What does basketball want from Blackness?

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What does basketball want from Blackness?

There is an incident that took place a few years ago, during an NHL game between the Chicago Blackhawks and Washington Capitals that put a fine point on something that often goes unsaid. After fighting with the Blackhawk’s Connor Murphy, Capitals player Devante Smith-Pelly (one of only 30 Black players in the league at the time) was sent to the penalty box, where a group of white fans began repeatedly chanting the word “basketball” at him.

Despite the fact that Smith-Pelly had worked his way to one of the highest stages that hockey has to offer, it took just one word to highlight something that is evident but kept quiet for a myriad of reasons, the color of his skin. What those racist Hockey fans accidentally stumbled upon is a truth that has nearly reared its head time and time again in the past few years, only to be whacked a mole down by broader power structures. The truth is that basketball is Black, you may read that and go “well someone must know that to be true, even those fans at the hockey game were on some level acknowledging that.” And to that, I’d say yes, they acknowledged the tie between basketball as a sport and the Black people playing it, but it was meant to degrade that sport and its culture when in reality that association is one that should be valued and celebrated. This piece isn’t to speak to handfuls of racists gleefully pointing out their inferiority in a sport they created, but instead to speak to basketball as a whole and coax it into proudly accepting its role among Black people. 

There is an understanding in America that culture is to be created by Black people and then curated for white consumption and manipulation. This isn’t a new concept or one strictly in the realms of sports. For example, Nina Simone unknowingly went on tour for the CIA in Africa. It’s very rare that this one-sided proposition is disturbed in the mainstream or mentioned outside of a vocal minority, but in 2020 we saw a glimpse of what was willing to be done to keep basketball from true realization. In the middle of a year severely thrown off track by the start of the Covid-19 Pandemic, the NBA hosted the first round of its playoffs series’. Simultaneously the country is seeing yet another video of police violence towards a Black man, this time the shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year old in Kenosha, Wisconsin. This left the players of Wisconsin’s NBA team, the Bucks, with a question to answer ahead of their game 5 matchups with the Orlando Magic. Would they remind the public that not only are the majority of the players in this league Black, but the essence of this sport is as well? They answered yes, and the players of the NBA made a statement with a work-stoppage unlike any other in recent memory among professional athletes. There was momentum in the air and a feeling of change that was on the horizon. The protest was labeled daring and revolutionary, sure to bring about the material change, and two years on…well, a 22-year-old named Amir Locke was shot and killed during a no Knock Warrant in Minnesota, home to one of the NBA’s franchises, with little to no mention from the league. How did all of that promise become squandered in such a short amount of time? The truth is the wind was let out of the sails almost immediately. While the fact that players themselves came together to decide to take a stand was legitimately powerful, it only took 48 hours for the whole message to be co-opted by the NBA and bastardized for the purposes of marketing. Not to mention the fact the idea for the protest came from WNBA players who truly have not stopped their efforts but have seen little national support on these topics. While it may seem like the league threw it’s massive weight behind the players, from the way things have turned out, it seems more likely that weight was placed on the players. It’s fair to say “well the NBA is a company, meaning ultimately its interests lie with profit” but like all companies, that profit comes from the direct result of the exploitation of labor and they have positioned themselves as the biggest pushers of basketball worldwide, so these are concerns that will always be relevant to discuss in relation to the sport. The reason this all becomes a point of contention now is that for the longest time, the NBA has been able to have its cake and eat it too. By this, I mean having Black athletes serve as the company’s face while ignoring broader social implications. This includes Magic Johnson contracting HIV and it leading to no discussion of the impact that disease was having on the Black community at large, or the true symbol of Blackness for marketing, Michael Jordan. This isn’t as much a condemnation of Jordan as it is an acknowledgment of the particular way he was spoken about and promoted to a global audience. It wasn’t just that Jordan’s Blackness was meant to be downplayed, but marketing-wise the NBA realized they could have all the aesthetics of Black culture without having to worry about the people they were taking from. It was basically a license to print money. Whether it was Spike Lee commercials or the juggernaut that would become Jordan’s signature sneakers, the NBA was able to keep itself on this cultural tightrope, that is until MJ retired. 

With Jordan gone there was undeniably a gap, and even in his ill-fated second return to the sport, it was obvious another face was needed. By all accounts there seemed to be one person in particular, who the commissioner of the NBA at the time, David Stern, did not want to assume that role, Allen Iverson. This was specifically because of Iverson’s Blackness, and there is really no other honest way to phrase it. It was simply too much for a league that was looking to hang its hat on the kindly smile and winning “can do” attitude they cultivated with a 90’s Michael Jordan. Iverson was brash, bold, and didn’t mind clashing with his coaches and league ownership when he felt he had been treated unfairly. As much as they could take from his paycheck, the higher powers of the association knew the way to exercise control over him was his image. This is when the league introduced its dress code, marking the true sterilization of the NBA and basketball as a whole. This meant no durags, chains worn over the player’s clothes, sunglasses while indoors, headphones, and basically any other indicator that these Black men might actually be Black men. Most saw these rules as a direct response to Iverson and the overall role Hip- Hop was playing in the league. It's as if David Stern went through the entirety of A.I’s closet and checked things off to ban. And with that, vocal players were removed and most of the effort in star-making was placed behind players more aligned with the NBA’s vision of basketball.