Posted on Sun, Nov. 12, 2006
The Kansas City Star
Previous columns
David Stern, the best friend black athletes have ever had, is under attack again for his efforts to protect NBA players from their own unprofessional, profit-killing behavior.
And, once again, I’m going to jump to the defense of the best, most-fair-minded commissioner in professional sports.
Stern has a reputation as a bully. He’s more than willing to pick up a phone and curse out a member of the media or anyone he believes has harmed his product. He’s a dictator. He needs to be.
He has quite possibly the most difficult job in professional sports. He lords over easily the most self-absorbed, spoiled, immature and hip-hop-influenced group of athletes on the planet.
It’s his job to clean up the image of the NBA so the league can experience growth. That’s the mandate given to him by his bosses, the league’s owners. His players, for the most part, don’t much care about the growth of the league. They’re rich beyond their wildest imaginations from shoe and team contracts, enjoy almost unlimited freedom and star power, and are surrounded by well-meaning, simple-minded entourages.
All of this forces Stern to eschew negotiation with his players when it comes to their on-court conduct. He passes rules. His latest basically forbids his players from confronting referees about foul calls. The refs have been instructed to T-up the offenders quickly.
It’s a good rule, one that should be adopted by high schools and colleges. The rule promotes good sportsmanship. It protects the league’s refs who became the focus of Dallas owner Mark Cuban’s NBA finals “Cuban Whistle Crisis” last season.
More importantly, the rule encourages the players to play basketball rather than stand at one end of the court and glare at the refs while play ensues.
One of the biggest knocks on the NBA is that the players don’t play hard all the time. Watching Rasheed Wallace (and others) yell at refs contributes to this negative perception. If you’ve attended or watched an NBA regular-season game over the last 10 years, you’ve seen countless players turn their attention away from play on the court and engage a referee.
Basketball is a continuous-action sport. It’s not baseball or even football. I’m sure focus groups revealed to Stern and the owners that basketball fans hate to see the players bicker with refs. It’s boring, frustrating and contributes to a negative image of the players.
Stern took the appropriate step to eliminate the problem. He acted in the best interest of his players. Not surprisingly, the players have reacted like Stern stripped them of some constitutional right or outlawed tattoos and strip-club visits. The players union considered suing the league. NBA player groupies in the media blasted Stern, and some even suggested that Stern is an old white man who can’t relate to his predominantly young black players.
Hmm. Young people in general, and young black men in particular, don’t need leaders who can relate to them. They need leaders who see their unlimited potential and have the courage to demand that they reach it.
Stern is demonstrating the exact kind of leadership we need more of in all walks of life. Rather than accept the poor behavior of his players and/or quicken the importation of easier-to-control-and-assimilate foreign-born players, Stern continues to enact rules (dress code, harsh penalties for negative interaction with fans) that make American-born players more marketable.
Stern is dealing with a group of young men in general who have been consumed with their physical development far more than their intellectual development since about age 10. Their physical gifts earned them the right to treat education as an afterthought. Many of his players come from dysfunctional, single-parent households or worse.
They’re not prepared for the NBA.
No one is prepared to be a 20-year-old millionaire celebrity performing in front of the world. Unlike football and basketball players, most NBA players don’t spend three or four years in college or in the minor leagues preparing for stardom. They show up at 18 or 19 with a childish posse in tow and visions of living a rapper’s life.
There’s a reason one-fifth of the Pacers roster was at a strip club at 3 a.m. packing guns and arguing with knuckleheads in the parking lot. Stern has been forced to beg his players to leave their guns at home. Why? Because their off-court behavior impacts the value of the franchises Stern is charged with making more valuable.
Stern’s next new rule might involve forcing his players to jog back on defense in the final seconds of a blowout. LeBron James, the league’s most marketable star, is predictably clueless about shouldering the burden of leadership of his team and serving as the game’s top ambassador.
In the sports world, David Stern is the principal from the movie “Lean On Me,” ‘Crazy’ Joe Clark. Stern is trying to create sanity in a world of chaos, and he’s doing a good job.
To reach Jason Whitlock, call (816) 234-4869 or send e-mail to jwhitlock@kcstar.com. For previous columns, go to KansasCity.com.
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