Does the NBA get bad press because it's a "black league"

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sinosleep

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I've been thinking this since the whole "Malice at the Palace" incident and being a HUGE NBA fan as well as watching the 4 other major sports in the US I definitely think it's THE major reason the NBA gets the press it does.

Here's a link to an article by Michael Wilbon after Steve Francis brought it up after the melee at Madison Square Garden a couple of days ago.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/18/AR2006121801403.html
 
It is without a doubt true. The perception of the NBA in terms of race changes much of what is done to the league. Baseball routinely has 18 and 19 year olds drafted, but only the mostly black NBA is told that its 18 years olds are too "immature" to be drafted, even though they could just as easily be in Iraq giving their lives. In fact, the ONLY leagues that have a minimum age requirement are majority-black (NBA and NFL).
The biggest way to understand the racial gap is to understand the rhetoric when something happens. For example, this past college footbal season there were TWO bench-clearing brawls on the same day. The one that got the negative press? Mostly black Miami and FIU teams while the other fight was between Dartmouth and Holy Cross, mostly white teams whole brawled for nearly ten minutes, but got much less grif over it.
 
Not only that but you have sports like Hockey that actively ENDORSE fighting and Baseball, which has bench clearing (something that will get you suspended in the NBA) brawls almost every month. Not to mention the bean ball wars when pitchers start intentionally hitting batters. Where's the media attention for them?

The NBA had been FIGHT FREE for two solid years, but they're still talking about this fight in the news.
 
speaking of "Malice in the Palace" (since i lived in the metro area where this happened) ...i would like to say that the scrutiny really SHOULDNT BE on the players..it SHOULD have been on those UNRULY fans!

if someone had done what they did at a POLITICAL event where the president or a prominent political official had been...they'd most likely have been SHOT or ARRESTED and dragged away and yet, at these sporting events, you have some RABID fans who some how seem to think they can cross the line with their heckling.

when you start throwing food, drinks, and spitting (not to mention hurling racial slurs ) at ANYONE..what do you think is going to happen? the victim of your insults and harrasment is GOING to react and most likely in a violent way. I know I would be RIGHT in a man's face if he threw something at me and was calling me a bitch.

So for people to act like this is something that is "a major problem" in ONLY the predominantly black NBA, to me thats just another racially motivated cop out.

ANYONE would be ready to fight you if you threw a drink, cup or food on them! that's MORE than heckling..that's straight up disrespect and harrassment and no one would tolerate that.

those men who did that shit NEEDED to get their asses beat. did they really think that these giant ass basketball players would put up with THAT kind of abuse for very long?
 
Yesterday there was a fight in hockey. Dude took off his glove and CLOCKED a guy from behind KNOCKING HIM OUT. Where was the outrage? Where were the cries for suspension, the claims of THUGGERY in the NHL? There were none. Michel Wilbon brought it up in his show PTI and was VERY noticeably angry him being a black man and seeing how this whole deal with the NBA is an obvious race issue.

No body cared when the league was majority white and there were fights. Hell even in the 80's and early 90's it wasn't a big deal. But suddenly any kind of fighting in basket ball is a national fucking disaster.
 
That's bs - not everything in the world is about race. The NBA gets bad press because of the behavior of its players, coupled with the fact that starting teams are small so the players are more recognizeable to people.
 
Vil, with the evidence I've presented here, if you can't see this as a race issue I don't know what you WILL see as a race issue.

Again, basketball was FIGHT FREE, as in absolutely no incendent in which a punch was thrown for TWO years. That's UNHEARD of in the other sports. Baseball, football (which has a LOT of black players but also has WAY more white super stars 'how many black QB's are there?' then the NBA), and Hockey all have TONS of fights and worse every single year. And yet where's the claims of thuggery in those sports? Why is it it's ok to throw punches (I even named a BLATANT example that just happened yesterday) in every other sport but Basketball?

I mean really what's the difference between every other sport I mentioned and basketball? The only clear difference there is that the NBA is composed of 90% black super stars.
 
Didn't ESPN do a story on this several weeks ago?

Anyway, I don't think it's the on-court stuff that gives the NBA a bad name (the whole Malice in the Palace thing I believe the players were absolutely right to defend themselves and the FANS should be the ones getting disciplined for it). Just because the NBA is 90% black (which seems a high number to me, personally) and they have a bad name doesn't mean one is the cause of another. I think it's that NBA players have a higher profile than in other sports so when they f up, everyone knows about it.

PS The whole Miami-FSU vs Holy Cross-Dartmouth thing: no one cares about Holy Cross or Dartmouth Football. EVERYONE cares about FSU and Miami.
 
The NBA is 70% black, I said the super stars are 90% black. And if it's not the on the court stuff then why is it EVERY TIME something happens on the court in the NBA it's the end of the world? Like I said, it's been I think, 7 days now since the fight, and they are STILL writing articles about it and talking about it on ESPN. People DEMANDED that Carmello Anthony get the 15 games he got for the sucker punch.

But this hockey incident, in which a player was KNOCKED OUT, gets no airplay, one or two articles, and you won't hear about it again unless someone brings it up to compare it to all the hooplah that the NBA gets. As for the off the court stuff I don't buy it either. The NFL and College Football have WAY more off court incidents then the NBA does. I mean just look at the Miami Dolphins, half the team's been arrested or suspended on drug charges in the last 5 years. But it's ok for TO to spit in someone's face and not get suspended for it and it'll be ok the next time a fight breaks out too.
 
No because the way it's worded it's as if the league is full of thugs and these things happen all the time, and because of that the hammer needs to be brought down hard and swiftly.

It's a bs double standard in regards to every other sport.
 
The article that I posted was written by Michael Wilbon, the same guy that was mad on PTI when the hockey fight didn't get any media attention. He's saying the same thing I'm saying, that the NBA gets bad press because it's majority black.

When I was talking about articles I was talking about articles in general in regards to the NBA and any time a fight breaks out. Hell it's not just fights it's EVERYTHING. THe jerseys are too big, the shorts are too big, the sag too low, they have too many tattoos, etc, etc, etc. You don't get these complaints in other sports. Just go to msnbc.com, go to the sports section and see if they still have any articles on the fight up and read them. The way THOSE articles are worded is what bothers me. That's why even though I'm talking about specific articles it still reflects the general public.
 
I don't think you can say that just because the media writes articles and does stories like that, that it reflects the general public. For IN GAME fighting public opinion will always put hockey as the sport of big thugs fighting the whole time. OUT OF GAME like I said before, NBA players are more high profile. There are fewer of them. They are more easily recognizeable by Joe American. And let's face it, there are a lot of them that go for the bad boy image purposefully. The Jailblazers are nicknamed the Jailblazers for a reason. For sports like the NFL it's more team perception - like the Cowboys cause so many of them have been in jail, or the Bengals this year cause what, 7 of their players have been arrested? But Joe Average American doesn't know who so and so is that plays back up left guard for Tennessee. But they know that Ben Gordon is the sixth man for the Bulls.

Bottom line is, if all NBA players behaved like Tiki Barber, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

You don't get those complaints about uniforms in other sports because the same problem doesn't exist in uniforms for those sports.
 
Actually there are a good chunk of baseball players that wear HUGE baggy pants when compared to others. Not to mention the GRIMEY ass hats that don't get washed cause of all the superstition surrounding baseball.

And I disagree with the bottom line because like I said, there are MORE players misbehaving in other sports yet they get much less press for it.

Though I do see your point in that there ARE less players in the NBA so when something goes bad it's that much more obvious.
 
Yeah I'm saying because there are so many more players in other sports - even starting players - that it sort of waters down the bad out of game stuff.

You know, my dad made a comment the other day and I thought it had some relevance to this discussion. I can't recall what prompted the comment - oh I know - I called the Bengals the Cincinnati Convicts. He said that people like pro-football players are first off, going to have an excess of testosterone because of the game they play. And second, that they've been treated like something special their whole lives in some cases and so don't feel the law applies to them.
 
Was anyone watching Quite Frankly yesterday? I was at the pub so there was no sound and I couldn't really understand what they were talking about. But the title at the bottom of the screen was "NBA: Black and Proud". And they had like an asian sportswriter and a couple other guys on a panel. Just wondered what they said.

:)
 
You know I think you're both right (Vil and Sino) and the problem rests elsewhere.

If someone told me that there was a massive fight in Hockey I would think, 'doesn't that happen all the time?' I mean, there was this Super Nintendo Hockey game and it included fighting as a feature of the game, no other sports game (except boxing) had that as part of the game so after that point I always thought Hockey and fighting was common place (to a lesser degree blanketing all the players as thugs) so I would naturally pay less attention if I heard fighting happened in a Hockey game. I'm de-sensitised.

If a fight started in a basket ball game I would be inclined to find out who it was between because (to my knowledge) its less common place and the chances are that I would know the players because of the higher profile.

However I make no excuses that the article I would read about NBA players will have chosen words which covertly only serve to perpetuate the negative image of players from paticular ethnicities.

Racism is in all sport's no matter how subtle, but the fact that its there and can be identified as being aimed towards certain players of certain ethnicites more so than other player's from other races shouldn't excuse any player from behaving badly.

Yes the player shouldn't receive the overtly negative media if other players clearly don't for the same and sometimes worse behaviour. However those players behaving badly should realise they are role models and idols for younger generations and shouldn't willingly give the media material to write anything negative about them in the first place. They need to take responsibility as well.

Just my 2 pence.

Edit: - In my view, the subject of racism in sport it needs to be tackled seperately from merely identifying the negative press a player acting badly receives. - That argument is too dual sided to hold any weight to either view, as highlighted above, nothing excuses the bad behaviour and nothing excuses the racism.

The wider issues need to be acknowledged, such as good players from other races deliberately not being played, played out of position, being held back, getting worse contracts, being limited to what image they can publicly portray - i.e a black star wanting a promotional deal will almost always be thrusted into the s'ell the product from a gangsta perspective if you want to sell anything'.

When looked at holistically racism hasn't got any defence.

Just my 50 pence.
 
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