The NBA’s decision to remove the 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte, North Carolina, is unprecedented.
Commissioner Adam Silver seems intent on presiding over a league that doesn’t shy away from pressing social issues. This particular stance was preceded by the NBA’s vocal outcry over gun violence and the public removal of former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling after one of his racist diatribes went public.
These actions mark a pronounced departure from the league’s approach to social issues across its history.
The NBA has typically lagged behind its players when it comes to social causes. In the 1950s, Bob Cousy formed the first pro sports union when he founded the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA). Subsequent NBPA leaders Tommy Heinsohn and Oscar Robertson, among many others, challenged the league to provide pension plans, expand health coverage and respect the right to free agency. These were principles widely abided elsewhere in the American labor market.
But the NBA didn’t exactly rush to provide labor rights. Players were forced to employ the specter of strikes and legal action for fair treatment. They had to fight.
Off the court, Robertson, Bill Russell, Elgin Baylor, Don Barksdale and others gave voice and clout to the African-American civil rights movement. White NBA players like Cousy, Vern Mikkelsen and others often supported their black teammates by refusing to eat at or stay at segregated facilities.
For too long, the NBA office and its teams’ owners scheduled games in segregated cities, forcing its players to confront and protest the humiliation. Jim Crow laws and the legacy of slavery manifested themselves in brazenly simple ways: the inability for a black player to use a bathroom or eat at a lunch counter. The opportunity for protest presented itself regularly.
Players understood the larger ramifications of their sacrifices. The success of the civil rights movement by the mid-1960s and of player lawsuits against the league from the late 1960s through the mid-1970s seemed to alleviate the stress players faced. Finally, players were treated humanely off the court and respectfully on it. Players had won guaranteed contracts, had seen the beginnings of real free agency, had earned a pension plan. Players were shielded from overt daily racism, in theory.
The 1970s saw the beginnings of the cocaine epidemic, followed by the widespread use of crack in the 1980s. NBA players abused drugs like many Americans of all professions and walks of life. The league and the NBPA formulated a sensible (but not perfect) plan to rehabilitate players rather than ban them for life.
The NBA still ousted players for drug use, yet those cases hardly mirrored the escalating, heavy-handed imprisonment of drug offenders in larger society.
The most impactful symbolic gesture of the 1990s still deserves credit. Magic Johnson’s shocking, abrupt retirement due to HIV in 1991 was soon followed by his participation in the 1992 All-Star Game and a comeback in the 1995-96 season. Johnson, for many Americans, was the first household name to appear lively while having the disease.
Until then, most portrayals of the illness depicted fatal despair and degenerative stereotypes. The NBA could proudly claim a role in the public’s wider acceptance of people infected by and suffering from HIV/AIDS.
The league, however, still maintained a strain of its previous reactionary behavior.
In the early ‘90s, former Chicago Bulls guard Craig Hodges publicly opposed the Gulf War and claims the NBA blackballed him for his political views.
Later that decade, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, citing religious freedom, stirred national controversy by refusing to stand for the national anthem. The NBA suspended him, then struck a compromise where Abdul-Rauf was forced to stand but didn’t have to acknowledge the anthem or flag.
Silver’s commissionership feels unrelated to his predecessors. The NBA has directly challenged a state’s government to change a law that does not directly impact the league’s ability to operate. The league has taken a highly publicized stance against gun violence, and Silver has supported players involving themselves in the Black Lives Matter movement, to an extent (he recently stated his preference that players not alter their jerseys to make political gestures).
"I would greatly prefer that the players use the platform they're given: social media, press conferences, media in locker rooms,” Silver said, “however they want to do it, to make their political points of view be known."
Yet challenges remain. North Carolina Republican Rep. Robert Pittenger quickly noted (in puzzling fashion) the NBA still proceeds with exhibition games in repressive China. While the North Carolinian lawmaker doesn’t appear interested in actually improving Chinese human rights, more sincere critics will examine the league’s corporate and civic responsibility in similar fashion.
For example, does the NBA ensure that all of its shoes, jerseys, camera equipment, balls, etc. are made free of forced or coerced labor? Given the league’s support of the LGBT community after the heinous Orlando massacre, will it refuse to play exhibition games in any country (or state) that represses such persons?
The league has articulated quite well why it can’t host this All-Star Game in North Carolina. Going forward, it needs to construct a coherent policy on how and where it chooses to play games in areas where human rights are ill-respected. Likewise, players like Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James publicly denouncing gun violence should also have a coherent follow-up on how they plan to address the problem as they see it.
Coherency doesn’t mean perfection for either players or the league. But there should be a clear sense that the NBA and its players, when they make stands on social justice or civil rights, have a legitimate policy and aren’t haphazardly riding a wave of public opinion.
Curtis Harris is a freelance writer and NBA history expert. Follow him on twitter at @ProHoopsHistory.
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