Is it any surprise that NBA player Ron
Artest beat up fans in the stands?
It shouldn’t be.
Is it any surprise that NBA Chief David
Stern gave him only a season suspension for beating up those fans?
It shouldn’t be.
If you’ve been following the National
Basketball Association over the last few years, you shouldn’t be surprised
that a player beat up innocent (and not so innocent) fans at an NBA game.
The NBA has become Thuggery, Inc.
And Stern is largely to blame.
That’s because Stern recruits kids from the killing fields of America to play
for his league. And he looks the other way when inbred street behavior
manifests itself in these instant-millionaire SOWMBDs (Sons of
“Who-My-Baby-Daddy”). Or worse, he encourages it.
When violence or a hint of violence
erupts, Stern sees it not as a bad thing, but as just another notch in the NBA
urban, hip-hop marketing campaign – a yet higher level of the street cred
Stern and the NBA crave to make their sport more hip-hop in a less hip post-Air
Jordan NBA.
Indiana Pacers player Ron Artest should
have been banned from the game for life. Anytime a player goes into the
stands to physically attack fans, that player should be gone forever. Pete
Rose is gone from Major League Baseball for a lot less. But David Stern
doesn’t have the guts, doesn’t have the morals, decency, or guts to do so.
In 2000, Allen Iverson—the
Philadelphia ‘76ers star whose basketball skills helped him get away with
a life of violence that included maiming others—made a rap CD, “Non
Fiction,” urging the murder of gays and Black women.
Calling Black women “f---[ing] b----es” and tramps, Iverson urged
“Everybody stay fly; Get money, kill and f--- b----es.” His lyrics
for gays was equally non-imaginative: “Get murdered in the second
and first degree; Come to me with faggot tendencies; You be
sleeping where the maggots be.” (I’m sure this hoops-Einstein
spent all night trying to find a word that rhymes with “faggot.”)
David Stern’s “discipline”? He got Iverson to “apologize”
– sort of. Stern also claimed Iverson agreed to change the lyrics,
but USA Today quoted Iverson as saying there would be “no change in the
lyrics.” Stern’s October 2000 “Statement on Iverson CD” read
like a press release from the Pro-Player Pander Palace.
In 2001, NBA players Allan Houston
and Charlie Ward made anti-Semitic comments, a special chutzpah because they
played for the New York Knicks, which has a large Jewish clientele.
David Stern’s response:
Nothing. Ward apologized and had a brief meeting with a Rabbi. No word
on whether he was forced to ingest gefilte fish.
In 2003, Sacramento Kings player
Chris Webber–arrested on various drug and alleged rape charges over the
years, but each time, escaping with the skin of his teeth—was indicted for
lying to a grand jury about illegal loans he took from a shady booster.
He pled guilty to a lesser charge when the key witness died suddenly.
Webber was traded to the Kings in the first place because of frequent
off-court arrests while a Washington Wizard. One of those, during a
1998 Maryland traffic stop, involved Webber fleeing police, slapping a
police officer, refusing to show his driver’s license, and lacking a
license plate. In fact, Webber’s Lincoln Navigator had devices to
quickly obscure the license plate and was equipped with secret compartments
to hide the drugs that were found therein.
Like all suspects caught red-handed, Webber claimed the drugs were left
there by a friend. That excuse didn’t work earlier that year when he
was fined $500 when marijuana was found in his carry-on bag at an airport in
Puerto Rico. Despite all that, he had the gall to sue Fila for
dropping him as an endorser pursuant to a morals clause.
David Stern’s actions on any of the above: A big fat capital Zilch.
After all, Chris Webber—who grew up not in the streets, but with two
parents and attended Detroit’s fanciest prep-school for the kids of
gazillionaires (Detroit Country Day School)—needed to establish his
‘hood-ness.
And wimpy David Stern isn’t about to get in his way.
So, when Ron Artest goes into the
stands to fight spectators half his size, David Stern can’t afford to give him
the lifetime suspension he deserves for inexcusable violence (regardless of what
precipitated it).
Imagine the marketing, the shoes sold,
the licensing fees, the sold-out NBA arenas, and the press coverage when Ron
Artest enters the basketball court in any market, next season.
Ron Artest, who claims he doesn’t
know what the word “integrity” means (he said he needed a dictionary to look
up that “big word”), wanted a few months off to promote his new rap CD, a la
Allen Iverson. Now, David Stern has not only given him that reward but
more publicity than he could have ever hoped for between now and next season.
David Stern is a smart marketer.
After looking the other way and condoning violence for years, he isn’t about
to forgo the sweet sound of that carefully cultivated cha-ching.
Thuggery sells even better than sex.
It’s a slam dunk.
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