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Michael Holley On The Players' Image/Nightclubbing/Behavior
[The Boston Globe Online][Boston.com]
[Boston Globe Online / Sports]
NBA focal point: blurry image
By Michael Holley, Globe Staff, 01/10/99
You already know about the NBA's six months of painful plastic
surgery. You know that the league rearranged its financial face with
its lockout, forcing hundreds of millionaires to mark ''unemployed'' on
their 1998 income-tax forms.
Here's what that means: If Michael Jordan happened to walk into a grocery
store during the past six months, he saw baggers and cashiers making more
cash from their full-time gigs than he was making from his.
But that's just the financial portrait from the past six months. After half
a year, players must know money is not the only thing that changed the way
people look at their game.
Maybe the players don't remember the way they were beginning to be
perceived, often unfairly, by league observers just before the lockout
became official July 1. There were public laments that many of them were
disciples of ''hiphop culture,'' as if that were something to be cursed.
Their lifestyles were scrutinized, labeled self-absorbed and
self-destructive.
In the spring, a Connecticut woman accused Juwan Howard and Chris Webber of
sexually assaulting her. Webber also was stopped on the way to practice by
police in suburban Maryland, the smell of marijuana allegedly wafting from
his vehicle. Four men, three with ties to the Celtics - Antoine Walker, Ron
Mercer, and Chauncey Billups - were accused of sexually assaulting a woman
in Waltham. Sports Illustrated wrote a 6,000-word special report on NBA
players fathering children with women who weren't their wives ...
Many people said, ''It figures,'' when they heard the news. Some allegations
were true, some were half true, and others were thrown out of court.
Well, guess what. A lockout probably didn't slow the momentum of images
projecting NBA players as social villains. Basketball fans will always be
fans, so players probably don't have to worry about people who love the
game. They do have to worry about people who fund the game, also known as
advertisers. The image of NBA players probably is at its lowest since the
mid-1970s. And you know one of the pillars of advertising: image, baby.
The NBA was built into an image-conscious pretty boy by design. League
executives hope that pretty-boy mug wasn't messed up beyond repair during
the past six months. The players? They don't have to hope. They just have to
make sure they avoid all headlines, unless they are headlines trumpeting a
public service. (Aside to Kenny Anderson: It takes about four seconds to
give an autograph. You don't even have to write out your name legibly; no
one else does.)
The Celtics return to work this week, and Rick Pitino is worried about them
being in shape. That is not the only concern for the players. Their image is
one. So is their decision-making. Many of the 20-something Celtics do not
realize that there are two NBAs. There is the one they will experience on
the FleetCenter's parquet floor beginning next month. And then there is the
one that takes place on the nation's dance floors well into the a.m. hours.
That's the one that keeps Pitino awake at night.
Pitino doesn't mind the youth of his players. On the court. Off it, he has
to hope they remain camouflaged against a club's walls, dance a little, then
go home with people they know.
That's hoping for a lot.
It's rare for a tall, rich, not-yet-25-year-old man to walk into a club and
not be noticed. And, frankly, propositioned. Some men become envious of
them. Some women want to have conversations and go home with them, and not
because the players are handsome.
And here's what that means if you are a Boston Celtic: Build a plastic
bubble. Live in it for a few weeks. Come out only to shake hands and sign
autographs. Your actions will be studied far too closely in the next few
weeks. You are a target. If you go to a club, act like late president
Richard Nixon: Become a little paranoid and constantly peek over your
shoulder.
If you have to ask for reasons for this NBA caution, you haven't been paying
attention to the past six months. You heard about the SI story and the
Webber story and the Howard story. But maybe you didn't hear that Howard and
Webber were acquitted of their sexual assault charges or that Howard wound
up countersuing for the restoration of his image and won a countersuit for
defamation of character.
Maybe you heard that Walker was named in a civil negligence lawsuit,
relative to the alleged Waltham assault. That was filed late in 1997, after
Walker, Mercer, Billups, and a friend went to a club and eventually returned
to Walker's home with a woman they didn't know. All of the men were named in
the suit. But fewer people paid attention when a judge dismissed the charge
against Walker last month, saying he was not at fault.
Walker and Howard are fortunate. They were able to wrestle their personal
images from an atmosphere in which many players are viewed as an evil
collective. They are also fortunate that they don't have to explain
themselves as Billups did to his girlfriend. He still is accused of
assaulting a woman during group sex in someone else's condo. So he had to
explain why he allegedly was doing that while his girlfriend was pregnant
with their child.
I'm glad I'm not a pro athlete. Sometimes you just want to go to a club,
listen to music, and leave with anybody (or bodies) who wants to leave with
you. It may be debatable behavior, but it's not illegal. But if you do that
as a pro athlete and something goes wrong, you wind up on TV.
The Celtics, returning to a more litigious and less tolerant post-lockout
world, should remember that. Recently, three fliers for area nightclubs came
in the mail. The Celtics should go. In a month. If they go sooner, they'd
better act like Nixon.
This story ran on page E03 of the Boston Globe on 01/10/99.
© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.