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Sunday, February 26, 2023

Basketball Apartheid - Social Justice, Sport, and Basketball

Sport is not immune from 'culture wars'. First, what is 'culture war'? 

  1. "Conflict, especially political, over cultural values, particularly in the United States." - Wiktionary

Battles rage over the primacy of ideas and how they are shared, implemented, and maintained. Who and what move to the top of the food chain or gets cancelled? 

Marketability (merchandising)

Self-promotion can get viewed in a harsh light. It's fine for the NCAA and member schools to champion their brands, but when players sought to unionize or shine a light on their concerns, it became taboo. NIL gave players a chance to participate in the gravy train.
 

Analytics

Everyone isn't a fan of analytics. Sport performance expert Dr. Fergus Connolly emphasizes using analytics to impact winning. I don't know the correlation between "40 times" or "bench press reps" and winning. Some guys aren't the biggest, the fastest, or the strongest, but won big like Julian Edelman.


 
Speech "Shut up and dribble"


First Amendment rights aside, athletes have long participated in philanthropy and social justice campaigns. LeBron famous founded a school and supported education within his home community. Kevin Durant likewise has a foundation with charitable works behind the scenes. 


When they choose not to participate, they have their reasons, which is fine, too. But having a platform and a megaphone doesn't allow you to silence others. 

Basketball pariahs

Who got cancelled and why? Examples include Donald Sterling, Karl Malone, Kermit Washington, and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. It's usually apples and oranges. Sterling got cancelled for racism, Kermit Washington lost control in an era where the NBA jammed physicality inside the arc, and Adbul-Rauf was 'Kaepernick before Kaepernick'.

It cuts both ways. Sometimes athletes get chance after chance despite unacceptable behavior. Steve Howe got 'one last chance' with drug abuse until finally dying in a truck accident. Unconfirmed reports say Duke athletes got play over punishment from the disciplinary board. Stanford athletes had "easy course" lists. Alabama basketball has a different kind of shootout going on.

Concepts and Ideas

Just because we heard it over and over doesn't make it true. "European players are soft." That was a thing once. It seems ridiculous when considering 'old timers' like Sarunas Marciulionis and Manu Ginobili or current generation players like Jokic, Antetokounmpo, or Doncic. 

Nations cancel others. The US boycotted the 1980 Olympics. Many of us can barely remember why. Many athletes surely remain bitter about losing the chance to compete.

Sport is a microcosm of society. Each of us reconciles our values while bombarded through prisms generating heat and light from every angle of the political spectrum. "Intellects" with a microphone think they're entitled to free speech but "dumb jocks" are not.
 

Everything is not always what we believe. 

Lagniappe. JJ Redick can believe whatever he wants about the 80s. Bird was winning championships before Redick was born. 

"The 38-year-old Redick clapped back against what he called a "trope" that players of past decades incurred more physical play than their contemporary peers.

“The trope that every old talking head uses, Mad Dog, Stephen A., ‘physicality, physicality, physicality,’" Redick said Thursday. "My entire point about the segment was that outside of hard fouls and fighting, the physicality, the basketball play ... is not that much different than today’s NBA." 

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