outdrawn by the Suns.

The
Suns
?

Yes, the Suns.

Have you
seen
the Suns?

Permit me this tangent: a study of 3,500 NBA players showed that each one plays for 2.5 teams over the course of his career. Players who average more than thirty minutes per game during their careers—star or high-end players—play for an average of 2.99 teams. Even star players like Patrick Ewing and Karl Malone and Michael Jordan don’t end their careers in the same uniform they wore their rookie years. Everybody gets traded in the NBA, but it’s rarely on players’ terms.

With this routine changing of uniforms, why were so many people outraged by LeBron James leaving Cleveland? Was it because a black player—on
his
terms—chose his destination? The words of Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert were telling. He called
it “cowardly betrayal,” “selfish,” a “shocking act of disloyalty,” a “heartless and callous action.” It reads like a vicious, crazed Zagat entry.

But before we crucify LeBron, can it be duly noted that in seven years in Cleveland they—meaning Gilbert—didn’t provide him with another all-star–caliber player? And can it be noted, for the record, that James was … you know … a
free
agent?

I believe part of the backlash against LeBron relates to the aftereffects from the Malice in the Palace. It’s the fear of the threatening black man. LeBron is big, he’s strong, he’s got tats, he scowls. I’m not saying that’s all of it, but that’s part of it. I’m not saying we love all white athletes. I’m not saying we dislike or fear all black athletes. But when you look at Dan Gilbert and you look at the Indiana Pacers and you look at the way we hold NBA players accountable for off-field indiscretions, the conclusion is indisputable: it’s a much,
much
harsher standard than you find anywhere else. If Charlie Sheen acts like a douche bag, it doesn’t speak for all Caucasians. When Josh Brent got a DUI and killed his friend, it didn’t speak for every NFL player. Hell, it didn’t even speak for every Dallas Cowboy. It simply doesn’t stick. But if Latrell Sprewell chokes a coach, or Ron Artest throws a punch, it seems to speak in some broad sense for all African-American NBA players.

(It’s interesting to note that Kevin Durant—marketed across the country as nonthreatening and friendly and likable, for good reason—has a ton of tats. The difference? He’s placed them strategically inside his uniform shell. They’re there, but you just don’t see them, therefore he’s palatable to the ticket-buying segment of corporate white America.)

I’ve been talking about sports professionally for more than twenty years, and the word
thug
on my Twitter account and e-mails—especially e-mails—gets used routinely to label NBA
players. The occurrence of this one word in reference to NBA players far exceeds that of any other sport. It’s not even close. Former NBA star and current ESPN commentator Jalen Rose once told me that players always laugh at NBA fights. He told me, “Man, we don’t wear hats and we don’t wear helmets. Our face is our moneymaker. Nobody wants to take a punch in the NBA.” If you watch most NBA “fights,” you can see Rose’s words in action. Guys square off and wait for someone to pull them apart. And yet, somehow, no sport has more athletes called
thug
.

Can we be honest? It’s racial coding.

John Daly, with a private life that would singe Keith Richards’s eyebrows, is a good ol’ boy.

Allen Iverson? Thug.

And the Pacers are still paying the price for the actions of a few black athletes. With a winning team in one of the less energized cities in America—Naptown, remember—they simply can’t draw.

I present, as a counterpoint, the city of Portland, Oregon. The Blazers sell out, even though they play in a worse arena with a worse team. The Blazers sell out, even though Portland is the No. 1 cycling city in the country, is an exceptional culinary town, is located one hour from the beach, and is one of the few U.S. cities close to year-round mountain skiing. The Blazers sell out, even though a far higher portion of the Portland population is earthy and eccentric, two qualities that aren’t automatically associated with rabid sports fans. The Blazers sell out, even though the franchise went through the better part of a decade being called “The Jail Blazers” because of the criminal behavior of several of its players—behavior far worse than anything the Pacers did in Detroit.

I can hear you out there:
Colin, it’s the economy
. Really? Is that why Portland is in the top ten in NBA attendance and home television ratings? Is it the economy? As of December 2012, Indiana had
8 percent unemployment. Oregon? Eight percent unemployment. The economy argument doesn’t hold water.

Maybe voting patterns provide a more incisive look. Portland is progressive, tolerant, tech-embracing. Indianapolis is the most conservative city in America with a population above 500,000. There has to be something, right? Because on the surface, it makes no sense. The Pacers, tops in the league in rebounding, defense, and effort, are the perfect team for Hoosierville. And yet …

There’s more empirical evidence, courtesy of the Harris poll. According to them, the NFL is much bigger than college football, the NHL is much bigger than college hockey, and MLB is much bigger than college baseball. But the difference between the NBA and college basketball? Slim. Considering the quality of play in college basketball has been gradually sliding for years, why is college basketball almost as popular as the NBA?

Part of it is simply this: the NBA is the league with black stars. It doesn’t do well in TV ratings in rural communities. It does well in ethnic communities: Atlanta, Houston, New York, Miami, Chicago, Dallas. Race plays a role. The evidence is undeniable.

Mike Lupica once wrote that the NBA is the only sport where the fans don’t really like the players. Buzz Bissinger, noted author of
Friday Night Lights
, created a minor shitstorm at the NBA All Star Weekend in Los Angeles in 2010 when he attributed the NBA’s lack of popularity to a dearth of American-born white stars.

Was Bissinger just stirring up trouble? Looking for attention? I’m not so sure. On my flight home from that All Star Weekend in Los Angeles, I sat next to the marketing director for an NBA franchise. I asked him about the team’s first-round pick in the previous year’s draft. He grimaced and shook his head. This man who is in charge of selling his team to its fan base said he wished his team had picked a certain college guard instead.

When I asked him why, he looked me dead in the eye and said, “We could really use a white guard to market to our fans.”

His tone was direct and matter-of-fact. I got the impression he was left with no choice but to acknowledge a problem he wished didn’t exist.

Proximity to greatness doesn’t equal greatness. Rubbing elbows with it doesn’t rub off.

Greatness comes from deep within people. It’s part drive and part focus. To maintain it also takes the same drive and commitment.

And just forget about trying to be great at two things. It almost never happens.

Remember how bad a fit Magic Johnson was briefly as the Lakers’ head coach? It doesn’t even seem possible. He learned from Pat Riley and Phil Jackson and still seemed lost? This was a guy with an innate feel for the game of basketball but in a huddle wearing a tie? It just didn’t feel right and Magic knew it instantly.

Back in the early 1990s the Washington Huskies were a top ten college football powerhouse. The man who built their program, Don James, retired abruptly. They gave the job to his longtime assistant, Jim Lambright. He stood next to James for around twenty years. They were in the same meeting rooms. Had a constant football dialogue for two decades. Yet just a few years after taking over my favorite team of all time, it dissolved back into a mediocre program.

Proximity to greatness doesn’t equal greatness.

Instead of hiring stars that seem like perfect fits for jobs, why not go find the next star?

Just because people are close to brilliance or talent doesn’t mean they have it.

Otherwise, you wouldn’t have so many loser kids from successful parents. It’s about the drive and focus, not the proximity.

When Robert Griffin III was named the 2012 NFL Rookie of the Year, there wasn’t even a ripple of protest in the sports world. Twitter didn’t erupt, or even bubble, with cries of injustice. RGIII won, in a landslide, beating out Andrew Luck, and that was simply how it was supposed to be.

But was it really that obvious? Was the argument for Griffin over Luck really so convincing it didn’t even merit a spirited conversation? I once casually mentioned that Thursday is my favorite day of the week, and I lost more than 2,500 Twitter followers by the end of the next day. Misspell a word on Twitter and see how many people mock your education. Pick a side in a movie debate—say you like
The Hangover
better than
The Wedding Crashers
—and you might earn yourself a death threat.

And yet, Griffin over Luck didn’t even bump the needle. Not even a little bit. Not even in Indianapolis.

Why? Why did the vote—29 of 50 first-place votes went to Griffin—seem so anticlimactic? There’s no dispute that Luck did more with substantially less, and that he clobbered Griffin in nearly every single relevant statistical category.

Except one: interceptions.

Luck had 18; Griffin, 5.

Voters couldn’t bend their minds around that one statistic, a statistic so widely misunderstood that it shouldn’t be used as a barometer of much of anything at all. But because of it, Luck was deemed—by a wide margin—to be the second-best rookie in the NFL.

Here’s the problem: we have absolutely no idea what to make of an interception. With all the advancements in the analytics of
sports, all the next-level statistics and advanced metrics, all of the NFL’s ability to seamlessly link technology to its sport, the interception remains tied to an old-fashioned concept of good vs. evil.

Interceptions are bad. All of them. Can’t win with them and can’t lose without them. They’re a one-size-fits-all statistic. The quarterback who throws more of them is worse than the quarterback who throws fewer of them. End of story.

In this day and age, it’s amazing that we still think this way.

Let’s remember how Luck ended up in Indianapolis. The Colts got the No. 1 pick in the draft because they earned it. They earned it because they were terrible, the worst team in the league in 2011 by a wide margin. They weren’t just bad at quarterback; they were bad all over. When they drafted Luck, that didn’t change anything beside the quarterback position. The personnel surrounding Luck was bad during his rookie year, too.