Monthly Archives: July 2012

NewBlackMan (in Exile): Covering the #Fail: The NBA, Sports Reporting & the United Hater Nation

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Sunday, June 10, 2012

Covering the #Fail: The NBA, Sports Reporting & the United Hater Nation

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

I have lost that lovin’ feeling. Already a recovering baseball, football, and college sports fan, I am slowly starting to hate the NBA. Don’t get me wrong – I love the game; there is nothing like a crisp bounce pass, a thunderous dunk, an ankle-breaking crossover, a fadeaway jumper, and a last second shot. Nothing compares to the beauty of the NBA game, or its excitement, competitiveness, and unpredictability. No other sport can compare when it comes to artistry and memorable moments: MJ’s jumper over Bryon Russell, Magic’s baby hook, Reggie’s 8 points in 9 seconds, Kobe’s alley-oop to Shaq, Robert Horry/Derek Fisher, and that is just a few playoff moments. Just think: Iverson’s crossover, Duncan’s bank shot, the Dream shake. Shaq’s rim tattlers, Ray Allen’s jumper, Gervin’s finger roll, and MJ/Kobe’s baseline jumper. The sight of LeBron James or Kevin Durant getting in the zone is not simply greatness personified but pure beauty. Perfection, beauty, and timeless are the words I would use to describe the NBA yet I have lost that lovin’ feeling.

My waning love isn’t about the hypocrisy of a league that sells its products through hip-hop at the same time it disparages and regulates its presence. It isn’t about an overzealous commissioner who vetoes trades for basketball reasons or even the league’s racial and class politics. It isn’t about greedy owners and the treatment of players. I have long come to grips with my discomfort, remaining a fan in spite of these troubling realities for the love of the game. Yet, that love doesn’t feel eternal.

The last week of the playoffs has highlighted my growing unease with basketball, which has nothing to do with the players, the league, or even basketball. I am starting to hate watching the NBA (and sports in general) because of the media, fans, and the cultural politics of blame. Upon the conclusion of several playoff games, commentators and fans alike immediately took to their respective platforms to blame players for a loss, to disparage, mock, and otherwise ridicule these great athletes. It is not just the glee the results from THEIR loss, but the pleasure in denigrating and disrespecting another person’s hard work and artistry that is killing my love softly and slowly, especially during the playoffs.

The Pacers’ victory over the Heat didn’t produce praise for Indiana’s squad or celebration of a clutch performance from David West or Roy Hibbert but endless statements from the UHN – United Hater Nation. Blaming LeBron, D-Wade, Spoelstra, Riley, and the role players, the post-game banter focused on player failures, player shortcomings, and worse yet the inadequacies of the players – “he isn’t clutch; he is mentally weak; he is selfish; he is to blame for the loss.” What happened to who is responsible for the win? What happened to celebration and acknowledgment of the greatness of players evident in the victory? In victory and loss, the politics of blame imagines players as robots deserving condemnation when they don’t perform as expected.

Even James’ historic performance in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals did not silence every critic with questions raised as to whether he could play at the level in a 4th quarter with the score tied, or whether or not he had the mental toughness to make that last 2nd shot. I am surprise he wasn’t criticized for not having 25 assists along with his 45 points. Where is the love?

The postgame commentary following game 2 (and likely game 4) between the Lakers and Thunder was no different in terms of the blame game, although it included death threats directed at Steve Blake. With debates about who was responsible for the Lakers inability to close and secure in those games (Kobe, Pau, Bynum, Coach Brown, role players; Jim Buss??) few even acknowledged the execution from the Thunder. The Thunder won that game and would ultimately win 4 games. The Thunder execution when it counted was amazing, especially for the young and untested team from OKC. That continued into the Spurs series. Yet, in many instances, the exceptional play of the Thunder and all its players hasn’t been the focus from the media and fans on social media given the dominance of the culture of blame, uber criticism, and the haters that dominate the NBA landscape.

Continue reading @ NewBlackMan (in Exile): Covering the #Fail: The NBA, Sports Reporting & the United Hater Nation.

NewBlackMan (in Exile): “Even Sugar Got Free…”: Black Athletes and the Contradictions of Free Agency

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“Even Sugar Got Free…” *:

Black Athletes and the Contradictions of Free Agency

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan (in Exile)

One of the common narrative frames of the 2012 playoffs was how the Oklahoma City Thunder did things the “right way.” Ignoring the team’s move from Seattle, a fact that left Sonics fans with a bitter taste in their mouth, Thunder mania stemmed from the fact that the bulk of their roster was made-up of draft picks and players who arrived via trade. Embodying a “rags-to-riches” ideology, one that celebrates individuals and institutions that supposedly pull themselves up by their bootstraps (or draft-picks), the celebration of the Thunder makes perfects sense given our national imagination about sports. In praising the Thunder for choosing to trade several players to acquire endless draft picks (a fact that surely also had to do with the pending sale of the team and dumping salary), fans and media pundits reimagined the Thunder as creating their own destiny.

This celebratory tone was amplified during the 2012 finals, which pitted the Thunder against the Heat, an organization imagined as everything wrong with sports. “The fact that we equate the Heat with evil and the Thunder with good reveals one big truth: sports fans and media hate it when a player chooses where he plays, and love it when a player has no choice over where he plays,” writes Nicholas Schwartz. “Writers and fans simply approve when a player has absolutely no choice over where he can play — like the Oklahoma City players dealt through trades — and disapprove when a player has a choice in which uniform he puts on. The criticism of the Heat ‘model’ for winning reveals that sports fans simply don’t want athletes to have any power over the course of their careers.”

What is clear from this “logic” and the celebration of the Thunder is that fans and media alike don’t like free agency. Worse yet, they don’t approve of players, particularly young African American men, determining their own future. In wake of LeBron James’ decision to take his talents to South Beach, William Rhoden noted the oppositional nature of free agency for the black athlete: “There are many lessons contained in the James free-agency drama. The first is controlling the game, not allowing the game to control you. Here is James, a 25-year-old African-American man with a high school diploma, commanding a global stage.” The response that he should “shut up and play” where he is told to play reflects the hegemony of white racial framing. The message is clear: professional basketball players are lucky enough to earn millions of dollars for playing a game, and that the least they can be is grateful, appreciated and loyal to their fans and city.

The contempt for player movement within the NBA has been on full display in recent years. The condemnation directed at LeBron James both typified this mentality all while perpetuating the idea that free agency is destroying the league. On The Bleacher Report, Asher Chancey named James the #1 worst traitor in sports history (the Sonics/Thunders’ owners are no where on the list). “By holding a prime-time news conference to announce to the world that the City of Cleveland was losing one the best athletes in professional sports, LeBron showed all the qualities we suspect our favorite athletes possess but hope they do not,” he notes. “LeBron showed the entire world that he has an enormous ego, he cares about himself first and all others second, and that the game of basketball is just that to him, a game.”

In other words, in holding a nationally held press conference that millions of people chose to watch, by raising money for the Boys and Girl’s Club, and in exercising his rights under free agency, he was denigrated (and dehumanized) as a traitor. He was said to be worse than owners who moved their teams to other cities or franchises that fire its workers because of a lockout.

Telling, no?

With jerseys burning in the background and fans ranting in virtual spaces, Dan Gilbert made clear his feelings about James and the enterprise of free agency:

Continue reading @ NewBlackMan (in Exile): “Even Sugar Got Free…”: Black Athletes and the Contradictions of Free Agency.

NewBlackMan (in Exile): Serena Williams: “Ain’t I a Champion?”

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Serena Williams: “Ain’t I a Champion?”

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan (in Exile)

On Saturday, Serena Williams captured her 5th Wimbledon title (later in the day, she and Venus would secure a double’s title as well). Since 1999, the Williams sisters have captured 10 titles at the all-England club. Yet, for each of them, this success has not come without trials and tribulations. Over the last few years, Serena has suffered countless injures, including a blood clot in her lungs. Battling insomnia, depression, physical ailments, and the tragedy of her sister’s murder, Serena has overcome obstacles far more challenging than a Sharapova backhand. “I definitely have not been happy,” Williams announced in 2011. “Especially when I had that second surgery (on my foot), I was definitely depressed. I cried all the time. I was miserable to be around.” In other words, Serena Williams has secured greatness on and off the court, thriving in spite of tremendous hardship.

Within a culture that thrives on stories of redemption, that celebrates resilience and determination, the career of Serena Williams reads like a Hollywood screenplay. Yet, her career has been one marred by the politics of hate, the politics of racism and sexism. Last year I wrote about the treatment she has faced from fans and media alike:

What is striking about the comments and several of the commentaries as well, is the demonization of Serena Williams. Focusing on her body (reinforced by the many pictures that sexualize Williams), her attitude, and her shortcomings as a player, the responses pathologize Williams. “The Williams sisters have been criticized for lacking ‘commitment’ by refusing to conform to the Spartan training regime of professional tennis, restricting their playing schedules, having too many ‘off-court interests’ in acting, music, product endorsements, fashion and interior design, and their Jehovah’s Witness religion” (McKay and Johnson).…

“The Williams sisters also have been subjected to the carping critical gaze that both structures and is a key discursive theme of ‘pornographic eroticism’,” writes James McKay and Helen Johnson. Similarly, Delia Douglas argues, a “particular version of blackness” is advanced within the representations of the Williams sisters. We see the “essentialist logic of racial difference, which has long sought to mark the black body as inherently different from other bodies. Characterizations of their style of play rely on ‘a very ancient grammar’ of black physicality to explain their athletic success”

This monumental victory also didn’t lead to a celebration, a coronation of the greatest player of her generation (and maybe in history), but instead more of the same. The story of redemption and the beauty of her game isn’t the story found throughout the cyber world, from twitter to the comment section of various sports websites.

Her victory prompted tweets referring to her by the “N Word” and several more about her body and sexuality. Reflecting an atmosphere of racist and sexist violence, of dehumanizing rhetoric, tweets referring to her as a gorilla flowed throughout cyberspace with great frequency (some of the below appeared over the last week).

  • ·      Today a giant gorilla escaped the zoo and won the womens title at Wimbledon… oh that was Serena Williams? My mistake.
  • ·      Serena Williams is a gorilla
  • ·      Watching tennis and listening to dad talk about how Serena Williams looks like gorilla from the mist
  • ·      I don’t see how in the hell men find Serena Williams attractive?! She looks like a male gorilla in a dress, just saying!
  • ·      You might as well just bang a gorilla if you’re going to bang Serena Williams
  • ·      Earlier this week I said that all female tennis players were good looking. I was clearly mistaken: The Gorilla aka Serena Williams.
  • ·      serena williams looks like a gorilla
  • ·      Serena Williams is half man, half gorilla! I’m sure of it.
  • ·      Serena Williams look like a man with tits, its only when she wears weave she looks female tbh, what a HENCH BOLD GORILLA!
  • ·      Serena Williams is a gorilla in a skirt playing tennis #Wimbledon
  • ·      My god Serena Williams is ugly! She’s built like a silver backed gorilla
  • ·      I would hate to come across Serena Williams in a dark alley #nightmare#gorilla#notracist
  • ·      Serena williams is one of the ugliest human beings i’ve ever seen #Gorilla
  • YouTube posts offered similar responses to her victory:
  • ·      A man? look at her body, more like a silver back gorilla. I can easily imagine her charging through the jungle breaking trees while flexing those muscles. Doesn’t help that her nose looks like a gorillas as well. I keep expecting to see her zoo handlers to chain her up after the match before she can escape.
  • ·      Monkey business
  • ·      i ddnt know apes wer allowed in women tennis O_O

It would be a mistake to dismiss these comments as the work of trolls or extremists whose racism and sexism put them outside the mainstream.  Just as the Obamas, just as Dr. Christian Head, just as Mario Balotelli was depicted as King Kong in a recent cartoon, and just as just as soccer andhockey players from throughout the Diaspora face banana peels and monkey chants, the racism raining down on Serena’s victory parade highlights the nature of white supremacy.  It embodies the ways that white supremacy demonizes and imagines blackness as subhuman, as savagery.

Continue reading @ NewBlackMan (in Exile): Serena Williams: “Ain’t I a Champion?”.

Jeremy Lin and the NBA’s Race Problem – Entertainment & Culture – EBONY

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Jeremy Lin and the NBA’s Race Problem

David Leonard

We interrupt this regularly scheduled Jeremy Lin update to bring your breaking news about Jeremy Lin: he is taking his talents to South Texas. The unfolding drama that amazingly pushed Dwight Howard’s fate to out of the limelight has finally come to end, although without fireworks.

Some have taken the opportunity to blame Carmelo Anthony or JR Smith for Lin’s departure. Carmelo Anthony, when asked about The Lin Situation over the weekend, offered the following: “At this point there’s a lot going on. I stay away from that part right now. I would love to see him back, but I think he has to do what’s best for him right now…It’s not up to me. It’s up to the [Knicks] organization to say they want to match that ridiculous contract that’s out there.”

And then the media spun “ridiculous” as if Carmelo was arguing that Lin’s offer was undeserved. When I read these comments, it didn’t feel like a sign of disrespect, or one where Anthony was saying that Lin didn’t warranted the contract, but rather that it was (L)insane, amazing, and out-of-the ordinary. Like saying “that dunk was ridiculous” or “that performance was sick.” Six months ago, did you think Lin would command 25 million dollars? Did you foresee earning as much as Russell Westbrook or millions more than Steve Nash.

Ridiculous!

When not blaming Melo and Smith, fans and commentators have directed their attention at the Knicks and owner James Dolan. To place all the focus on the Knicks decision is to deny Lin his choice and his agency. According to Frank Isola, “Dolan felt betrayed by Lin for going back to Houston to rework the contract. After all, the Knicks acquired Lin in December after he was released by both Golden State and Houston.” Some have linked this sense of betrayal to Lin’s Asianness, as if Dolan only felt “betrayed” because HE gave Lin – the “overlooked Asian American baller” a chance otherwise unavailable to him.

From start until now, Linsanity has been wrapped in racial narratives that pitted him against Black players. Is it a surprise that as some within the organization reportedly felt he was getting a big head or being ungrateful? Linansity emerged because he could be imagined as the anti-Black NBA star. Yet with reports of him not wanting to play at 85%, his flashy clothing at the ESPYS, and his demands to get paid more, he no longer fits this bill.

And compared to LeBron James, Deron Williams, Dwight Howard, Carmelo Anthony, and Ray Allen, Lin has gotten a pass. Yes, some have criticized him, questioning his worth and his value, questioning his loyalty. But this doesn’t stack up with the derision and contempt directed at Black NBA players. Many in the media have come to Lin’s defense. Dan Devine made a point to explain that “This wasn’t an act of treason,” but rather this is ” how free agency works.”

Yet the loudest media voices weren’t speaking up for Howard or Williams when they expressed their desire to head to NY, or when fans took to Twitter and into the streets to metaphorically and literally burn Ray Allen’s Celtics jersey. Nor did they come to the defense of James when Dan Gilbert described James’ decision as a “shocking act of disloyalty from our home grown ‘chosen one’ sends the exact opposite lesson of what we would want our children to learn.”

If we believe reports that the Knicks decision wasn’t driven by money or even for basketball reasons, but instead Dolan’s ego or his feeling that Lin should have been more grateful since “how often does an Asian American kid go from Harvard to MSG,” it is fair to say race matters. But this is the NBA, where race matters, and where Black players face the daggers of American media racism daily. The constant backlash against these stars, particularly Black ones, who determine their own fate is clear: professional basketball players are lucky enough to earn millions of dollars for playing a game, and the least they can be is grateful, appreciative and loyal.

As Charles Moriano brilliantly stated, the media constantly tells NBA players “get-back-in-your-place-you-spoiled-ungrateful-fill-in-the-racial-code-word-blank.” For Jeremy Lin, the “code words” may be different, but the foundation of race is unquestionable.

via Jeremy Lin and the NBA’s Race Problem – Entertainment & Culture – EBONY.

NewBlackMan (in Exile): Kevin Durant and the Myth of Michael Jordan’s America

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Kevin Durant and the Myth of Michael Jordan’s America

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

With game #3 in the NBA finals set for tonight, and the series in question, one thing not in question is that the league has finally found its Michael Jordan for the twenty-first century. While others have fallen short for a number of reasons, it seems that Kevin Durant is on the precipice of following in Air Jordan’s footsteps.

Although the NBA lockout marked the end of this search, given the league’s focus on team rivalries over superstars, it now clear that Kevin Durant has taken the mantle. Irrespective of who ultimately wins the series, Kevin Durant has already been declared the winner of America’s next best commodifiable baller. His reign is not so much about basketball but the narrative, the embedded racial meaning, his appeal in “red state America,” and the representational possibilities available with Durant. Clearly LeBron James’ basketball resume is on the same level; in fact, with multiple MVP awards, endless skill, and an ability to dominate each and every game at both ends of the floor, LB6 has game that is once in generation. The same cannot be said for KD35, whose skills are unimpeachable yet his power and resonance rests with the story and ideological confirmation he provides the league and countless fans.

Since MJ’s retirement, the league, its marketing partners, and fans alike have pinned for someone to fill his AIR Jordans. Each anointed as the next Michael Jordan, Penny Hardaway, Grant Hill, Vince Carter, and Harold Miner (“Baby Jordan”) all failed to deliver because of injuries, limited production, or a combination of both. Each in their own right was imagined as a player who could fill the shoes, whose talents, charisma, and athleticism would propel the NBA during its post-Jordan era. None of them met these expectations resulting in an NBA in continued search for a twenty-first century basketball God.

Kobe Bryant and LeBron James each took the mantle of the next Jordan to places none of the other NMJ (next Michael Jordan) had reached. Kobe, because of his talents, the ways in which he patterned his game and demeanor after Jordan, his quest for rings, and most importantly his competitiveness, all elevated the comparisons, leading many to argue that he was the NMJ. Yet because of Eagle County, Colorado, because of his conflicts with Shaquille O’Neal and the ultimate demise of the Lakers Dynasty, and because he is said to have demanded to get out of Los Angeles, Kobe has fallen short in other’s quest to find the next Michael Jordan. Like Kobe, LeBron James has delivered on the court, dazzling fans with his passing skills, his athleticism, and his ability to make his teammates better. Worse than struggling to secure a title, LeBron James fell short in the MJ sweepstakes when he decided to take his talents to South Beach. Simply exercising his rights of free agency meant that James was no longer eligible for Jordan status within the national imagination.

While possessing the skills, charisma, and baller potential, the two most promising players to lead the NBA, to build upon the global popularity established by Jordan, have fallen short not because of any basketball deficiency, but their inability (or our inability) to fill some mythical shoes. The quest to find the Next Michael Jordan, thus, has nothing to do with basketball but rather is part of an effort to find a player who reinforces popular narratives about the American Dream, the protestant work ethnic, and post-racialness.

Continue reading @ NewBlackMan (in Exile): Kevin Durant and the Myth of Michael Jordan’s America.

NewBlackMan in Exile: Brittney Griner, Women Athletes and the Erotic Gaze

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Brittney Griner,
Women Athletes and the Erotic Gaze

 

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan (in Exile)

With the 40th anniversary of the Title IX, and the recent announcement that for the first time in history American female athletes will outnumber their male teammates at the Olympics, it would be easy to claim victory in the fight against sexism within the world of sports. Dave Zirin, in a recent column about Title IX and Serena Williams, reflected on the importance of this legislation:

There is arguably no piece of progressive legislation that’s touched more people’s lives than Title IX, which allowed young women equal opportunity in education and sports. According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, one in thirty-five high school girls played sports forty years ago; one in three do today. Before Title IX, fewer than 16,000 women participated in college sports; today that number exceeds 200,000. All stereotypes about women being too “emotional” to handle sports were answered when the gyms were unlocked, and they arrived in droves. It is a reform that has improved the quality of life for tens of millions of women around the country.

While certainly a landmark piece of legislation that literally and symbolically transformed sporting landscapes throughout the United States more so in the suburbs, Zirin also elucidates the persistence of sexism within sports culture, evident in inequity in pay, coaching disparities, differential treatment from the press, and the intransigent power of stereotypes. Recognizing an incomplete transformation and the need for persistent agitation as to fully realize justice and equality, Zirin depicts sports as a place where dreams remained deferred.

The reasons for Zirin’s muted or skeptical celebration have been on full display this evening with the treatment of Brittney Griner by “sports fans” on Twitter. Illustrating the ways that race, gender, and sexuality constrain and contain, the ways that racism, sexism, and homophobia exists as prism/prison of sporting consumption, and the ways that new media operates as a technology of surveillance and demonization, the treatment of Griner highlights the dreams yet fulfilled in Title IX. What should have been a celebration of her greatness and that of other female athletes is yet another moment of rampant sexism, homophobia and racism. Here are but a few of the tweets that echoed within the twitter world during the ESPYS:

 

 

·      And the best male athlete goes to… Britney Griner

 

·      Britney Griner should have won best male athlete…

 

·      If Britney Griner‘s straight then I’m an Angels fan.

 

·      Watchin the #espys……ummmmm Britney Griner sounds like a man……wow!!

 

·      The Heat win “BestTeam” category really? They should sign Britney Griner then they’d really be a scary team

 

·      Britney Griner is a man

 

·      The ESPYs made me cry tonight. Not because of Eric LeGrand or Pat Summit. But because of Britney Griner. That woman frightens me endlessly.

 

·      Britney griner screaming like a dude lol

 

·      Britney Griner has to be a dude

 

·      Britney Griner is a Dude her voice deeper than mine

 

·      Britney griner looks and sounds like a dude #BestMaleAthlete

 

·      I would rather have Britney Griner win best male athlete than Lebron. Because she’s WAY more of a man than he will ever be

 

·      Britney griner… Do your balls grow hair? #nodoubt

 

·      Cup check in britney griner please

 

·      I wonder if Britney griner is packing more downstairs than the #bieledong@BeingBielema

 

·      No one on this planet can tell me that Britney Griner is not a homosexual male. I won’t believe it. #ESPYS

 

·      Britney Griner’s voice scares me

 

·      Britney Griner…you just won best FEMALE college athlete, at least go to the ESPY’S dressed like a GIRL! Smh.

 

·      Are we sure that Britney Griner is really a girl??

 

·      If Britney Griner wins female athlete of the year at the Espys tonight I’m gonna throw a fit. She’s not even a female

 

Clearly, the 2012 ESPYS were another moment to mock and ridicule and to otherwise dehumanize Britney Griner. Demonizing her as “unattractive,” questioning her worthiness or the appropriateness of her receiving an award for “best female athlete,” and imaging her as a scary and disgusting Other, the Tweets are yet another reminder of how sports culture remains a space hostile to women, especially those who don’t fulfill male sexual fantasies.  In an effort to fully contextualize these tweets, I thought I would repost piece I wrote for Slam earlier in the year.

 

Continue reading NewBlackMan in Exile: Brittney Griner, Women Athletes and the Erotic Gaze.