Musing

[Marcus Bryant]

What if a Chipper Jones was hit by a thrown beer during a game and opted to climb into the seats and start accosting fans...would he get a season ending suspension or the equivalent of a 30 game NBA suspension? Would he have been regarded as a man just doling out some payback to some punks instead of an out of control 'animal'?

[samikeyp]

I think you would see the same breakdown as far as blame or acceptance. The athletes would side with him....most of the fans wouldn't.

[Marcus Bryant]

Hmmm. I think race definitely does play a role in the perception of what went down on Friday night.

[Spurminator]

I think past behavior has more to do with it than race.

For example... if Rob Dibble had done it, he almost certainly would be done for the season.

[SequSpur]

It was Artest. Dude deserves everything he got and then some.

[ducks]

dude stern said it was his past behavior also factored in his decision

if anyone else except for rodman did what he did they would have gotten less
even if they were black

[Marcus Bryant]

Perhaps a better way to frame this question is: what if it was a Larry Bird, a Bill Lambeer, or a Dirk Nowitzki who opted to run into the stands after a plastic cup full of beer was thrown at him? Would they have been regarded as violent, dangerous, out of control athletes or simply guys taking care of a punk?

[ducks]

what if you just drop the racist part of this
it has no bearing on this case
it makes no sence

[Spurminator]

Laimbeer? Absolutely. No question about it.

With Bird or Dirk, it may have been a more lenient penalty because they didn't have a history of violent or erratic behavior. It would also depend on how out of control the situation became... was it just Bird in the stands attacking a fan, or did several of his teammates also charge the stands and create the kind of chaos we saw Friday?

[mouse]

I will say this if it was a white player that puched out a black boy you can bet there would be Al sharpton and others all over this thang,

[ALVAREZ6]

Perhaps a better way to frame this question is: what if it was a Larry Bird, a Bill Lambeer, or a Dirk Nowitzki who opted to run into the stands after a plastic cup full of beer was thrown at him? Would they have been regarded as violent, dangerous, out of control athletes or simply guys taking care of a punk?

They don't have "big tough guy im the shit" ego's and profiles.

Everyone knows artest is an ass, so that had a part to do with it.

[Marcus Bryant]

Lambeer didn't have an ego? That's a new one. Bird was fairly cocky as well.

[xcoriate]

It didnt happen theres no point hypothesising. Its completely irrelevant. The only one stupid enough to do it at this point is Artest and Jax. No one else. Stop looking for a conspireacy there isn't one, Jax and Artest were wrong to do what they did. End of Story.

[T Park]

Why does it have to be race??

The guy has a past, the guy is a loon.


I dont understand, he deserved everything he got, and Stephen jackson shouldve gotten more.

White, black, purple, whatever the fuck.


Saying the suspension is "racially" motivated is absolute BS.

[IcemanCometh]

try thinking outside the pizza box for moment tpark

[conversekid]

Marcus

Stop racially dissecting this event. It's people like you that perpetuate racism in our society. Most people are trying to put racism behind them and move on with life; people like you continue to make every issue a racial one and continually reopen wounds our society has been trying to close and mend for years.

move on, the rest of the world is trying to.

[boutons]

Here's Wilbon's take, a guy except for his screaming TV show (screaming is what the viewers want to see and advertisers want to pay for), is almost a journalists who writes about sports:

================================================== ======

Hip-Hop Culture Contributes to NBA's Bad Rap

By Michael Wilbon

Not everything that ails the NBA is solved by the rest-of-the-season suspension of the Indiana Pacers' Ron Artest. It would be irresponsible to suggest anybody should have foreseen a brawl coming. But there have been signs of an increasing disconnect between people who identify themselves as basketball fans and the players they pay to see perform. Ticket holders and fans pay more than ever to see professional basketball, yet it seems they identify less than ever with the players. Some of that backlash was obvious this summer when a U.S. Olympic team of high-profile NBA players was ridiculed, at home and overseas, as pampered and spoiled before the competition had started.

Even the players' union chief, Billy Hunter, said on ABC's "Nightline" this week that players have become less accessible than ever. Older NBA players increasingly indicate they'd like to see an age-limit adopted in the effort to keep out kids who clearly haven't served an apprenticeship.

And not all the league's problems can be attributed to the players. League and club executives decided to marry the NBA to hip-hop, and clearly didn't know what they were getting into. As my friend Brian Burwell wrote in Tuesday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch, NBA marketing people "thought they were getting Will Smith and LL Cool J. But now they've discovered the dark side of hip-hop has also infiltrated their game, with its 'bling-bling' ostentation, its unrepentant I-gotta-get-paid ruthlessness, its unregulated culture of posses, and the constant underlying threat of violence . . . "

The marketing folks might not have realized that if you welcome in the mainstream group OutKast, you might also have to take the decidedly vulgar Young Buck. You welcome in the music, you also get the misogyny and other themes of thug life that are admittedly the prerequisite values of the hip-hop culture.

And all this is relevant because this is where NBA players live. It's not a lifestyle they've adopted, it's a life most of them -- black and white -- have lived their entire adult lives. It's a life that boasts incessantly about, "my drink," "my smoke," "my women," and "my rides." And it is a life based on getting "respect" at any cost, including going into the stands and administering a beat-down if somebody "disrespects you."

The point here is not that I think hip-hop is bad; some Eminem or Snoop Dogg CD is constantly playing in my car. The point is NBA folks probably didn't know what they were getting into, how much hip-hop's street code might appeal to the players, and how much the league's very mainstream ticket buyers and sponsors might be resentful of a subculture they don't understand or distrust, even if their white, suburban, well-to-do children inhabit the same subculture. And that doesn't even address the notion that basketball, a decidedly team sport, doesn't exactly work with the theme of "my, my, my."

And that's just one element. Three years ago, while working with Charles Barkley on his book, "I May Be Wrong but I Doubt It," Barkley talked about how unfair it is for fans of the worst teams in the league, like the Bulls, Wizards and Clippers, to have to pay full price for tickets to watch bad teams featuring players straight out of high school. "How can it be fair," Barkley said, "to ask fans of a team that already stinks to pay full price for a seat, and then be told to 'be patient' while a 19-year-old kid learns how to be a professional? Ticket buyers don't get to say, 'I'll pay you full price in four years when Kwame Brown or Eddie Curry is ready to play.' The fans have every right to resent that."

And increasingly, they do. Antonio Davis, now playing for the Bulls and a players' union vice president, told reporters in Los Angeles this week he is worried that the league is overrun with unprepared young players. "I think that's what our image has become: a bunch of young guys who are really not understanding what it is to play in the NBA, what it means to put that uniform on, what it means to be in front of thousands and thousands of people who love what you do, what it means to be making a living playing the game of basketball. They're not thinking about that," Davis said. "As vice president of the union, I'm trying to get them to understand the business of basketball, why it's so important for us to have a good, clean image, why it's so important for us to connect with the fans and enjoy what they do and have some passion . . . I give them something to read about the union, about BRI, escrow . . . they look at me like, 'I'm sleepy.' "

How can anybody hear Davis's words and not think the NBA desperately needs the kind of age limit the NFL has? It doesn't matter that a specific player might have gone to college for a year or two, or that somebody in big trouble might be a college graduate. What Davis sees is a league going hard in the wrong direction, a league having fewer people worthy of being called professionals with every passing year, and another draft class eight players deep in high school kids.

It's those areas, much more than race, that are causing the divide between fans and players. The previous generation of stars was 70 percent black. Okay, there was Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, John Stockton and Chris Mullin, then just about every other star from Julius Erving to Magic to Michael Jordan to Grant Hill to Shaq has been black. And they've been embraced by white sponsors and ticket holders.

What I hear now, increasingly, is tolerance for the game, particularly in black America where basketball is the most beloved industry going, but a wariness of many of the players. Just last week, the league told Vince Carter he couldn't wear headphones during warm-ups. The inference from fans is that Carter would like to, if allowed, block them out right up until the opening tip-off. The night after the brawl in Detroit, the Rockets' Maurice Taylor conducted an interview and wouldn't even take off his headphones. The message, intended or not, is that the moment he was done talking he didn't want to be bothered. This came two weeks after Latrell Sprewell indicated he would need more than $10 million a year to feed his family. And of course, Artest wanted time off during the season to promote his girl group's new CD.

Fans, for their $85 tickets, would like to know the players are at least interested in being there, interested in playing, interested now and then in engaging the people who make it possible for them to bling-bling through life. The suspension of Artest and the other Pacers and Pistons doesn't address the disinterest, lack of professionalism and preoccupation with thug life a lot of mainstream patrons perceive, which means the NBA's work has only just begun.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

[Tonto]

try thinking outside the pizza box for moment tpark


^RACK^ :lmao you make Tonto raff

[T Park]

try thinking outside the pizza box for moment tpark

if that means, thinking everytime something bad happens to ablack person and a white person disciplining them, means that its racially motivated??


No im not gonna think outside the box, because the idea is ludicrous.


But you sticking up for shit head artest is laugable.

[Supergirl]

Obviously it has nothing to do with race/class (I'd argue what the article was talking about has more to do with economic class than race) and everything to do with Artest's past. If it had to do with race/class, Jax would DEFINITELY be out for the season just like Artest. It could be argued that he should be, for his role in inciting Artest. But he isn't, and the only reason Artest is is because he has done this in the past.

[Aunt Jemima]

If that black bastard was my Boy? I would woops him good...