“Basketball is like war in that offensive weapons are developed first, and it always takes a while for the defense to catch up,” says Red Auerbach, coach of the Boston Celtics Basketball Team 1950-1966 and voted greatest coach in National Basketball Association (NBA) history in 1980. Basketball did become war-like a little over a week ago when Detroit Piston star Ron Artest and other players with the Detroit Pistons and Indiana Pacers got into a brawl during a professional basketball game. Artest, last year’s NBA defensive player of the year, was given a 73-game suspension, the longest in NBA history but the damage was already done.
The Artest incident coupled with the next day’s football riot at a Clemson-South Carolina football game riot and even the subsequent shooting and death of six deer hunters in Wisconsin a couple of days later by a Laotian immigrant could have been isolated and unrelated incidents, but they all might have been part of a larger symptom developing in the United States, a culture of intolerance and violence.
Artest was on the NBC Today Show shortly after the basketball incident and he was asked why the fight took place. He answered, “...sometime things happen. People go to war, but we don’t want to go to war.” Billy Hunter, who is the president of the NBA Players Union, was later asked by the Today Show, “Whatever happens, it is an ugly chapter in NBA history, isn’t it?” Hunter answered, “It’s an ugly chapter in general, but I think it’s reflective of — of, you know, basketball and sports are a microcosm of the system and I think that there’s a lot of polarization in this country. We’re at war with Iraq and I think people to a great extent, have been kind of immune to violence until all of a sudden something like this shakes us back into reality.”
Shortly after the second Kerry-Bush presidential debate, we received an e-mail from a passionate concerned American friend. He said, “Please advise and ask Sen. Kerry to stop saying ‘KILL’ the terrorists. First this is not presidential language. Second he sounds like ‘wild west Bush’ and third it is beginning to be reflective of our society that just going out and ‘killing’ is okay.” He went on to say that if a Middle Eastern leader used such language, they would be condemned for it.
American sports columnist Dave Zirin has also noted the increased intolerance and subsequent violence in American society and keyed on the recent Artest basketball incident to discuss these issues. Zirin said, “So we have angry white fans trying to punch out angry black players with the players returning the favor. This animosity is very real and not going anywhere.”
Zirin goes on, “This violence is also heated by the bloodshed engulfing US society — not street violence, but the state-sanctioned variety. ESPN (sports TV channel) has replayed the ‘horror’ of the fight ad nauseam, in black and white with all kinds of slow motion angles. They have reveled in this fight and are crying all the way to the bank.” Zirin concludes, “Ask people in Fallujah what violence really looks like, and the role a network like ESPN plays in promoting the acceptance of such violence.”
During the first intifada many years ago, a friend commented, “Wait and see. At first when people see the Israeli soldiers roughing up and killing the Palestinian innocents on TV, there will be an outpouring of sympathy for the Palestinians. But eventually, when people see this happening every day on their television sets, they will become immunized to the violence and turn the channel to something more pleasant. I actually think the Israelis want this to happen. They are so masterful at propaganda and what is better for them than to get the Western public immunized to the suffering of the Palestinians.” Her prediction seemed to prove itself later and we seem to be seeing other examples of this “immunization” process in current events.
In March of 2003 when the Iraq war broke out, the NCAA basketball tournament, often referred to as “March Madness”, was in progress. The TV channels broadcasting the tournament weren’t sure what to do. Some used split screens and rolling titles side-by-side with the basketball games. Some pre-empted the games with stories and pictures of the war. In one college town in Wisconsin, school officials placed TV sets in adjacent rooms. The room with the basketball game was overflowing. The room with the war coverage had only one person watching. That person was quoted as saying, “The war is much more significant than the basketball game. This can change the world, not only for the young men over there who can lose their lives, but the citizens of Iraq and their soldiers.”
Phil Jackson, another NBA basketball coach who is considered one of the best ever, also has a famous quote about basketball. Jackson said, “Love is the force that ignites the spirit and binds teams together.” Basketball, sports, war and intolerance have merged much more closely since the “March Madness” of 2003 and since Auerbach and Jackson were first quoted. Time will tell whether Red Auerbach or Phil Jackson got it right.
— Dr. Michael Saba is the author of “The Armageddon Network” and is an international relations consultant.
