Bobcats Thoughts, 6/5

Gee, if only Bob Johnson was as loyal to his own basketball team as he seems to be to the Clinton Campaign. According to the Observer, Johnson’s pressuring Congressman Jim Clyburn and the Congressional Black Caucus to back Hillary Clinton to be Barack Obama’s Veep. That’s pretty ballsy considering just a few months ago Johnson was openly lampooning Obama as a worthless drug addict. Now he honestly expects favors from Obama? This is like me asking Tim Duncan for a million bucks. Wait, sorry, Johnson’s not pressuring Clyburn; he’s "urging and encouraging." Whatever, BJ. I wonder if Johnson considers his bladder to be “pressuring” him or “urging and encouraging” him to take a pee after he downs a bottle of Chardonnay?

I don’t know what Billary’s got on old Bob, but I guess we should be happy that—unlike the rest of Hillary’s loony apparatchiks—Johnson’s at least accepting the fact that she lost. I see that she’s sort of (kind of, through third parties, etc.) conceded the election now (how benevolent of her), but Clinton’s refusal to admit defeat immediately after Obama secured the delegates is, is…spectacular, quite frankly. Imagine if sports teams did this? I mean, for all intents and purposes, the delegate count is to a primary election what the scoreboard is to a basketball game—it’s not subjective; whoever has the most, wins. So what if the Spurs—instead of just shaking Kobe & Company’s hands at the end of Game 6 and going quietly into the off-season—decided instead that they'd “think about their options and consult with their fans” and get back to everyone in a few days...And then Greg Popovich and Tony Parker reappeared a few days later, held a press conference, and “acknowledged” that LA did win, but only on the condition that, say, the Spurs get the Lakers’ draft pick next year. This is basically what Hillary did--"I'll only say you won if you consider me for VP and/or and/or a key cabinet member and/or a Supreme Court Justice." Couple this with her brazen claim to have won the “popular vote” (rhetorical fertilizer of the highest grade), AND the fact that practically no one’s calling her on anything, and I’m downright awestruck. At some point, I actually have to admire her.

Anyway, because I can’t bring myself to get too worked up over whoever ends up being our 9th round pick (Brook Lopez! Anthony Randolph! Pinch me!), I’m calling out someone else: The New York Times’ William C. Rhoden. For those of you who might not follow the Times (which, to the ultra-self-important Times, is utterly inconceivable), Rhoden is one of their regular sports columnist who focus primarily on racial issues. You may remember that he wrote a controversial book a few years ago with the subtle, bland title of Forty Million Dollar Slaves. I actually gave it a mixed review and thought that although he illuminates some worthy concerns, a lot of his arguments were questionable and supported by some pretty flimsy evidence (for instance, he had a problem with the way big-time colleges isolate black athletes and strip them of their cultural identity, yet he relied too heavily on a Sports Illustrated article from the late 60s to back up his claims--I'm pretty sure things have improved at least slightly since then).

So remember a few weeks ago when New York Mets manager Willie Randolph made some comments about being judged unfairly because he’s black? This was right in Rhoden's wheelhouse. Anytime something like this happens, you can bet that Rhoden’s going to follow up with a very sober piece on how far we still have to go in America before we’ve completely put racism behind us and truly do value each other as equals. Rhoden’s other recurring tendency, by the way, is to compliment whoever the athlete/coach is who made these inflammatory comments for bravely bringing the problem to light. This can actually be sort of comical at times, because Rhoden tends to do this no matter how non-sensical and/or farfetched the comments are; for instance, he was a huge believer in Larry Johnson’s profanity-laced tirade with the Knicks back in 1999 (in fact, it was the “inspiration” behind the Forty Million Dollar Slaves title). For the most part, I’m actually with Rhoden—I prefer athletes and coaches who speak their minds, and I believe that racism still plays a problematically large role in society.

But here’s where I think Rhoden is dead wrong. In that same follow-up article on Randolph, in which he predictably praised Willie for speaking out on racism and chastised the New York media for their subsequent backlash, he switched gears and began discussing what he believed to be a “quota system” in modern-day sports. Specifically, he referred to the globalization of the NBA over the past few years as a “code word for more white players on rosters.” I’m sorry, but if that’s what Rhoden thinks is the primary motivation behind expanding the League, he’s employing some pretty slanderous reductionism. And I think Ronny Turiaf, Tony Parker, Leandro Barbosa, Luol Deng (sense the pattern here?), and plenty of other foreign stars would agree with me. Whatever you think of David Stern, he’s a bottom-line guy; for better or worse, the color he focuses on more than anything else is green. If anything, “globalization” is code for “2 billion Yao Ming jerseys sold in China.”

I appreciate Rhoden for speaking up on these matters, just as he extends his thanks to the athletes whenever they do so. But Rhoden can be hard to support when he expresses hostility to further integration (he did this repeatedly in his book also)—in sports and in society as a whole. Call me naïve, but for all of its faults and missteps, I still believe in the benefits of integration, the melting pot, and everything else they taught me on Sesame Street. After all, it’s integration that allows me to spend the first two paragraphs ripping the moves of our team’s black owner just as if he were any other white, distant, disinterested, billionaire owner. And on that note, you’re doing great B-Jo, now pick us a winner at #9—Russell Westbrook! DJ Augustin! Kevin Love! I can’t wait!