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My friend Buzz Bissinger loves a good argument, and we’ve been having one for the past year–privately–that he’s now invited the nation into, via his very lively column in the Daily Beast. It’s about race and professional basketball.
Last year at this time, I did a piece for Parade about what was wrong with the NBA, and what needed to be fixed as the game headed into its most important negotiation on a collective bargaining agreement in recent years. I contacted a couple of friends who are sportswriters–especially Buzz and Jon Wertheim from SI–and also spoke to agents David Falk and Steve Mountain and many others, including commissioner David Stern, all of whom spoke pretty candidly about issues the NBA really needed to address–rule changes, incentives for more team play, structural changes to the CBA.
I have to say honestly that race didn’t come up in ANY of these discussions (although it did come up in the many online comments to the Parade piece.) Then Buzz, who actually got back to me too late to be included in the story, called me. We got into a heated discussion about race and hoops, which we continued on his radio show in Philadelphia in August, and now it’s in the Beast.
Read his piece here and see what you think. Then read the original piece I did for Parade, as well as the online-only sidebar in which we continued the discussion.
While I appreciate that Buzz quoted me in his piece and let me get a word in edgewise, we actually had a longer, more impassioned dialogue about this yesterday by email–as I was sitting in 30th Street Station waiting for my train to NY to teach my class at Columbia J-school. For those interested in more of my side of the discussion about Buzz’s notion that the biggest problem for the NBA is that white fans don’t want to watch a game with predominantly black players, I’ve included more of my email to him below:
<< While racism is a part of America and American sports and always will be, I really don't think the main problem with the NBA is racial, and I think it's kinda racist and certainly reductionist to say it is. I think the basic problems with the NBA are the ones I tried to get at in the story--too many teams, too much focus on expansion to Europe and Asia rather than improving the core US game, and fewer and fewer players who have fundamentals when they arrive in the league. Take a look a the new book Playing Their Hearts Out which explores something most people don't realize about b-ball--the best players are being "coached" not to play a fundamentals game as early as 5th and 6th grade, by AAU and other youth programs that are even more star-oriented than the NBA, and only care about offensive stats. Jrue Holiday, probably my favorite Sixer at the moment, is a small character in the book, but whenever we discuss why this enormously winning and talented and promising point guard has these incredible defensive lapses--when he has the speed and intelligence to never get beat--you realize that when he was a little pee-wee star in California, he was already in a system that is unregulated but full of sneaker contracts, where kids are taught a bad version of the game from the moment they are tall enough to appear promising. white or black. The problem is that the game does not reward team play, except at the elite college level, and the rules don't force kids to remain at the elite college level long enough to learn that lesson. Everyone wants a star, and the idea that we're moving from the Kobe era to, maybe, a Durant era, is a good thing. But we don't need white or black or green stars, we need stars who play the game, every night, like it matters. The rise of the spurs this year, a multicultural team with no huge stars (now that Duncan is fading) is actually a great thing for the league--it shows the game can be played at its highest level by well-coached, disciplined teams. This year's San Antonio Spurs, with the Thunder as the hope for the future in the west, is actually a great model for the NBA, while the Celtics and Heat stockpiling stars under the old CBA is the beginning of the end for that era, one would hope. But it all depends on whether there is a seamless transfer to a new CBA that allows teams more leeway to trade and, perhaps, the league the chance to let one of the struggling franchises fail. The idea that they can put a team in Europe to fix the problems of the American game is a really bad idea, but something stern wants. And by the way, your notion that the complaint about players not playing hard is one that only white people have is, in my opinion, really racist. And also horseshit. When was the last time you watched a hoop game with black people? In my row at the Wells Fargo Center, section 104 row 10, my brother and I are the only white season ticket holders. I can assure you there are no racial differences between our fan reactions and our often hilarious conversations. And the fact that the NBA has the most multicultural fan base in the country is one of the great things about the sport. >>
Back to you Buzz.
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