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Michael Holley On The Ball
Holley contributes an impressive article, and mentions some interesting
things in
brief detail: Pierce gained the respect of both Walker and Mercer;
Mercer is now
represented by a rap artist; Antoine was offered to two teams - Danny
Fortson
would be one of the players coming here, and John "Hot Plate" Williams -
Can you
believe Pitino swiped him away from Larry Brown......
[The Boston Globe Online][Boston.com]
[Boston Globe Online / Sports]
They've been playing crazy game
By Michael Holley, Globe Staff, 10/29/98
Ido not know who among us is the most sane. But I do know who isn't. If
you care about pro basketball, you know who the sketchy people are,
too. Before we get to that, we should make a pact: No one should be referred
to as ''nuts'' or ''touched'' or ''shady'' without first being compared to a
handful of people associated with the NBA.
You think you have friends and relatives who have issues? Please. You haven't
met crazy until you've heard about a group of wealthy men who have spent weeks
in hotel conference rooms arguing about how to split billions of dollars. NBA
commissioner David Stern has done that. His deputy, Russ Granik, has done
that. And members of the league's Board of Governors have encouraged them to
do it.
All of them are very rich. And very crazy. They proved it yesterday in a city
where many people have written or sung about losing their sanity. A rapper
named Nas once rhymed that it was a ''New York State of Mind,'' but he was
presuming that his listeners were dealing with common sense. The people who
run the league are not. They stood at yet another expensive Manhattan hotel
yesterday and canceled two more weeks of the NBA season. That means there will
be no games until Dec. 1 at the earliest. It also means Stern, Granik, and the
owners have not been listening to the public. Which is to say they are not
skilled enough to know how indifference sounds.
Of course, it didn't have to be like this. At the beginning of this year,
everyone under the NBA umbrella was on the winning side of a pro sports scam.
The league was popular. A new television deal was on its way to being signed.
Michael Jordan was still king. Almost every owner was making fistfuls of cash.
And players were making more money than ever before.
All of that for a mediocre product. That's right. The game had achieved global
popularity even though it was at its artistic low. NBA arenas are now where
tortured souls gather, watching 48-minute lullabies disguised as games.
We know the drill by now, right? Many players can't pull up for a 17-footer,
instead opting to shoot the three or dunk. A marginal talent named Rasheed
Wallace has an $80 million contract. Dull coaches such as Rick Adelman and
Mike Dunleavy have jobs, blurring in with other bland coaches who run the same
predictable offenses in 90-84 games. Fans? Lots of them stay at home, priced
out of arenas by corporate posses.
But all of it was selling and selling well. Even the purists - the people who
remember when Earl The Pearl wore his socks high and when Pistol Pete wore his
floppy and low - were willing to sift through all the marketing hype, just for
a dose of basketball.
Who would call for a lockout in the middle of labor peace? I'll tell you who:
People who have abandoned their sanity (the NBA union simply refers to them as
''union-busters''). You don't stop the music when people are dancing. The NBA
disc jockeys, also known as Stern, Granik, and the owners they represent,
stopped the music. Craziness. Now they have given everyone time to sit back
and reflect on what the NBA has become. They shouldn't have done that. They
shouldn't have done a lot of things.
They shouldn't have complained about escalating salaries when they are the
ones who bankrolled them. They shouldn't have complained about franchises
losing money when they are the ones who decided to expand, first in the late
1980s and then in the mid-'90s. They shouldn't have complained about the
emergence of the self-absorbed player when they are the ones who market
individuals.
If the Board of Governors released its financial books tomorrow, none of us
would be surprised. We would find poorly run franchises (Clippers, Kings)
losing money. We would also see that no one forced the Timberwolves to spend
beyond their means and hand Kevin Garnett $121 million. So, really, not only
do NBA owners not make sound choices, they are also hypocrites.
But players and owners alike have not felt the worst backlash yet. When they
return, they will have to deal with some facts that are at the core of
American existence. They will find that baseball recaptured its love affair
with the public. Frankly, they will find that baseball is much older and
whiter than basketball. Baseball players struck in 1994, and it took them
nearly four years to reclaim their place in North American sports.
Basketball players are not striking. But they will be treated that way. We
have not seen how an overwhelmingly white public reacts when a league, 80
percent black, shuts down and becomes entangled in multimillion-dollar money
matters. Most people will simply have a problem with rich men either asking
for more money or not wanting to relinquish a whit of what they already have.
Rich black men asking for more? The country hasn't seen that in terms of a
sports labor dispute. I think America is what it is. I think it will take a
decade, at least, for the NBA to come back. Owners and players should
understand this. They will not win back their fans as quickly as baseball did.
Not even close.
Even during a summer and fall of lockout talk, The Crazy Men could have calmed
the public by talking about the game sometimes rather than luxury taxes and
hard salary caps all the time. Wouldn't it be fun to talk about Ron Mercer and
his new agent, rapper Master P? Or how Antoine Walker was discussed in trade
talks with Orlando and Denver (Danny Fortson was one of the names mentioned in
the Nuggets deal)? Maybe we could add another twist to the Celtics-76ers
rivalry, how Larry Brown thought he had John ''Hot Plate'' Williams coming his
way as a free agent and how Rick Pitino swooped in and secured him for the
Celtics (true story). Then there's the story of Paul Pierce earning the
respect of Walker and Kenny Anderson ...
That would make sense. We are not dealing with sense. We are dealing with
craziness. We are dealing with the insane. The NBA's best days are behind it.
It will never be as popular again.
This story ran on page E01 of the Boston Globe on 10/29/98.
© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.