The Gilbert Arenas situation has made it clear as day: the NBA has a problem.
The league is “full of thugs,” to quote Forbes editor Michael K. Ozanian. San Francisco Examiner writer Bob Frantz recently wrote that the NBA’s “overly ink-stained players look like a bunch of gang-bangers playing in the recreation yard at Pelican Bay,” following that up by saying that Arenas and teammate Javaris Crittendon had validated his opinion. Frantz: “A league filled with guys that look like thugs is bound to be filled with guys that act like thugs” (sfexaminer.com, 1/4/10).
And they’re absolutely right. Just take a look at the league’s rap sheet.
An NBA player was just released from prison after being involved in a murder-for-hire plot involving his agent. There’s an NBA player currently serving a 14 year prison sentence for attempted murder, and another player serving a sentence for conspiring to murder his pregnant girlfriend.
There are fights in NBA games on an almost nightly basis — including one during the league’s outdoor game earlier this season, its showcase event. Several years ago, an NBA player grabbed an elderly assistant coach by the head and shoved him to the ground during a melee in the Conference Finals. Five years ago, an NBA player threw a chair into the stands and broke a woman’s nose — just months after another player suckerpunched an opponent, breaking his neck.
NBA players are unquestionably prone to violence. One player demonstrated to ESPN’s Outside the Lines how he would handle someone who would attempt to mug him. “If someone’s right here, … and he’s like, ‘give me your wallet,’ and he’s got a knife. I’m like, alright man, let me grab my wallet,” he grabbed his gun and laughed, “there it is. Now, he’s got a chance to turn tail, or he’s getting it. Better leave. If you think you can get me with that knife before I squeeze off three rounds with this, you’ll be gravely mistaken.” If that does not epitomize thug life, I don’t know what does.
An NBA player was arrested for domestic battery last year — less than a year after his brother, a fellow NBA player, was sued for allegedly beating his pregnant girlfriend. The star of the NBA’s championship team was sued for alleged sexual assault over the summer.
And let’s not forget the NBA player that murdered his teammate back in 2003.
The fact is, the NBA has a problem. The league is filled with vile, criminal thugs. No other league deals with the kind of criminal activity that the NBA does. Not the NHL, not Major League Baseball — and certainly not college basketball, where the players are uncorrupted by the money in the pros. Even the NFL has more upstanding citizens than the …
Hold on a moment.
I’m receiving word that the aforementioned murder-for-hire plot involved NHL player Mike Danton. And that the person serving a 14-year prison sentence for attempted murder is former MLB player — and member of the ’03 World Champion Marlins — Ugueth Urbina. And the person in jail for the murder of his pregnant girlfriend is the NFL’s Rae Carruth.
Also, I’ve been informed that the NBA has not had a brawl since 2006. To the best of my understanding, those nightly brawls I referenced earlier took place in the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball. Again, I apologize — but who could blame me? It’s not like you hear about fights in those leagues.
Furthermore, the outdoor game fight took place during the NHL’s Winter Classic, the player who shoved the elderly assistant to the ground was MLB player Pedro Martinez, the player who threw a chair in the stands was MLB player Frank Francisco, and the player who broke an opponent’s neck during a fight was the NHL’s Todd Bertuzzi.
The Outside the Lines quote was made by MLB player Luke Scott, and the brothers involved in separate domestic violence incidents were MLB’s Brian and Marcus Giles. And, apparently, the superstar sued for alleged sexual assault was the star of the Super Bowl champion Steelers, Ben Roethlisberger.
Finally, it has come to my attention that the player who murdered his teammate in ’03 was Baylor college basketball player Carlton Dotson.
Huh. Boy, it’s a good thing none of those other sports have image problems. Or those incidents would really have stuck.
Okay, so the other leagues have their issues. But those are isolated incidents. Why judge Major League Baseball just because an elderly man was thrown to the ground and had to be taken away by stretcher, or just because a woman had a her nose crushed by a folding chair?
And besides, that doesn’t change the fact that the NBA is filled with unrepentant, preening, arrogant thugs. Just look at Jayson Williams, who killed his limo driver and continues to get into legal trouble. Sure, he hasn’t played in the NBA in a decade, and he was retired when said incident took place, but he is still representative of the league as a whole. You know, the same way Jim Leyritz (arrested on DUI manslaughter after the death of a woman in ’07, and then arrested in ’09 on domestic battery charges) is representative of Major League Baseball.
The Pacers/Pistons brawl is perhaps the best example of the NBA’s rampant thuggery. Players going into the stands to fight with fans is unprecedented in the history of sports. Except for the time Bruins players went into the stands at Madison Square Garden. And the time Dodgers players went into the stands at Wrigley Field. But Pacers/Pistons was different. After all, as Mike Breen said, Ron Artest had a “scary look in his eyes.” Mike Milbury was just having fun out there.
The NBA’s gun problem is another good example. Devin Harris estimated that 75% of NBA players own guns. Take a look at the list of NBA players involved in gun incidents in recent years: Jayson Williams, Sebastian Telfair, Arenas, Crittendon, Delonte West, Stephen Jackson, DeShawn Stevenson and Chris Mills. That’s 9 whole players — enough to fill an injury-decimated team — and those are just the 9 we know about. It could be 25 or 50 of them for all we know.
If 75% of the NBA owns guns, and the NBA has 400 players, then we’re talking about 300 pistol-packing NBA thugs. Now, sure, 9 (or even 50) out of 300 is a fairly small fraction — and one that would seem to indicate that the vast majority of NBA gun owners are responsible with their weapons. But just the fact that they have those weapons is a bad thing. After all, gun ownership is illegal in the United States. (ed. note, apparently, the right to bear arms is guaranteed in the Constitution. Who knew?)
And guns aside, everyone knows that NBA players frequently get in trouble with the law. Remember that book by Jeff Benedict, “Out of Bounds: Inside the NBA’s Culture of Rape, Violence, and Crime,” where he found that 40% of NBA players have a police record involving a serious crime? Sure, his sample size was limited to 177 of the NBA’s 417 non-foreign born players — less than half. And sure, the book did not “disclose a detailed listing of his data” (New York Times, 6/15/04). And sure, as NBA Commissioner David Stern noted, the book lumped together those who were accused of crimes and those who were convicted (ed. note, apparently, there is indeed a difference between being accused of a crime and being convicted of one.)
But who cares? 40 percent of NBA players! Rape, Violence and Crime! That’s all you need to know. And sure, I could do an investigation into cable news, use Bill O’Reilly and Kiran Chetry as my sample size, and say that 50% of cable news hosts have been accused of sexual harassment. But that doesn’t matter. It sounds true, doesn’t it? It reinforces our preconceived notions.
It doesn’t matter what’s true. It doesn’t matter what goes on in other sports. It doesn’t matter that for every Javaris Crittendon, there’s Chris Paul, Deron Williams, and countless others. It doesn’t matter that the majority of NBA players are more than likely law abiding citizens.
The league has an image problem. It has an image problem not because of what actually takes place, but because of what observers have convinced themselves takes place. It has an image problem because every incident becomes part of a trend. It has an image problem because the league’s first player-related scandal in three years has also resulted in its only mentions on cable news shows in three years.
With that in mind, I, for one, will join my sportswriting colleagues — from Terrence Moore and Michael K. Ozanian to Gary Thorne and Jason Whitlock before them — in continuing to judge the league and its players based on stereotypes and innuendo. The NBA is full of thugs, and I think I speak for those aforementioned individuals when I say there’s nothing you can say to make me think otherwise.
