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Ron
Artest Ain’t the Problem!
A
Revolutionary Take on “Fight Night in the NBA”
by
Carl Dix The replays have been run so many times the
scene has become etched in my brain. The Indiana Pacers'
Ron Artest laying a hard foul on Ben Wallace of the Detroit
Pistons near the end of the game. Wallace coming back at
him with 2 hands to the throat, and Artest walking away from
this potentially explosive situation and laying down on the
scorers' table. (I'm told this is an anger management
tactic.) Then a cup full of some liquid comes flying out
of the stands onto Artest and the brawl is on. Players
going into the stands, fans running onto the court. Beer,
chairs and punches being thrown. Endless video replays
accompanied by seemingly endless articles and panels of talking
heads supporting the suspensions NBA Commissioner David Stern
hit Artest and several other Pacers with and talking about
Artest as a troubled young man who needs to do to deal with his
problems.
And I'm thinking what problems are they
referring to--fans who douse you with beer? NBA big wigs
who, with their eyes focused on their bottom line, make an
example out of you? The talk about Artest's problems
or his previous run ins with basketball's authorities is a lot
of crap. Bush took the US to war in Iraq based on lies
about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's ties to Al Queda.
Before that as Texas governor he presided over a record number
of executions, including some where the person put to death was
innocent. But news reporters don't link this to his past
problems with alcohol or to his current addiction to Pat
Robertson style Christian Fascism.
In announcing Artest's suspension for the
rest of the season (and Pacer players Jermaine O'Neal for 25
games and Stephen Jackson for 30 games) NBA commissioner David
Stern said that Artest had broken the social contract between
players and fans. What is this social contract he's
talking about here? It's doesn't include a clause saying
fans shouldn't abuse players. Some NBA teams
institutionalize such practices. The Washington Wizards
(formerly the Bullets) had a designated heckler who was seated
behind the visiting team's bench. This guy would do
research to determine the best way to get inside the heads of
visiting players and coaches. He'd recite rewritten
versions of Shaq's rap lyrics, read sections of Phil Jackson's
autobiography and run down any run ins players had with the law
among other things. In places like Boston, instead of
having a designated heckler, the whole crowd is encouraged to
get into the act.
This social contract rests on the way the NBA
has approached dealing with a problem central to its marketing
strategy. The NBA is serving up a sport dominated by Black
athletes and featuring the edge and attitude that Black youth
bring to the game, and to life. But they are marketing
that sport to a fan base that is largely white.
The league knows the game minus the power,
speed, aggression and agility these players bring to it would be
a pale imitation of what draws the fans out to the arenas and
into the stores to buy jerseys and other paraphernalia with
players' names and numbers on it. To deal with this
contradiction, players are allowed, even encouraged, to show
that spirit in competition, and even somewhat in combat, among
each other. (Think of how much less a story this would've
been if Artest had responded to Wallace's blow by throwing
punches at HIM. Both of them would've gotten suspended for
one or a couple of games at most.) But never, ever, should
a player even think about responding to anything done to him or
his team by a fan. Think of the gladiators in the Roman
Coliseum, cheered or jeered for what they did against each
other, but never allowed to respond to directly to the crowd for
anything it said or did.
The racism embedded in this approach rests on
a lot of history. I'm not mainly talking here about how
this country's dragged Africans to these shores in chains and
stole the land from the native inhabitants. Although I
could talk about that because it's still very relevant today.
I'm more speaking about basketball history. Blacks were
barred from the NBA till the 50's. The best Black ball
players in the country were limited to playing for the Harlem
Globetrotters if they wanted to play ball for a living.
Most NBA teams refused to even play the Globetrotters.
(The Minneapolis Lakers, who dominated the NBA in the late 40's
and early 50's, did agree to play the Globetrotters. They
ended up splitting several games with them.)
Coming closer to today, the NBA publicly
agonized in the 1980's over the growing numbers of Black players
in the league and wondered whether and how it could sell a Black
dominated game to white fans. Out of this agonizing came 2
things: 1) A search for and promotion of "white
hopes"--white players talented enough to stand out in a
game dominated by Black players. (Sometimes this worked, e.g.,
Larry Bird, and sometimes it flopped, like with Danny Ferry.)
And 2) Attempts to moderate the edge and attitude of the Black
players.
I'm not exaggerating when I speak of them
trying to moderate players' attitude. During the 1984 NBA
Finals, the LA Lakers began one game by giving each other low
fives instead of high fives. League officials were
horrified and quickly told them not to do that again.
Laker Michael Cooper said the word to not do another low five
came from someone "higher than the team and lower than
God." All this forms the backdrop for the widespread
condemnation of Ron Artest for his role in his incident.
Let me be real clear. This incident
didn't happen because of Artest's problems. Nor did it
become a major story for that reason. Brawls at
hockey games involving one or several of its mostly white
players fighting with some of its mostly white fans occur so
often they're treated as normal occurrences. Something for
some sportscaster's plays of the week list. There have
even been incidents where fans who ran onto baseball or football
fields, interrupting games, were beaten by players, and it
didn't get treated as major stories like this did. But
this was basketball, with it's mostly Black players fighting
with it's largely white fans.
Artest walked away from a punch to his face
and ignored a towel thrown at him. But this largely gets
left out of the talk about this incident. Instead the discussion
begins with Artest's "hard" foul on Wallace even tho'
the game was all but over and skips to him going into the stands
after the fan who hit him with the cup. As for the foul,
the game was all but over, but Indiana's coach still had his
starting line up on the floor. So he seemed to want his
players to keep playing intensely. And in going into the
stands after whoever threw beer on him and punching a fan who
ran onto the court and got in his face, Artest was responding to
what people did to him. This is what gets talked about and
analyzed, or mis-analyzed, in commentary on this incident.
He was defending himself, and for that he becomes the NBA's
public enemy # 1.
When David Stern and others say that no
matter what was done to him, Artest never, ever should have gone
into the stands, they are applying to him a standard that
doesn't get applied much in US society--turn the other cheek.
Artest grew up in the Queensbridge projects in New York City.
You don't turn the other cheek there unless you want to get hit
again. Artest's shot to get out of the projects was thru
basketball, and he succeeded at it by turning himself into one
of the best players in pro ball at his position. The heart
of his game is giving his all every minute he's on the floor, on
offense and defense. His competitive style has led to
clashes with the NBA's hierarchy and to a number of suspensions.
This itself got turned into more reason to punish him harshly.
David Stern noted that his previous suspensions by the NBA were
taken into account in determining what punishment to give him in
this case. This comes down to a retroactive repeat
offender policy that has only been applied to Ron Artest.
In commenting on all this, Charles Barkley
said, "These guys (referring to NBA players) have to
understand the racial undercurrent in the NBA. The fans
look at this stuff as Black millionaires acting stupid."
This was a theme that came up often in discussion of the
brawl--fan resentment of wealthy Black athletes who lack the
proper gratitude or humility for their situation. A number
of newspaper articles even noted the growing number of NBA stars
wear their hair in cornrows as something that contributes to
this resentment! (The authors of the articles bringing up
cornrows could add that they are adding to and whipping up such
resentment.) There is a large gap in income between the
fans and NBA players. But there's an even larger gap
between the economic status of the fans and that of the almost
all white NBA owners. Yet the media, sports or otherwise,
doesn't work to whip up the kind of resentment against them
that's its pumping up in relation to Black players.
This theme of resentment and hostility to
Black people who don't know their place fits right in what's
being brought forward in society overall. Black youth are
treated like criminals in US society, guilty until proven
innocent. This has gone so far that recent studies report
that 1 in 10 Black men in the US are in jail! Widespread
resentment among whites towards uppity Black people helps
justify outrages like this.
And we've just been through a presidential
election where the party in power tried to keep as many Black
people from voting as they could. I know the Republicans
are denying this, but the stuff is pretty much out in the open.
Florida's Attorney General drew up a list of "felons"
who would be denied the right to vote. This list consisted
overwhelmingly of Black people, and it was full of people who
had never even been charged with a crime. Again in
Florida, Black people were visited by armed police investigating
their involvement in registering people to vote. Flyers
were circulated in Black communities in Maryland and Michigan
telling people they should vote the day after election day.
And I could go on and on.
The NBA suspended Ron Artest for the rest of
the season with an eye toward shoring up the league's bottom
line thru reinforcing a "social contract" that rests
on keeping the Black athletes that give their sport its heart
and soul in their places. The intense debate this incident
has generated thruout society is having the effect of giving
added weight to the justifications used for all the ways this
society acts to keep Black people in their place overall.
Some reality needs to be injected into the discussion around
this, and the terms of the debate around it need to be changed.
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posted 2 November 2007 |
