Sam Smith: Sprewell's Attack=Root of NBA Strife

[j.hironaka@unesco.org]

In fairness, I think the reason Sam Smith's article is so nauseating can
be attributed to his lack of aptitude or training to think logically,
rather than any uglier motive.

To blithely link the NBA lockout to Latrell Sprewell (e.g.. "it became
as clear as the scratch marks on Carlesimo's throat that the NBA was
being strangled by greed, selfishness and a lack of ethics and
morality.")  without offering any shred of evidence or a single measly
quote from an owner is IMO the crudest form of uppity-"n"-word,
race-baiting.  It's akin to the fabulously successful strategy of James
Baker (George Bush's 1988 presidential campaign manager) to link Michael
Dukakis with Willie Horton (a black man who was "furlowed" from a
Massachusetts jail and subsequently raped a white girl).

I'm not necessarily on the players side any longer, and  I certainly
don't mind if they lose the billion+ dollar wages they were contracted
to earn this year by their dumb-ass owners. Unless some of these NBA
players grow up and clearly suffer a little (lost wages) and gain
perspective, they will never win back the full sympathy of fans (who,
after all, have historically been working class white men and women).

But to even implicitly hint that the "Modern-Day-Basketball-Pro=Latrell
Sprewell" suggests to me questionable logic and motives. I wish to
goodness that the Sprewell incident had never freaking happened. It's
true enough that the incident put a lot of black athletes in an
uncomfortable spot, when asked to choose sides. Nevertheless, I happen
to believe this was an entirely isolated incident in pro basketball's
noble history. The NBA and its fans have surely played a genuine role in
the process of bringing America together. And the sport has made many
millions of young people "color blind" as if it were the most natural
thing in the world. Why can't we just leave it at that?

IMHO, it's America's job as primo cultural and military superpower to
try hard to live up to its heretofore phony-baloney ideals ("All men are
created equal" etc.despite a longer history of legal Apartheid than
South Africa's). Were you all taught in school that lynching was not a
federal crime until a full decade after World War II, when America was
pridefully "making the world safe for democracy" and nuking civilians?
Were you all taught that according to shipping company logs more
Africans died aboard slave ships during the trans-Atlantic crossing
(nearly 10 million) than Jews died during the Holocaust? That's a long,
slow way to die. We surely wouldn't be forgiving about it if it had
happened to one of our ancestors.

Boy, am I a smug Euro-influenced bastard. Sorry.

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