NBA players are thugs." When I ask basketball fans who don't follow the Association what keeps them from doing so, it's the answer I hear most often - and it infuriates me.
Overt racism in America is, thankfully, becoming less prevalent today. But that doesn't mean racism has disappeared; rather, it's just become more covert. And as long as white America is paying hundreds of millions of dollars annually to see its favorite sports played by mostly non-white athletes, the intersection of race and sports will be an explosive one.
Witness Don Imus' recent termination from an NBC radio affiliate for calling the Rutgers women's basketball team, "a bunch of nappy-headed hos" and referring to them as "jigaboos." The resulting public outcry cost the shock jock his job. Good riddance, I say; Imus was a misogynistic, homophobic, racist piece of crap who should have been fired a long time ago. This was not a first-time offense.
But at least a part of me wonders about the complete veracity of that outrage. How many people calling for Imus' head on a platter would cross the street if they saw a young, black male walking down the sidewalk towards them? How many of those people would agree with the characterization of NBA players as thugs? My guess is more than a few.
Because in my opinion, that's what the characterization of thuggery boils down to: appearance. In the NBA, more than any other professional sport, the players are in a fishbowl. The fans can be mere feet from the action, not dozens of yards away like in football or separated by Plexiglass like in hockey. And that means the tattoos, the cornrows, the low-slung shorts and the other aspects of the hip-hop culture that have pervaded basketball and that make many middle-aged white people (the ones who buy the expensive tickets) so uncomfortable are on full display.
Why don't you hear NFL players called thugs nearly as readily? After all, even after accounting for disparities in roster sizes, more NFL players commit crimes than NBA players do. Last year alone, nine players from the Cincinnati Bengals were arrested for crimes ranging from marijuana possession to drunk driving. Nine players on a 53-man roster! That one team had more players arrested in 14 months than did every franchise in the National Basketball Association combined in the same span.
But no sport is growing faster in the United States than the NFL. The Big Four sports networks - NBC, CBS, Fox and ESPN - are shelling out a combined $3.1 billion for television rights next year. The league is raking in money hand over fist and it's rare that stadiums aren't sold out. It's a lot easier to turn a blind eye to the criminal activity of some of the players when - between the pads, the helmets and the distance to the field - the fact that the majority of the players are young and black is harder to discern than it is in basketball.
Anybody who's even a casual sports fan likely heard about this year's "brawl" at Madison Square Garden between some players on the Knicks and the Nuggets, after which several players were slapped with substantial suspensions. Why quotes? Because it consisted of a couple of shoves and one half-hearted punch that missed, but that didn't keep commentators and bloggers from excoriating the participants and bandying about the T-word. Of course, when a batter tries to attack a pitcher that beans him and both benches storm the field, that's just part of baseball tradition.
You want thuggery? Try the NHL. Check out YouTube.com footage of the vicious hit that the New York Islanders' Chris Simon laid on Ryan Hollweg in March, when Simon sizes up Hollweg for two seconds and then levels him from behind with a two-handed slash to the face. In the real world, with no hyperbole, it would qualify as assault with a deadly weapon.
Or go back another couple of years, to 2004, when Todd Bertuzzi of the Vancouver Canucks sucker-punched the Colorado Avalanches' Steve Moore from behind, driving Moore's head into the ice, breaking his neck, and ending his career with the most revolting action I've ever witnessed in sports. Watch those clips and then compare them to Carmelo Anthony's actions in the MSG fight, and try to tell me which sport has the real thugs. But the NHL only has 13 black players, so it's a little tougher for the sport to earn the thug label.
Racism, in sports and in contemporary America, is simply more subtle than it used to be - it's not gone. Just a thought to keep in mind next time you hear the NBA disparaged as "a bunch of thugs."
Matthew Mertens is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major. He can be reached at Matthew.Mertens@tufts.edu.
