WNBA players changed US politics in Georgia. NBA stars can do the same in Texas

Last year for Martin Luther King Jr Day, I interviewed a group of WNBA players along with Eric Garner’s daughter, Emerald. We spoke about their campaign to unseat Republican Kelly Loeffler, who had been part of the leadership group of the Atlanta Dream, from the US Senate. With the players’ help, the outside candidate Raphael Warnock beat Loeffler giving Democrats control of the Senate.

That election in Georgia was an excellent example of how athletes can cause real change. But, as we mark MLK Day on Monday, there are plenty of signs the struggle is far from over. We’ve just passed the first anniversary of the 6 January riots, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol. The subsequent investigation into the riots was a chance to address the extremism that is poisoning US society. But Republicans have attempted to block the inquiry, while politicians and the rightwing media who fanned the flames have not been held accountable.

We have also just watched the sentencing of the three white men who murdered a young Black man, Ahmaud Arbery, in cold blood while he was out jogging. And while justice was eventually served, we should remember that prosecutors failed to act until two months after the killing, when video of the murder was leaked, touching off international outcry.

It’s fair to say that America still has a long way to go until it is a safe and just place for all.

How the WNBA helped the Democrats take control of the US Senate

WNBA players caused real change last year in Georgia and their NBA peers made an impact after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. John Wall, Bradley Beal, Russell Westbrook, Jaylen Brown, Enes Kanter and the Ball brothers were among the dozens of NBA players who attended and spoke at Black Lives Matter marches. Carmelo Anthony, Dwayne Wade and Chris Paul founded the NBA Social Change Fund, which aims to support critical issues in the Black community.

But now it’s time to take it a step further. And the NBA could and should use the WNBA as a blueprint to follow. I have even identified a place where they could make an important impact: Texas. Lee Merritt, who served as one of the lawyers for the Arbery family, is running for attorney general in the second-most populous state in the United States. He would be the most powerful legal figure in a state where battles over racial justice, policing, immigration and voting rights are being fought every day.

In my new book, Police Brutality And White Supremacy: The Fight Against American Traditions, I interviewed politicians, athletes, activists and educators as well as victims (and their family members) of police brutality. Many of these people said fighting for laws to be changed is a vital part of changing the status quo. And while many have grown understandably tired of the voting process, local elections stand as one of the best methods to take a serious step in the right direction of justice.

And there is no doubt Merritt is committed to justice. “The reason I am moving into the political spectrum is … that we still exist in the deadliest police culture in the modern world. Other countries have done it better. Other countries that we compare ourselves with. We’re in last place in terms of policing our communities without resorting to violence,” he told me on my podcast, The Rematch.

“We need a better policy, and we’ve talked about it long enough. Now that we know the truth, let’s stop turning a blind eye to it and pursue policies that will actually lead to long term systemic change. And I believe that means having constitutional attorneys like myself assume the role of attorney general. And not only myself but Letitia James in New York, Keith Ellison in Minnesota, Kwame Raoul in Illinois.”

He also acknowledged the tremendous role the NBA could play in achieving real change.

“Members of the NBA have the opportunity, they have the position to really have an impact on how we pursue policy not only in the state of Texas but throughout the country and the voices of the NBA are critically important to that,” he said.

“We’re asking for the NBA, and everyone else with a platform to join us in this movement because we can really change this country for the better.”

He has a great point. Last year, WNBA players showed the power of athletes’ voices. Imagine what prominent Texas NBA players, executives and coaches such as Mark Cuban, Jason Kidd, Gregg Popovich, Tim Hardaway Jr and Luka Doncic (or indeed NFL players like Dallas Cowboys stars Ezekiel Elliott and Dak Prescott) could do if they endorsed Merritt?

Slogans on jerseys calling for justice are all well and good. But if NBA players could make a difference in the election for a role as important as Texas attorney general, it would be huge a boost in the fight for justice in the United States.

Lee Merritt: The NBA could impact public policy and elections

Civil Rights attorney Lee Merritt discusses the power and influence the NBA has, and can continue to have — if the NBA continues using its platform, voices and resources to fight for justice. 

Lee Merritt is one of the attorneys for Ahmaud Arbery’s family — a 25-year-old black man who was murdered while on a run near Brunswick, in Glynn County, Georgia. A verdict of life imprisonment was just announced in the case, in which three men were convicted of murdering Arbery. While Lee Merritt is definitely relieved about the verdict, we discuss the long road ahead to achieve justice and equality for all. Merritt is running for attorney general in Texas and I would love to see the NBA duplicate what the WNBA did, when they threw their support behind Raphael Warnock, an Atlanta-area pastor who was running as a Democrat at the time for (and would eventually win) one of Georgia’s seats in the U.S. Senate. 

This was a great discussion.

Etan Thomas: So this time last year, I interviewed a group of WNBA players, [including] Renee Montgomery and Elizabeth Williams, who both played for the Atlanta Dream at the time, [as well as] Tierra Ruffin-Pratt, Angel McCoughtry — and Eric Garner's daughter, Emerald. And we discussed what the WNBA did to galvanize support for Raphael Warnock, and ultimately get him in office and Kelly Loeffler out of office. And it was really amazing. Because for one, Raphael Warnock was polling at 9% before the WNBA got involved. And he won — in Georgia, of all places. 

So I want to see how we can galvanize the NBA to duplicate that with you, as you're running for attorney general in the state of Texas. So that's why I reached out to you to have this interview with you. I've been following you for a long time and I'm a big fan of the work that you do. And so, I'm going to send this interview to the NBA, to the NBA Social Change Fund.

Which, for those that aren't familiar, it was birthed out of the Bubble season. After the NBA players went on strike, after Jacob Blake was shot multiple times in broad daylight, in front of his children. The NBA Social Change Fund was formed by Chris Paul, Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade, and is aimed to support critical issues in the black community.

So that's why after speaking to Allisa Charles-Findley, who is Botham Jean's sister — and I actually interviewed her for my new book, “Police Brutality and White Supremacy: The Fight Against American Traditions.”

She was one of the people I interviewed, along with Atatiana Jefferson's family, who I know that you work with as well — so we came up with the idea of conducting this interview with you, to try to galvanize that support from the NBA. Some people are like, "Alright, you usually do basketball stuff. Why are you interviewing a politician right now?" But that's the reason why. So thank you for taking this time.

Lee Merritt: "Sure, I really appreciate that. During most of my career, I've enjoyed the support of the National Basketball Association. I can recall in 2017, a young man named Jordan Edwards was slain in Balch Springs, Texas. 

"It was in the middle of the NBA playoffs — and Steve Kerr, who had suffered family tragedy as well, identified with that family, reached out, invited them to the playoff games [and] got his brothers to take their mind off of it for a bit.

"I actually used to coach basketball myself. I was a coach down at South Atlanta High School. I coached Derrick Favors, I coached against Cousins and Walls* when they were high school students. And I enjoy a relationship with them today, continuing to give back to the community of Atlanta.

"And yeah, the names that you mentioned that you work with, Chris Paul has supported the work and the families I represent. Dwyane Wade and his wife, Gabrielle Union, [have] been major, major supporters over the course of my career.

"And, just as I transition away from representing one family at a time and start talking about representing larger groups of people and going towards policies, I certainly think the NBA can play a major role — in not only the success of the campaign, but championing some of those issues that we're fighting for on a case-by-case basis, and taking it to one of the biggest states in the country and really impacting national policy."

Etan: So, let me ask you to review some of the cases that you've worked with before, and the people that you've represented. We could start off with Ahmaud Arbery.

Merritt: "Sure. I came to represent the Ahmaud Arbery family before the video was released of his brutal slaying in South Georgia. Many [...] will recall that he was a South Georgia jogger. On February 23, 2020, he was targeted by three white men who have now been each convicted of murder, and are facing life sentences in the state of Georgia, as well as federal hate crime charges.

"I've also represented... Unfortunately, the list of families that I've represented is quite extensive. I represent over 67 families who have suffered misuse of force, that lost a loved one, as a result of the deadliest police culture in the world. Some of the names that your viewers may have heard of.

"You mentioned [...] Atatiana Jefferson. 

"Of course, that case is ongoing. Botham Jean, who was an accountant eating a bowl of ice cream in his own apartment complex. 

"Jemel Roberson was a security guard in Chicago. Had just stopped a mass shooting, and was shot in the back by a police officer who must have mistook him for a gunman. 

"Sean Monterrosa in California.

"But the bulk of my work has been in Texas. I represent Damian Daniels, a veteran shot to death in his home. 

"Pamela Turner in the Houston area. 

"And like I said, we could probably spend the rest of this podcast going through the list of names."

Etan: Wow! So now you're running for attorney general in Texas. And for those that don't know, what exactly are the responsibilities of an attorney general?

Merritt: "The attorney general of Texas, and an attorney general in any state, is the legal voice for the people. They're supposed to serve as the spokesperson for what justice is in a municipality. And so we've seen it, in cases like Breonna Taylor, where we had a really bad attorney general interfere with accountability in that case, in the form of Daniel Cameron. We've seen the opposite end of that spectrum with Keith Ellison and the work that he's done in Minnesota. Prosecuting the officers responsible for the death of George Floyd and, most recently, Daunte Wright.

"But even beyond the criminal justice aspect, the attorney general’s office, particularly in the state of Texas, impacts virtually every aspect of Texas life. So property taxes, school protection. And we've heard a lot recently in the news about the CRT [Critical Race Theory] scam, where they're trying to erase entire portions of our history in the name of not getting anyone upset.

"From the border crisis, to really economic empowerment in our schools. There's so many businesses that are attempting to get off the ground, but don't have access to the kind of governmental loans and support that our white counterparts do.

"All of those things run through the attorney general's office. It's a very, very influential office. More or less the second-in-command in the state of Texas."

Etan: Now, Ken Paxton, [is] who you would be running against, and who is the current attorney general — and has been since 2015. I want to talk about the stark differences between the two of you, because it's really night and day.

But I want to start off with this, because the Jan. 6 insurrection [anniversary] is upon us. And you know, I'm looking at him, looking at the footage, and I see him at a rally right before the insurrection, almost like leading the charge. Explain to me, let's start off with there, about the stark differences between you and Ken Paxton.

Merritt: "Well, there is a clear contrast. You know, Texas was in the national news because of [its] unique voter suppression laws. They passed some laws that would make it more difficult for the black and brown people in the state, people with disabilities and marginalized communities to vote.

"It was so upsetting that certain members of the Texas legislature left the state and went to DC — refused to participate in that session in order to fight for voting rights. Now, I was present with them. I thought that was a fight worth standing with people for, providing both legal advice and strategies, working with the labor community and others to take on voting issues in Texas.

"By contrast, the last sort of infamous trip of the attorney general, the current attorney general, to our nation's capital was on Jan. 6. And we don't know exactly what he did there, because he has not participated in an ongoing investigation in terms of his potential criminal liability for helping to incite a riot.

"But he was very publicly on camera, encouraging the soon-to-be riders and insurrectionists that the election was stolen, that they had a responsibility to fight. And he invoked the name of Texas when he did it. He said, "You all should fight, because Texans fight." And he laid out that he had fought to overturn the results of the free and fair election. And yeah, that's our top legal position in the state, advocating for the overthrow of our government."

---------------

We then went on to discuss particular differences between him and Ken Paxton such as his position on education, police reform, border, gun training before owning a gun, and we cleared up the misconceptions on CRT, being anti-police vs. anti-police brutality, Second Amendment rights, etc.

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Etan: So let's go to the NBA, and how important it is for the NBA to continue to promote, to continue to use their platforms, to be able to — I mean, this is the thing. It's important to do that part. But now we have to take it a step further.

And I think the NBA has been doing a great job of promoting, raising awareness. You saw it all especially during the Bubble season, after the entire country was promoting and demonstrating and protesting what happened with George Floyd, what happened with Breonna Taylor [and] Ahmaud Arbery.

You saw John Wall and Bradley Beal here in D.C. leading protests. You saw all the Ball brothers, you saw Russell Westbrook in L.A. You saw Jaylen Brown and Enes Kanter Freedom too, in Boston — of course everything that LeBron was always doing.

But now it's like, it needs to be a step further, like the next step. And I think that you, with what you are trying to implement in Texas as the attorney general, is that next step. Because you have to be able to have someone in place that's on the right side of wanting to be able to create something that functions properly. So just talk about that, how this is like the next step that should happen. Along with [...] raising awareness and protesting and everything like that.

Merritt: "Yeah. I can recall, we were in the middle of the NBA playoffs when Jacob Blake was repeatedly shot in his back by a Milwaukee police officer. And I was watching the game, and Chris Paul had just gone off, sort of a historic performance.

"And they interviewed him right after the game. And they said, 'You know, Chris, you were playing...' I think he was playing his old team, the Houston Rockets. He was with the Oklahoma City Thunder [...], where Derrick Favors is currently.

"And they said, 'Tell us about this performance against your old team. You had a chance to really show them that you still got it.' And he said, 'Yeah, I don't really care about that. That's cool. And that's what I'm paid to do. But a law enforcement officer in my community has just shot someone in their back several times. He was unarmed and nonviolent. Let's talk about that.'

"I think it's on the players to stand up like Chris Paul did, and like you said, like people have done, in a systemic way across the National Basketball Association — where the pundits and the media might tell you, 'Could you just shut up and dribble.' We've heard that refrain before.

"It's important for the players to say, "No, actually I won't. This is my community. What's going on in our community, it's urgent. It's a crisis. It's not something that we want to put off for a later conversation or for the offseason. But where it happens, I'm going to stand up to it. And I will get involved in elections. And I will use my resources and time and attention to shine a light on these issues that must be addressed."

Etan: You know, it's interesting. In my book, “We Matter: Athletes and Activism” I interviewed Jahvaris Fulton, who is Trayvon Martin's brother. And in the interview, he told me how — and when he said this, it kind of threw me,  because I didn't expect him to say it — he said that if it weren't for NBA players and celebrities and everybody like that, talking about his brother, he didn't think that anybody would know his name. And I was like, "Wow, that's kind of strong. Why do you say that?"

So then he explained to me how, when Trayvon Martin was first killed, his family was trying to get the local news people to cover it and they didn't want to cover it. They said, "Okay, another young black man was killed. That's not newsworthy."

And I was like, "That's what they told you?" He said, "Yeah," he was like, "We don't have no evidence. We don't have no video of it. Just your word saying that he [was] killed, that's not newsworthy." And he gave a shout-out to Roland Martin and some of the black news people, who were covering it. But he said, "But no local news people wanted to cover it."

So then he said, "But then, LeBron James started talking about it. And Dwyane Wade started talking about it. And then the entire Miami Heat team posed in the hoodies." So then he said, "So then you had everybody like, 'Okay, what is this that LeBron James is discussing? And why is Dwyane Wade feeling so passionate about this, and talking about his kids, and about this case?' Then everybody started to gravitate towards it and cover it and everything like that."

But he said [...] before, they couldn't get anybody to cover it. And that's just... It's unfortunate that it is that way, because people should have a regard for human life anyway, without an athlete having to speak about it. However, the athlete speaking about it is what drew the attention — and that just shows where athletes have to continue to do that, continue to use your voice and your platform to be able to speak to these causes.

And also to take it a step further by having laws being changed, and people who are in positions to fight for laws being changed, like [you are]. You know what I mean? And running for attorney general — [who] are in positions to actually implement some things so these things don't just continue to keep happening.

Merritt: "Yeah. I can remember in 2016, we saw two high-profile officer-involved shootings back-to-back, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. It was the same weekend, and it was almost like a dark cloud being hanged over impacted communities. And if you and I saw each other on the street, we would make eye contact and say, 'You know, man, this is becoming too much.'

"Dallas had a protest — I was living in Dallas at the time. And they had a protest downtown, where we marched and we discussed what happened, and started to talk about organizing police reform. And at the end of that protest, a vigilante named Micah Xavier Johnson, targeted law enforcement officers and shot five police officers and a couple of civilians as well. And you could imagine the national outcry about Black Lives Matter, and how they put law enforcement lives at risk.

"And everyone began to ignore the fact that people were there for protesting peacefully about police violence — that was back-to-back and overwhelming. And while it was a tragedy for our entire community that law enforcement officers were targeted by Mr. Johnson, there was also an ongoing crisis in our community, that was the reason that all those people had gathered and made targets of themselves.

"And it was Dwyane Wade. LeBron was still, I think, in 2016, with the Miami Heat. So it was Wade and LeBron who came forward at the ESPY Awards that weekend and re-centered the conversation. And said, 'That's terrible what happened in Dallas, and we back the blue. We stand for the law enforcement officers.'

“But understand that our community is also under attack. And it's two sides of the same coin. We don't tolerate violence directed at law enforcement officers. And we cannot continue to tolerate violence directed at our community.

And it saved the national conversation so that we could get back to what had brought us all there in the first place. And so, yeah, members of the NBA have the opportunity, in [the] state of Texas, but [also] throughout the country, the voices of the NBA are critically important to that."

Orange alumni react to Syracuse-Georgetown game

Saturday afternoon, I had a great time at the Syracuse-Georgetown men's basketball game. It was great to see all the alumni in the house from both schools. I took pictures with Rony Seikaly, Dikembe Mutumbo, Patrick Ewing and Louis Orr, who was my assistant coach at Syracuse.

The Syracuse fans all showed love. (We have the best fans in college basketball by the way.) This rivalry has so much history, and although Georgetown unfortunately came out with the win, I had an overall wonderful time watching the game.

I reached out to some Syracuse alumni — Lazarus Sims, Arinze Onuaku, Ryan Blackwell and Preston Shumpert — to get reactions after the two-game, old-Big East matchups against Villanova and Georgetown. It still pains me that we are no longer in the Big East, and yes, I am still holding out hope that, one day, we will return to the conference we belong.

Here is what all four Orange alum had to say on the team.

Lazarus Sims 

Etan Thomas: How do you think we played against Villanova and Georgetown? 

Lazarus Sims: "They were both great games, but we didn’t have a consistent true point guard on the floor who put everyone in the right position. I’ll go back to when they won the championship in '03. Many people will say it was 'Melo [Anthony], it was Gerry [McNamara] — but really if you go back and watch the tournament, when they played their best, it was Billy Edelin who was the key. He put Gerry in his right position, the 2. In contrast to this team, against Villanova and Georgetown, when they put Symir [Torrence] in — who is a pass first point guard — it puts your shooters and your scorers in the right position. It puts Buddy [Boeheim] at the 3. It puts Joe Girard at the 2, and allows them to do what they do best. What we’re doing is forcing the 2-guard into [being] a point guard, so the flow isn’t there. It lasts for awhile, but it’s not sustainable."

Etan: I couldn’t agree more, and I like Symir. It’s crazy, I was watching [Seton Hall guard and 'Cuse transfer] Kadary Richmond play against Rutgers. And the way he was running the team, [he] put everyone in their positions first, then it opened it up for him especially in the first half.... then the second half, he focused on putting everyone in their positions. He should be in a Syracuse uniform. But I see him how I see Symir in [that] we need what he brings to the team and he needs to play more. What do you think? 

Sims: "Definitely, and you have to let him play through certain mistakes like you do with Joe [Girard]. We need what he does. The offense flows better with a Symir-type of point guard running the team. That’s no knock on Girard, it’s just not playing him to his strength."

Etan: Symir should be playing more, the same way Kadary should’ve been playing more last year.

Sims: You’ll get no argument from me. 

Etan: I saw the press conference after the Georgetown game, and Coach [Jim] Boeheim was saying the guys are worn down and they’re tired. And I’m thinking 'Well, you got guys on the bench ready to go.' The starters don’t have to play ironman minutes.

Sims: "You saw with Symir, he got in [the game] at Georgetown. [He] made one mistake, and you didn’t see him anymore for the rest of the game. It’s hard to play like that. But we need what he brings, so we need to let him play through mistakes like we do the starters. I mean, let’s be honest, sometimes Girard struggles to get the ball up the floor because that’s not his strength. Well, we have someone on the bench whose strength that is, just like we did last year with Kadary. We gotta play guys to their strengths."

Arinze Onuaku 

Arinze Onuaku: "It’s totally different from when we were there because obviously, our responsibility was solely the paint area, so it’s odd seeing Jesse Edwards run from corner-to-corner. I know they switched the defense to the 1-3-1 [zone] at times and we know it’s the bottom man’s job to run corner-to-corner, but to have Jesse be that person, it does take him out of rebounding position."

Etan Thomas: And that’s the part that I question. I can see [that] if we had Quincy Guerrier still, but it’s seems like quite a bit to ask of the Boeheims to be the ones to crash the boards, but that’s our strategy. And we’ve been getting beaten pretty badly on the offensive rebounds, which is one of the reasons why I’m not the biggest fan of that strategy.

Onuaku: "Yeah, for sure and [Jesse] is exerting a lot of energy sprinting from corner-to-corner, three-point line to three-point line. That’s a lot to ask of the big man."

Etan: Now, I would like to see him get the ball more, and I feel he has earned the right to get the ball more with the way he has been converting. I want them to play inside-out, and that may be a lot to ask, but the entire half shouldn’t go by and he only gets the ball two times. That’s ridiculous.

Onuaku: "I agree. Any good team has to have balance, and he has been doing a much better job of finishing as well. I think it may take guys a little more time to trust him. He started off slow last year, and this year, so that trust factor from the guards is a factor. But as he continues to improve, I would expect that trust factor to increase."

Etan: But my problem with the trust issue is, they can jack up three-pointers and they can brick 90% of them and nobody loses trust in them. The big men get two or maybe three opportunities, and if you don’t convert or catch their pass, they don’t trust you?

Onuaku: "Yeah, the game is always gonna be unbalanced for big men. Jesse is going to have to speak up more, and as he produces more, they will have no choice but to give him the ball."

Etan: Yeah, that’s the story of being a big man. It was like that when I played and when you played. But that drag screen he does in early offense situation and [when] he rolls, I think that’s an easy high pass to him and he finishes. They just do that a few times every half. 

Onuaku: "I agree, and he has shown that he can catch it off the run and he does a great job of keeping the ball high and he has been scoring. So you’re right — they should definitely utilize him much more. And shout out to Frank Anselem, who came in and really attacked the rim and provided a spark off the bench. He’s someone we’re definitely going to need him down the stretch."

Ryan Blackwell 

Etan Thomas: You watched both the Villanova game and the Georgetown game. What was your assessment? 

Ryan Blackwell: "The Villanova game, we were right with them the first half. We were making shots, being aggressive, playing defense. Then the second half, it seemed like we just ran out of gas. Same thing with Georgetown; we were up [by] 10 at half, and we let them back in it. We’re gonna have to shoot lights out to win games. I know Buddy was struggling a little, but if he’s off and we’re gonna rely on Jimmy Boeheim to post-up or go 1-on-1 or Joe Girard to go 1-on-1, it’s gonna be tough. And if we’re not gonna get much from the bench... I mean, the first half against Georgetown we got good production, but [in] the second half, for whatever reason, the production just wasn’t there. Coach felt more comfortable going with his starters. And we faltered at the end, and that was unfortunate because it was a very winnable game."

Etan: I heard Coach Boeheim at the press conference say that the guys looked tired and worn down, but then I’m looking at the bench and they look pretty fresh to me. So I’m thinking, well coach, there’s a remedy for that. If the guys are tired and their shots [are] not falling, [they're] not closing out on defense, not getting back in transition, not rebounding, whatever — you have people on your bench who can help.

Blackwell: "You and I both know, coach relies heavily on his starters and that’s never going to change. And we know Benny Williams is extremely talented, but for whatever reason, he’s not getting the minutes. Yes, he’s young and he’s a rookie, and with coach, he has a formula that he has always stuck to. But yeah, it’s gonna be a real struggle for our starters to carry the full load."

Etan: I’m at the Georgetown game — you can see it better in person — and I saw Georgetown literally wearing our guys down. And then, utilizing their bench and getting fresh legs in there to wear our guys down even more. Aminu Mohammed, who is just a freshman, was a holy terror against us. And he would get a break, then come back in fresh and terrorize us some more. I mean, you can’t be surprised if guys are tired if they are playing ironman minutes, right? 

Blackwell: "Yeah, it’s tough. And yes, Buddy has improved so much, but he is being asked to do so much and carry the load offensively. And you’re right, it’s gonna wear on them as we get into the season. And you’re right, Georgetown was getting in our shorts and wearing us down. I can’t disagree with anything you said. And I worry about when we get into conference play, because it’s not going to get any easier for us at all. And it’s tough to knock down shots when you’re worn down, no matter how great of a shooter you are, and we have great shooters. But yeah, you’re right — hard to shoot threes when you’re worn down. We may need to look to incorporate some other options and alternatives to go along with that."

Preston Shumpert 

Etan Thomas: The secret’s out now with Buddy. Everyone knows he can shoot, and teams are devising schemes to make sure he doesn’t get open shots. What would be your advice to him, as the elite shooter you were, as to how he can get open and get his shot off?

Preston Shumpert: "It’s so different once you’re on the other team’s scouting report. It’s great that he had the success he had last season, but now, like you said, teams are going to try to come up with a game plan to stop you from doing what you do best, which in Buddy’s case, is knocking down shots. He’s been doing a good job of moving without the ball; he just has to do more of it. Be a little more creative on getting open and what he does once he catches the ball."

Etan: You said move without the ball, so let’s talk specifics. Do you mean off screens? Running the baseline?

Shumpert: "I think it’s a combination of both. He’s getting pin-down screens and curls. I just think he needs to stay consistent with it and know he’s going to be hounded and [that] guys are gonna be on him, because he’s an elite shooter. But at the same time, if he comes off a screen and two guys jump him, it’s the point guard’s job to find the open man. Once you start taking advantage of those situations, then you will be more open. But he’s gonna have to fade, curl, post up — he’s gonna have to do a lot of different things to get his shot off, and that’s really a compliment to him because of how good of a shooter he is. On every scouting report, I’m sure it says, 'No open shots for him.'"

Etan: That’s definitely true. What is the best way to come out of a slump? With shooters, you’re going to go through times where the ball just doesn’t go in the hole. What would your advice be to Buddy or Cole [Swider] when they are not shooting well? 

Shumpert: "My favorite quote is, 'Shoot when you’re making it, and shoot when you’re missing it.' You've gotta continue to be aggressive and have confidence in your shot. Now, your shot selection is definitely important, but if it’s a wide open shot, and that’s your shot, fire that 'thang up. That’s what you do. If you’re a shooter, you've gotta shoot the ball. Shoot 'til you make it, shoot 'til you miss. That’s a shooter’s mentality. No conscience."

Etan: One thing that you started to develop through your years was the one-dribble, two-dribble pull-ups because they were playing you so tight for the three-point shot, and Buddy has been doing good with that. Do you think he should keep doing that more especially if the outside shot isn’t falling? 

Shumpert: "Definitely, that’s what I meant by being a little more creative and taking what they’re giving you. Like you said, guys are gonna be pressing up on you and running out on you. They’re not going to let you get a free look. So that’s when you go to the pump fake, one-dribble, two-dribble pull-up. But another thing — which I’m sure you’re gonna like this — throw it up to the big [man] or give him that little pocket pass, when they hedge on him or after he sets the pick a little more often, and let the big [man] hammer a few down and get all riled up like you used to. It will open you up more. And the more you involve the big man, the better your screens will be. The big man will have you wide open if you treat him right. I learned that myself when we played together. Keep the big man happy, and he’ll rebound better, block shots better and work harder to get you open, and will roll harder which will ultimately help everyone."

Etan: That should be on the wall in every locker room (laughs).

Fox News and the right will praise unvaccinated NBA players … then use them

In an open letter to Jonathan Isaac, I warn him about how certain sections of America will co-opt him for their own ends

Dear Jonathan,

Let me first say that I have a tremendous amount of respect for you, and not just because, as a former NBA player myself, I appreciate the hard work and skill it takes to succeed in the league.

My admiration for you extends off the court too. I’ve watched videos of you preaching and, as a fellow Christian, I was blown away. You are eloquent, your delivery is exquisite, you appear humble, knowledgeable, and I can see your passion and sincerity. To be so young and walking in your purpose is commendable.

You also possess courage to stand up for your convictions. Although I completely disagree with your perception, I respect that you had the fortitude to take the unpopular stance and oppose your peers. That came about when you decided not to wear a Black Lives Matter shirt alongside your Orlando Magic teammates, who took a knee during the national anthem following the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. You said you have a different interpretation of what the message meant.

Given that my book We Matter explored the subject of athletes and activism, I was invited on to numerous shows in order to criticize your choice, but I always declined. It would be hypocritical of me to encourage players to stand up for what they believe in and then bash them for doing so when their opinions happen to differ from mine. I can disagree with you without attempting to discredit or silence you, but that’s not what most networks are interested in.

Which brings me to the current topic of the Covid-19 vaccine and NBA players. There is already considerable misrepresentation on the topic before we even discuss your specific case. There has been widespread condemnation over the league’s record on vaccinations because of a few high-profile holdouts such as yourself, Kyrie Irving, Bradley Beal and Michael Porter Jr. There has even been ridicule of LeBron (who has been vaccinated) but is unwilling to chastise players who have not.

But around 95% of NBA players have had at least one dose of the vaccine, which means that on average, only one player per team is unvaccinated. That is a much higher rate of vaccination than those in similar age groups to NBA players: 64.7% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 have had at least one dose and 67.9% of those between 25 and 39.

Meanwhile, vaccination rates among the majority of police departments across the country remain relatively low. The New York and Los Angeles Police Departments, who have many, many more interactions with the public than NBA players are far lower. As of last Wednesday, the NYPD’s vaccination rate was 68% and the LAPD’s was 65%. And yet, based on the media outrage, you would believe that two dozen or so unvaccinated NBA players are a bigger danger to America than the thousands of police officers who encounter the public on a day to day basis, often maskless, and have yet to get the shot. It is hypocritical to hold athletes to a higher standard than we do law enforcement. But this is the age we are living in.

Currently, I see you being misrepresented by some in the media and I agree with you when you said that “true journalism is dying”. An article in Rolling Stone implied you turned against vaccines after “watching Donald Trump’s press conferences” something that you have said is untrue. Mischaracterizing athletes for the sole purpose of using that fabrication to then discredit them is a tactic parts of the media use far too often.

You – and some other vaccine hesitant players – have clearly stated that you are not against vaccinations. More importantly you have not discouraged others to get them. Instead, you’ve articulated that you are personally “uncomfortable with getting the vaccine at this time”. While we hold different opinions on the vaccine, I’m not going to demean, ridicule or purposely misrepresent you because of them. If I did that, I would be as bad as the hypocritical right-wing media, Donald Trump and his followers who purposely misrepresented Colin Kaepernick’s reasons for taking a knee during the national anthem (for the record, I’m not comparing you to Colin Kaepernick, but the misrepresentation of your stance does seem to have a striking similarity.)

The same people who once told all athletes to “shut up and dribble” are now praising you for expressing your hesitancy in taking the vaccine, and are attempting to co-opt your uncertainty to promote their agenda – a push against vaccine mandates – which was the sole reason Fox News invited you to appear.

Getting the support of Fox News, Trump supporters and Texas senator Ted Cruz of all people should ring alarm bells. Cruz has castigated NBA players for his entire career for speaking out, but he now tweets that “he stands” with players like yourself who are unvaccinated. He even called LeBron “courageous” for saying vaccination is a personal choice, which is laughable given Cruz’s history of antagonism with him. Cruz clearly believes LeBron is only “courageous” when he agrees with him. That’s the epitome of hypocrisy.

And just as Cruz now embraces LeBron, and Donald Trump Jr praises Kyrie, the same crowd who shouted from the mountaintops that athletes should “stick to sports” are now wrapping their arms around you and holding you up as one of the “good ones”.

They would love to make you into the next Herschel Walker, someone who repeats the Fox News talking points and gets invited to speak at the Republican National Convention. Or reward you like a Jason Whitlock, Sage Steele or Stacey Dash, with pats on the head in return for being the Black face who agrees with them. Someone they can point at to prove they are not racist.

And make no mistake: they will compliment you on how well you speak, and proclaim what a great example you are for your community. But as soon as you stray from their script, you will be cast away quicker than Donald Trump discarded Omarosa.

I’m not telling you what to believe. I don’t feel you’re “uneducated”. The purpose of this letter is to warn you to be very leery of those who are currently applauding you. Pay close attention to how they really feel about our people and our community. They may cloak their agendas in Christianity and scripture but let’s be clear, their religion is white supremacy – and that’s far from anything remotely Christlike.

Sincerely,

Etan Thomas

Did Enes Kanter Freedom really hop the Fox News ‘shut up and dribble’ bandwagon? I asked him

Enes Kanter Freedom has had an intriguing basketball career. He was barred from playing college basketball at the University of Kentucky because he had received benefits from his time playing professional basketball in Turkey as a teenager. And since being drafted as the No 3 overall pick in the 2011 draft, he has played for five different NBAteams and is currently in his second spell with the Boston Celtics.

But it is off the court where Freedom has attracted the most attention. He has spoken out on human rights violations both in China and Turkey, where he grew up. His criticism of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, led to reprisals against his family and Freedom’s Turkish passport being cancelled. More recently, he has taken aim at LeBron James for his sponsorship deal with Nike and the company’s alleged ties to forced labor in China. Then last month, he became a US citizen and legally changed his name from Enes Kanter to Enes Kanter Freedom.

Freedom’s political activity down the years went mostly unnoticed to most of America. If there was a reaction, it was generally one of support across the political spectrum. The right welcomed his attacks on one of their foes, Communist China, while liberals admired his fight against Erdoğan, a leader in the mold of Trump.

That all changed when Freedom went on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight. He appeared to attack players like LeBron, Colin Kaepernick and the entire new generation of athlete activists who have spoken out about human rights violations in the United States: state-sanctioned violence including the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Terence Crutcher, Atatiana Jefferson, Botham Jean, Sean Monterrosa, Willie McCoy, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and many others. “I feel like they should just keep their mouth shut and stop criticizing the greatest nation in the world and they should focus on their freedoms and their human rights and democracy,” Kanter told Carlson, who couldn’t hide his exuberance that Freedom took the bait.

The backlash was swift. In the Atlantic Jemele Hill wrote that “the subtext of Carlson’s question was obvious: Most NBA players are Black, and Carlson frequently portrays people of color who seek political and social change as ungrateful and unpatriotic.” In the Nation, Dave Zirin said that Carlson “looked like a rosy-cheeked, spoiled child under the Christmas tree. For him, having Enes attack powerful outspoken Black people must feel like getting the gift topping his list for Santa.”

I understand the points Hill and Zirin made and agree with much of what they say. And while I’m aware of Maya Angelou’s quote that “when people show you who they are, believe them the first time”, I didn’t believe the Carlson interview was indicative of what Freedom really feels.

Many on the left have begun to undermine the altruism of Freedom’s endeavors or ridicule his playing career (a tactic straight out of the right’s playbook when they disagree with an athlete). So I reached out to him to give him an opportunity to clarify or double down on what he told Carlson.

We started off by talking about his statement on Carlson’s show that players should appreciate the freedoms they have in America compared to countries like China and Turkey and “stop criticizing the greatest nation in the world”. Was he effectively using a familiar trope of the right: that players like LeBron should shut up and dribble?

“What I meant was, where I’m coming from, Turkey is a brutal dictatorship,” Freedom told me. “We have no freedom of speech, religion or expression. We have no democracy. Turkey could have been a branch of Islam in the west, but just because of all the stuff that’s happen ... it’s impossible.

“So what I meant was, people should feel lucky and blessed to be in this situation [in America]. And obviously there are many issues in America. I’m definitely not denying it. I recognize many of them and racism is definitely at top of the list. But what I meant was at least, they’re not in a country like Turkey, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela or Belarus.”

That, however, does not mean Freedom believes players in America should stay silent about problems in this country. “Obviously I stand for freedom and I would never, ever tell an athlete or not just an athlete, a human being or a celebrity to not use their platform. Because obviously the greatest thing we have is freedom of speech,” he said.

Freedom did, however, fall into Carlson’s trap. Tuckums (as MSNBC’s Joy Reid calls him) was actually smiling as Freedom appeared to endorse Carlson’s view that anyone who criticizes America is an enemy of America. During our conversation Freedom acknowledged that his words had been twisted.

“I saw some of the op-eds, and some of the interviews, and some of the comments and so many people didn’t understand what I was trying to say,” he said. “And I don’t judge them because obviously somebody used my words ... and some of the words that I used could be twisted or stretched. And I have to be more careful with my words.”

I am glad that I sat down with Enes Kanter Freedom and gave him the opportunity to clarify his statements. But there’s no question Tucker Carlson knew exactly what he was doing and his agenda was clear: Get Enes Kanter Freedom on while he is excited about becoming a US citizen and coax him into criticizing other Black athletes who aren’t (in his eyes) as grateful and thankful to be in America as they should be, who have the audacity to criticize America and call out police brutality and white supremacy. Fox News only wants to continue their mantra that athletes (at least the ones who don’t fall in line with their agenda) should shut up and dribble, and not dare to criticize the good ol’ USA.

Hopefully, this is a learning experience for Freedom and he won’t allow himself to be played by the likes of Fox News again. They do not care about human rights in China or Turkey. They are only out to use him as a pawn.

• You can listen Thomas’s full interview with Enes Kanter Freedom here

Q&A: Enes Kanter Freedom on U.S. citizenship, Fox interview, LeBron

Earlier this week, BasketballNews.com's Etan Thomas hosted his latest episode of "The Rematch" and brought on Boston Celtics big man and recently-naturalized American citizen, Enes Kanter Freedom.

The two spoke on a number of topics, including Freedom's grateful attitude to be a U.S. citizen, he and his family's issues with the Turkish government, his recent viral interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, his true feelings toward LeBron James and how he's been educated on the Black Lives Matter movement by Jaylen Brown and his teammates.

Here is the full transcript of the conversation:

Etan Thomas: You’re now an American citizen. So, tell me how it feels?

Enes Kanter Freedom: "It feels amazing. Obviously, the last six years [have] been rough, you know. Just because of what I’m going through, [it] made this citizenship so special because obviously some of the things I talk about... You know, my name was on [the] INTERPOL list and the Turkish government wrote my passport, and just the last six, seven years I was pretty much stateless. I didn’t have any place to call home, so that’s why, to me, that moment was very emotional to me and I was speechless."

Etan Thomas: Now, explain a little bit more in detail about what happened to you in Turkey when you criticized the president, [Recep Tayyip Erdogan], because a lot of people still don’t know a lot of the details. So, just explained what happened.

Enes Kanter Freedom: "You know, what happened back in 2013 was a corruption scandal that happened. President Erdogan and his family were involved in it. I remember when I first said something about it, and obviously because of the NBA platform, it became viral here in the United States and Turkey. Obviously, you know, after that I started to pay more and more attention every day. I remember my teammates were just going out and hanging out and all that stuff. I was going back home to study. Study about the Middle East, study about the relationship between America and Turkey and stuff.

"For me, it was important to be the voice of people over there, and obviously the stuff I talked about affected me and my family. My dad was a genetic professor and he got fired from his job. My sister went to medical school for six years and she still can’t find a job. My little brother was playing basketball and got kicked off every team. [My family was] getting affected so much, they had to put a statement out there saying they are disowning Enes. After that, it was a bit rough.

"I remember going to practice that day, and it was definitely one of the hardest days in my life. After that, the Turkish government didn’t believe that [my family disowned me]; they sent police to my house in Turkey and raided my whole house. They took every electronics away, phones, computers, laptops, because they wanted to see if I was in contact with my family or not. And if they would’ve seen one piece of evidence, they [would] be all in jail — which, they already took my dad to jail for a while, but we put so much pressure [on the situation] from here to Turkey, they let him go."

Etan Thomas: For months, you have stood pretty much unafraid to criticize the Chinese government for it’s many human rights violations. Whether it’s their treatment of the Tibetans, the people of Hong Kong, the Uighurs. And it’s interesting with the Uighurs — and reportedly by numerous fact-tested, fact-verified reports, including Amnesty International to have been subjected to concentration camps, torture and attempts to try to erase their entire culture. Can you go into more detail about that?

Enes Kanter Freedom: "I remember doing a basketball camp and I was signing autographs for kids. And while I was signing, one of the parents turned around and said, 'How can you call yourself a human rights activist when your Muslim brothers and sisters are in pretty much genocide in China. And you’re still using your platform and focusing on only one region?' And I was shocked. I turned back to that parent and said, 'I’m going to get back to you. I promise.' And I started to learn about China using their power to abuse many countries around — like Tibetan, even Mongolians, Taiwanese people, Hong Kongers and stuff.

"What they were going through definitely broke my heart, but I was like, I’m not just going to watch YouTube clips and decide which side is right or wrong. I actually wanted to sit down and have some conversations with the survivors. So, I sat down with some of the survivors, concentration camp survivors, and started to talk about what they’re going through. And my heart just shattered. I remember talking to this woman, and she was telling me about how she was gang raped every day and she was getting tortured. And she was just not one; there were millions of people. I was like. I cannot just remain this [silent], I have to do something about this."

Etan Thomas: Your appearance on Tucker Carlson has garnered a strong response. Jemele Hill wrote an article on you in the Atlantic, Dave Zirin wrote one on The Nation, Candace Buckner on the Washington Post, Stephen Knox from Deadspin, Rick Strom did a whole segment from the Young Turks. And it was all centered around the interview you did with Tucker Carlson. Did you read some of the articles and some of the coverage?

Enes Kanter Freedom: "I did see it, for sure. I even sat down with some of my teammates and had a conversation about it. Let me just explain this to you. I was actually talking to one of my teammates about it. We sat down and he asked me about the segment I’ve done and what I said. And what I told him was, obviously there’s human rights violations not just happening in Turkey, not just in China, but all over the world. Obviously, America has it’s own problems as well. But where I’m coming from [in] the Middle East, especially Turkey, just because you’re outspoken, they put your dad in jail and pretty much torture [him]. Just because you’re outspoken, I haven’t seen my family since 2015 and haven’t even talked to them in years. Where I’m coming from, just because you liked someone’s Twitter post or Facebook post that a person you know is criticizing the government, you could be in jail.

"So, what I meant in that segment, obviously America has their own problems every knows that — but people should feel very lucky and blessed to be in this situation. If you go overseas, especially where I grew up, or the Middle East like Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Venezuela, Belarus, I can go on and on... but trust me, you don’t want to associate with any of the governments over there because it’s just brutal dictatorship. What I meant [is], at least in America, you have checks and balances, you have rules and laws. Obviously, there are problems happening in America, but people should feel lucky because people have freedom of speech, religion and expression, and there is a democracy."

Etan Thomas goes on for nearly three minutes about how Tucker Carlson appeared to frame Enes Kanter Freedom in a certain way to criticize Black athletes speaking out. However, Etan doesn’t believe Freedom felt the way Carlson did. Freedom met Etan’s daughter, and she spotted him at a Black Lives Matter protest. Etan gives Freedom the floor to explain what he meant to say during the Carlson interview.

Enes Kanter Freedom: "I remember the first time when Black Lives Matter protests were happening. I was in Chicago, and when I heard that for the first time, we drove with my manager over 10 hours to Boston because I wanted to be with my city during those times. I protested peacefully with my city, and if you look — and I’m not saying this to brag about myself — but I was the third one in the whole league [that] went out there and protested because yes, of course, I 100 percent believe Black Lives Matter. What happened two years ago, my heart just shattered. And I remember during the [Orlando] Bubble, that was one of our biggest goals together — to first off, bring awareness of what’s going on and second, to educate the young generation; because if we can educate our younger generation, we’re not going to have the problems that we’re facing right now. I sat down with my teammates like Jaylen Brown, Tacko Fall and many other athletes to come together and brainstorm about what we can do to bring more awareness, about how we can use our platform to educate people.

"I said this from the beginning: I don’t have a side. I’m not a Republican, I’m not a Democrat. Whenever I do some kind of work in congress — when I put a bill out there about political prisoners in Turkey, or whenever I put a bill out there about all the human rights violations that are happening in the Middle East — I obviously have to work with both sides. I was even explaining this to one of my teammates. I’m like, 'I understand you guys have seen me with so many different kinds of people, but you guys need to understand I do a lot of work for those people to free all those political prisoners in prison right now who are getting tortured and raped.' Because the stronger the bill is, the more effective it’s going to be.

"So, I do work with a lot of people from both sides, and every time I talk to people, I tell them: 'I don’t do politics, I hate politics. I do human rights.' There’s a big difference between the two lines. To me, I don’t care about the politics side. Obviously, America is having so [many] problems right now. One side is attacking the other side, and one side is attacking the other side. But the main goal should be how [we can] make this country better together, what can I do to help those people over there? And that’s why I work with both sides."

Etan Thomas: I understand that, and that’s definitely a good point. Again, we know Tucker Carlson and Fox News. They have an agenda, and that agenda was very apparent during your interview. You were talking about how happy you were to be an American, and you talked about everything you just said now — how it is in Turkey and the story about your teammate that was talking about the president and you were like you can’t do that because you’ll go to jail. But Tucker knew where you were coming from; he kinda wanted to use that to get you to join the chorus of bashing Black athletes in particular, and he used a lot of distinct language in what he was saying.

I’m looking at you and I’m like, 'I don’t think he sees what Tucker is doing.' And that’s the problem when you go on their programs; you have to know what their agendas are. It seemed like what he was trying to pull out of you and to try to lead you to is: 'You’re so grateful to be here, you’re so thankful to be here, and those Black athletes they’re not thankful, they’re not grateful.' You were just in your element of saying, yes I’m happy to be here. But he tried to use that to side swipe, which is what their normal agenda is to attack "the ungrateful Black athlete that’s speaking out against police brutality" and things of that nature.

Enes Kanter Freedom: "Whenever I talk about it was never about Black or white athletes, or red or purple athletes. It was never about a color. I even had a conversation with many of my teammates, and a thing people don’t understand is that many of the Black athletes in the league are telling me to call out these people and [those] people. Not many people know that. They are the ones telling me to call out the hypocrisies of LeBron James, the hypocrisies of Michael Jordan, but they are the ones actually sending me talking points about you can’t say this, you can’t say that. I remember having one conversation with one of them, and he’s like, 'Listen, these teams got us. We cannot talk, but you’re talking and you’re already out there, so you might as well just say this and say that.' I don’t follow them blindly. I actually do research and if I believe it, I’ll go out there and say it. So, not many people know about it, but many Black athletes in the league are the ones reaching out to me saying you should talk about this and that."

Etan Thomas: I understand that, but there was one thing in particular you said in the interview that raised a lot of eyebrows, and I want you to clarify this part if you could. You started off by saying people should be lucky and blessed to live in America. They love to criticize it, but if they lived in somewhere else, they would appreciate the freedoms they have here. And I get that because. in Turkey, you’ll get put in jail for criticizing the president. But then you went a little further and said they should keep their mouths shut and stop criticizing the greatest nation in the world, and they should focus on their freedoms, human rights and democracy. And Tucker Carlson was actually smiling while you said it because he knew he got you to say what he was trying to get you to say that falls into their narrative. I don’t believe you meant for athletes to 'shut up and dribble' because that’s what Tucker Carlson was leaning to.

Enes Kanter Freedom: "Let me just make it very clear: I stand for freedom, and I would never tell a human being or celebrity to not use their platform because obviously, the greatest thing we have is freedom of speech, and the other amazing thing we have is the platform. The last two years, what I’ve been talking about is how can we use our platform to educate people. So, to me, that was very important. AndI was telling one of my teammates, what I meant by it is where I’m coming from, Turkey, is a brutal dictatorship. We have no freedom of speech, religion, no expression, and we have no democracy. Turkey could have been a bridge of Islam and [the] west, but just because of all the stuff happening, it’s impossible.

"So, what I meant by it [is] people should feel lucky and blessed to be in this situation. And obviously, there are many issues happening in America; I’m not denying it. I recognize many of it, and racism is definitely at the top of the list. But, what I meant by it is people should feel lucky [that] at least they’re not in a country like Turkey, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Belarus and many other countries. Thank you for asking that because I wanted to make that very clear.

Etan Thomas: That’s what I tweeted out, 'I don’t think [Enes] means what you’re thinking he meant.'

Enes Kanter Freedom: "Definitely not. If I said that, it would go against everything I stand for. I would never ever tell a human being to shut up and don’t talk about this or don’t criticize that. I mean, the problem is going to [be solved] by first recognizing the problem, and then after that, talking about it, criticizing it and try to find a solution. So, I would never tell a person to shut up and not say a word."

Etan Thomas: I want to ask you about working with LeBron James under a common goal and if that’s something you want to do. Because that’s what I interpret your overall goal is, that you want him to utilize his voice and his platform much like Craig Hodges wanted Michael Jordan to utilize his voice and his platform. Once again, correct me if I’m wrong.

Enes Kanter Freedom: "Let me just start with this, and obviously LeBron has the biggest platform of us all. It really broke my heart when he couldn’t say anything two years ago when Daryl Morey tweeted something about [China]. Obviously it broke my heart, but then after that, I have nothing against or personal against LeBron. I do recognize he’s maybe one of the best players to ever play the game. Maybe top-three. I would put him in my top-three, so obviously on the court, he’s a nightmare. And it’s not just about LeBron, but it’s about all the people who are making profit out of it. So, the resources are there and people know what’s going on, and I feel like before these athletes and not just LeBron, it could be Cristiano Ronaldo or this or that. Before they put their signature on a paper, they should research what kind of companies they’re signing with, and obviously, Nike is the biggest sponsor of the NBA.

"When I researched, I knew a little bit, but when I researched more and more about the slave laborers, the sweat shops and how Nike is pretty much using modern-day slavery over there in China... I just couldn’t believe it. First of all, I was ashamed for wearing Nike the last whatever [amount of] years. I was like, I have to bring a light — even though Nike is the biggest sponsor of the NBA — but I have to stand up for what is right. Because I did speak with a lot of concentration camp survivors, and I heard it from them firsthand how they were getting treated, these slave laborers. When I see these athletes — and I don’t want to say they don’t care about what’s going on — [but] they’re making millions, maybe billions of dollars from these sweat shops, [and] it does break my heart. So, I feel like all these young athletes, before you put your signature on a paper, just research about what’s going on because it could affect a lot [of people]."

Etan Thomas: So I’m with you on that, and I definitely understand. But going back specifically to LeBron because he’s the one where a lot of your attention is going towards in terms of calling out [athletes]. What is the end goal? Do you want to work with him?

Enes Kanter Freedom: "The end goal should be to definitely sit down and work with him and just understand what’s going on. I think the main goal should be not just call him out, troll or things like that, but how to find solutions. When I called out LeBron, the next four-to-five games, many of the athletes that I actually shared the court with and played against said thank you for calling him out. Many of his ex-teammates came to me and said thank you, because we know all LeBron is doing is for his PR. That’s not what I’m saying; that’s exactly what his ex-teammates said. I didn’t make any comments when they said that. I just said okay.

"But my main goal is, how can I sit down and have a conversation with him to maybe educate him, or maybe he can educate me about what’s going on over there? What can we do to hold these companies accountable? Because these companies like Nike stand with Black Lives Matter in America, they stand with No Asian Hate, they stand with Latino community, they stand with the LGBTQ community. But when it comes to China, obviously, they’re making billion of dollars to remain in silence, and they’re pretty much using modern slavery over there.

"So, that definitely breaks my heart, and I’m like, what can I do. And LeBron is not the only one. I remember talking to my teammates, and was like, 'No, LeBron is not the only one.' There’s so many other athletes that I’m going to talk about, but I’m just not done with my research yet. This is not about color, this is not about a player; I’m not against anyone. I’m against the people who are not educated enough to put their signatures on a paper.

Etan Thomas: Now, from the outside looking in it does look a little targeted towards LeBron. I’m sure you can see why it looks a little bit personal.

Enes Kanter Freedom: That’s not it.

Etan Thomas: I’m glad you clarified that, but you do understand that’s a lot of the reason why Fox News [invited you]; you’ll be invited to Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham. I’m sure Jason Whitlock will tap dance over to you, and Candace Owens [too]; they like to hear anyone criticize LeBron because they don’t like the fact [that] he speaks up for Black rights for against police brutality and he criticizes [Donald] Trump.

Enes Kanter Freedom: "Oh yeah, of course. Let me tell you something: what LeBron is standing up for, I’m with him. When two years ago, [when the] Black Lives Matter [movement] happened, what LeBron was saying, I was with him. I remember we had a meeting in the Bubble with our team, the Celtics, and we were talking about kneeling. Many of my teammates said, 'Hey you’re about to get your citizenship. Don’t kneel,' because back then, Trump was in office. I was like, 'This is what I believe in, this is what I stand for and I will be kneeling with you guys because so many issues are happening here in America and I do want to protest with you guys. Because this isn't about me or you, but it’s about us.' I understand back then I wasn’t a citizen, but I still live in this country. Obviously, LeBron stands for Black Lives Matter and [condemning] police brutality and all that stuff. Yes, I do stand with him. Not one person can say otherwise because you can check my social media and see me at protests, see my interviews and everything."

Etan Thomas: I want to talk about the way in which they’re framing it. Because what you just said, they’re not going to run that on Fox News. But, you said you’d want to be able to educate LeBron, and you said you want him to be able to educate you. That’s not how they ran the clip. The clips [that aired said], 'I would love to talk to James, but I’m sure it’ll be a very uncomfortable conversation for him. I don’t know if he’s going to want that.' And then, they showed where you said, 'I don’t know if he’s educated enough, but I’m here to educate him and I’m here to help him because it’s not all about money.' When you leave the quote like that, that sounds very condescending, very insulting. And you know, the phrase if you want to try to get someone on the same page as you, I’m not sure if that’s the way to do it.

Enes Kanter Freedom: "For sure, people can stretch my words anywhere they can. The media in America is wild, and when you say something — especially in sports media — when you say something, they stretch it to something that you didn’t mean at all. Let me just make it very clear what I meant by it. I need to be educated too, and that’s why I sit down with Jaylen Brown so much and have a conversation with him about what Black people went through throughout the years, because I don’t know enough. He actually sits down right next to me on the plane, and me and him talk hours and hours about the history, about what Black people went through, what is the real meaning of Black Lives Matter and what’s the goal. He’s been educating me since the beginning of the season. I just became a citizen. I didn’t grow up in this country, but I knew obviously there was a problem with racism and police brutality. But, obviously I came here when I was 1, so I did not grow up in this, so when I sit down with educated athletes like Jaylen Brown, I’m learning a lot.

"At the same time, I want to educate people too, because what’s happening in China, it’s not even comparable to anything. There’s a genocide happening. There’s over 2 million people in concentration camps right now waiting for help. They’re getting gang raped, they’re getting tortured, and obviously you can’t say it no other way. But people are scared to talk against China because they’re paying the bills, there’s a lot of business involved; a lot of companies are scared to say something. Not just athletes, but actors, rappers, singers — people are scared to say anything. It doesn’t matter what your color is, you know people are just scared, period. Obviously, it goes both ways. I want to be educated, and I’ve been trying to do all season with Jaylen, and I also want to educate as well."

Etan Thomas: The two-way education about what’s going on in this country is important. Everything that’s going on with the police from Breonna Taylor, Tatiana Jefferson, Terence Crutcher, George Floyd and we can go down the list.

Enes Kanter Freedom: "I remember, especially during the Bubble, what the NBA did was unbelievable. They put Black Lives Matter on the court, put the phrases on our back, and we actually didn’t care about basketball. We cared about how we can educate the world, because obviously during the bubble, the whole world would have their eyes on us. All the microphones were going to be in our faces. So, that 82 days that I stayed for was amazing because all I did was learn. Obviously, I didn’t know that racism was one of the biggest problems that America had, but once I did more research and studied, I was like, this is unbelievable. So, yes, there are so many problems and I don’t deny it. I do recognize it, but the education should go both ways.

Etan Thomas goes on for a while about how Enes Kanter Freedom has an unique situation to where he could get LeBron to join forces with him. He compared it to Fred Hampton who brought different people together, but was assaianated by Chicago police because they were afraid of him bringing different people together for a common cause.

Enes Kanter Freedom: "That’s actually the main goal. I remember having conversations with assistant coaches and some of my friends. I was like, my main goal is to never pick someone [out] and attack someone. My main goal is, what can I do to bring other athletes to my side and get them to join my cause? My voice alone is strong, but with their help, it’s even stronger. And people are going to know what’s happening all over the world. So, I’m already with them. I kneeled with them and they’re my brothers."

Etan Thomas: Well, good luck to you and I’m glad that you came on and cleared up a lot of that.

Enes Kanter Freedom: "I’m glad you asked me those questions because I saw some of the op-eds, some of the interviews, some of the comments, and people really didn’t understand what I was trying to say. And I don’t judge them, because obviously some of the words I used could be twisted and stretched. But, what I meant by shut up is like, feel blessed. And obviously, I do recognize there are many problems happening here, but at least it’s not Turkey or North Korea."

Markelle Fultz reveals what really happened with his shot, shoulder

Since he arrived to the NBA as the No. 1 pick in 2017 for the Philadelphia 76ers, there has been so much misreported about Markelle Fultz.

Fultz went through two tumultuous years of misinformation by the media and fans, conspiracy theories, unfounded rumors, criticisms and internet jokes, and he was labeled a bust by people who are paid a king’s ransom on ESPN — namely Stephen A. Smith, who called Fultz “the biggest bust in NBA history.”

But what actually happened is quite the opposite. Fultz wasn’t a “bust.” He was dealing with an injury that is not only untraceable by an MRI, but also rarely (or hardly ever) seen in basketball players. In spite of all that, he was still trying to play through the pain because of his love for the game of basketball, and it's something that he does, in fact, regret doing. 

I spoke with Fultz on my podcast, "The Rematch," and the Orlando Magic guard opened up on everything that happened with his shoulder and finally put all of the incorrect rumors to rest. Below is a snippet of our conversation:

Etan Thomas: You mentioned your shoulder. You injured your shoulder, and you initially tried to play through it and not tell anybody about the injury, right? Am I correct?

Markelle Fultz: "Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely."

Etan Thomas: So walk me through that process because people don't really understand how it works sometimes. And I'm sure the pressure of being No. 1 was a contributing factor to why you wanted to play through the injury. But walk me through that process.

Markelle Fultz: "Yeah. Well, a lot of people just don’t know my love for the game. Growing up in the area I grew up, you have bumps and bruises. But that's where it becomes a business, taking care of your body. And me being who I am, loving the game so much, I feel like, although my shoulder was messed up, I feel like I can still contribute to the game and help my team win. So I wanted to go out there and just compete and have fun with the game. And also, it's my first year. And I think that I did a poor job of communicating to my agent and my family what I was feeling, instead of just going out there and trying to compete without expressing what I was feeling. And all I was doing was making it worse. But when I realized that certain situations weren't going my way, I knew I had to speak up, and I had to do what's best for myself.

"And I think that was the toughest part about it, because I felt like I could still play and contribute to my team, but I wasn't myself. I wasn't 100%, and it wasn't what was best for the team. So I took that time and tried to figure out what was going on. And I went to go see certain doctors and started that rehab process then. But I think the biggest thing I learned from that is just taking care of my body, and communicating what I feel to not only my agent and my family, but also trainers and stuff like that."

Etan Thomas: So how long were you in pain before you told anybody?

Markelle Fultz: "Actually, my shoulder started hurting before training camp [in my rookie year].  But I just thought it was from how much work I was putting in, from me shooting so much that my shoulder was just sore. So I tried to work through it. I'm going in the gym, shooting thousands of shots, trying to shoot through it. And the whole time, I just continued to make it worse. But again, the mindset that I had, I'm just trying to grind. I'm trying to continue to work through these issues, and not knowing that I'm making it worse. Again, I'm just kind of being young and being selfish, I would call it, in a sense, not understanding my body. And I think that was a big part of it. And again, once I communicated, I started to get the help that I needed. And I started to work and rehab, and it started to get better."

Etan Thomas: You mentioned you learned how to advocate for yourself. I want you to go a little bit more detail with that. And speak up because still, a lot of people don't really understand how it works with team trainers and team doctors, and how a lot of times players have to speak up and advocate for themselves. Just go into a little bit more detail about that point.

Markelle Fultz: "Yeah. And this is no knock on any team or anything like that, but it's a business, at the end of the day. And sometimes, again, it's a long season, so you have bumps and bruises. And sometimes, some people play through it, some people don't. Everybody's body is different. So especially not knowing a person and not knowing the situation, if you don't communicate and advocate for yourself, you never know what could happen. And it can be something as small as your toe hurting. But what I've learned so much about my body is your body compensates. And we're so good, as athletes and as humans, that if we're trying to do something, our body's going to find a way to do it. So it might not be the right way, but we can do certain stuff and hurt ourself, in the long run.

"And so my one thing would be: try to be in tune with your body as much as you can. And [it could be something] as small as your toenail hurting. I mean, you always get this phrase of 'You're soft' or you're whatever. But what I've learned is I'd rather overcommunicate about how my body's feeling and still be able to work out. I still want to work out, but I'm going to let you know, 'Hey, my big toe's hurting. Hey, my right hamstring is feeling like this today. My knee's feeling like this.' So they can start to know that you're caring about your body, and you're documenting certain stuff, so you don't end up compensating and hurting yourself in the long run."

Etan Thomas: Yeah, well, it's interesting. You go to different gyms, and they could be even as young as high school. And you see phrases on the wall like "Pain is weakness leaving your body" and stuff like that. And I hate that. I do, because it puts the wrong mentality into players, to thinking that them being injured is somehow their fault, like they're not being tough enough to play through an injury. And I just personally cannot stand that mentality at all.

Markelle Fultz: "Yeah. And I think that's how I kind of grew up. Not in a bad way. But growing up, I'm playing through whatever. I don't want to be soft. I want to show that I'm tough. But when you get to a certain point where your body is your brand... Your body is your car, so you need to take care of that thing like it's a Ferrari. You hear phrases like that, but it's true. You have to take care of your body.

"You have to get the right recovery. You have to get the right sleep. If not, it's going to end up hurting you. It might not hurt you right away, but down the road it can give you certain side effects. Or you never know, it can lead to something happening right away. But there are also freak accidents that happen. But I think that's the one thing that I would recommend to any player at any age, is just communicating about your body. [That] doesn't mean that you have to sit out of a drill, but it can start to put an awareness on people's mind. You can start to document certain things. And you'll have a better understanding, going forward, of why you do what you do."

Etan Thomas: But I think that sometimes a player does have to sit down. A player does have to say, "Okay, I can't go. You're going to talk bad about me. You're going to tell..." So I use the example a lot with my son about Robert Griffin III. So when RG III first came to D.C., my son was the biggest RG III fan on earth. And then I took him to... you know when they have the open scrimmages? So he met him, and RG III was cool with him. And they took a picture, and he's been the biggest RG III fan forever since then. And you remember that game where RG III was limping out there? And so, I'm watching that game with Malcolm. And he was like, "Why is he playing? What is he doing? He's going to injure himself," and so forth. This is what a young Malcolm is saying.

And sure enough, in fact his entire career, the trajectory of everything, went downhill from there. And then you saw the trainer say, "Well, I didn't tell him to go out there." Nobody wanted to take responsibility. But it should be the trainer's job to tell you that you are going to hurt yourself more if you continue playing. And that's the problem that I personally have with a lot of NBA trainers. I'm not throwing anybody in particular under the bus; this is a league-wide issue. They're employers of the team, and they want to do what's best for the team, not what's best for the player.

Markelle Fultz: "Exactly. And that's where it comes back to a relationship. So you have to have the certain people in your corner that's going to always keep it real with you because at the end of the day, like I said, your body's your brand. And it's about the longevity. It's different if it's Game 7 in the playoffs or the championship, and you're sacrificing for that. What I've also learned is rest is a big part of recovery, and getting the right amount of rest. Some days you got to go hard, and some days you have to not do anything at all. I mean, you can do some light stuff. But I think you hit it right on the head. Some people’s mind is set for the team. Not everybody has your best interest [in mind]. You have the best interest for yourself. So I think that's why it's huge to communicate how you feel to whoever it is — whether it's your mom, your dad, your trainer, whoever — and do what you feel is best because you know your body the best.

"Nobody else can tell you how your body is supposed to feel, how your body feels at that time. And I think that's where I learned how to advocate the most for myself. And I've gotten more respect from a lot of people when I do that. And again, it doesn't mean you're soft. It's just being smart about certain things. But at the same time, you do have to push yourself in certain limits to be able to... It's going to be certain days where you're sore, and you still have to push through. That's part of it, but it's a difference between sore and hurt. So just trying to learn... The sooner you start to communicate certain things, you start to learn what's pain, and what's okay to work through and what's not to work through. And that's where I think I've learned the most. I've learned how to identify what's going on in my body, and understand what I need to do to make that feel better, or if I need to take rest or if I need to go get treatment."

Etan Thomas: Yeah. I mean, I always heard the saying that there's a difference between being injured and hurting. So sometimes you're going to have to play through being hurting. That's just part of being an athlete. But being injured, you need to sit down.

Markelle Fultz: Exactly.

Etan Thomas: So, I want to ask a few specifics. I remember seeing some videos of you, watching you play and seeing your different routines on the free-throw line. And I just wanted to ask: Was that when you was trying to push through it? Was it part of the rehab? So there was one where you would kind of pat the ball like this, and then shoot it. And then there were some where you would go up and it would be kind of like a hitch, kind of. What exactly was going on?

Markelle Fultz: "Yes. So what a lot of people don't know is, what TOS (Thoracic Outlet Syndrome) is. It's a nerve... It's when your nerves are getting pressured on, and you can start to lose feeling in your hands. So at the time when I was playing, I still had TOS. I wasn't diagnosed with TOS. I still was working through certain shoulder stuff. But again, with my love for the game, I still wanted to be out there.

"And another thing people don't know, TOS is not diagnosed through a MRI, CAT scan. It's very hard to diagnose TOS, which is a big part of why, in the beginning, I kind of thought that nothing was going on. And I just thought it was my shoulder, because when I got MRIs and I got the scans, I didn't see anything that was going on. But I had to continue. So I went from shooting 40% in college to coming into the NBA.... It's so funny, people were like, 'He changed his shot.' Like, what would I change my shot for? There's no reason. So that was one of the funniest things that I heard, then I used to hear all these rumors about me being injured on a motorcycle, but that's another story."

Etan Thomas: Oh, man! There were so many different rumors about you... They got the story wrong so many times. I heard so many different stories.

Markelle Fultz: And that's what was the funniest thing because to me... I never went out to address it because I didn't care about that. Again, my main focus was getting back on the court, doing what I needed to do. But some of the stuff I used to see, I used to be like, 'Yo, that's crazy that somebody actually believes that.' But it also taught me another thing: You can't believe everything you read, right? But yeah. So pretty much what people didn't know is, so when I was going... The whole thing on my shoulder, when I would try to shoot, it almost felt like I had a too-small suit jacket on. So I would go, try to go up, and it felt like somebody was almost holding my arm there. I would try to move fast, but I felt like I couldn't move fast. So what I ended up doing is continue to try to shoot on it. I ended up building up more and more pressure on my shoulder where I'm not using... where I'm starting to hinge my shoulder up. I'm starting to use the wrong muscles, and I'm building bad habits.

"But what people don't understand is I'm out there playing, still. Still trying to shoot, still doing this. I was still making free throws. I wasn't very high percentage, but I was still making free throws. And so the first thing, when I would go up sometimes, I would lose feeling in my hand. And so, that's the reason I'd double clutch, because I would get here and I wouldn't feel like the ball was in my hand. But when I'd come up, my feeling would come back because the way it is — when I'm going through a certain motion — my muscles are pushing on my nerve, which is cutting my feeling off. And when I go through, it releases off the nerve, and that's when I would get my feeling back. So when I would do the double clutch, it was because when I would get here, I wouldn't feel the ball in my hand. So it was no way I was shooting if I don't feel like the ball [was] in my hand.

"So I would go up a little bit and it would come back, so I would just come from here and shoot the ball. And so when I went to practice, I'm like, 'Alright, that's not working, so let me try something else.' So another thing I tried to do was, this wouldn't have me holding the ball. So the desensitization of just moving the ball back and forth until I get into where I get feeling, which is right here, then I can just shoot. I was fine shooting from here. If I had just caught the ball here and shot up, it was perfectly fine. So that was why I went to that because I was just trying to be more efficient at the free-throw line. I didn't care what people were saying. I was just trying to get my flow in. So when I got to where I needed to go, I can just shoot the ball fine. But again, that was another realization of me compensating. And I said, 'Markelle Fultz, you don't need to compensate. You need to get healthy.'

"And another instance where I talked to my agent, I just told him I have no problem playing. I just feel like I want to be myself so I can just go out there and play without thinking, just playing my game, be who I am. And so, that's where it kind of went from. But just a lot of repetition of shooting the wrong way, it just builds bad habits and it builds your muscle memory wrong. And so, that was the biggest thing, trying to get back to... And I'm still working on it now. It's something I'm always going to have to work on. It's just trying to get my brain to process the ball being over my head the same way. And it's something that is a everyday grind, but I'm enjoying it. I feel way more comfortable now, and I feel the improvement. And again, I know my body, so I know what I need to work on.

Listen to the full episode of Markelle Fultz on The Rematch here.

Sage Steele: Discussion with Deadspin’s Carron J PHILLIPS

Over the weekend, ESPN co host of the 12pm SportsCenter and who hosts SportsCenter on the Road from various sporting events such as the Super Bowl and The Masters Sage Steele had a series of statements go viral for all the wrong reasons.

She told Jay Cutler on his podcast that it was “fascinating” President Obama indicated he he was Black on his census form “considering his Black father was nowhere to be found.”

Social media world went ballistic.

Then, as people started digging up her past statements about Lebron, Kaepernick, and athletes in general, the question began to circulate, why does ESPN keep rewarding her? Why doesn’t she get the same reprimand Jemele Hill received after she didn’t ‘stick to sports’ ?

Surprisingly, ESPN decided to suspend Steele. I say surprisingly because this wasn’t the first time she had ventured outside of sports and not been reprimanded. Reportedly, she will not appear in her normal SportSCenter slot for at least a week

https://news.yahoo.com/sage-steele-suspended-espn-controversial-203800107.html

To delve more into this topic, I spoke to Senior Writer for Deadspin Carron J Phillips, who over a year ago, wrote a brilliant article called “Sage Steele is ESPN’s Candace Owens and it’s time for her to go”

https://deadspin.com/sage-steele-is-espns-candace-owens-and-its-time-for-he-1844470068

This interview was conducted a day before ESPN made their announcement. But this discussion illustrates why ESPN had no choice but to suspend Sage Steele in order to avoid the exact blaring hypocrisy and double standard Carron J Philips and I expressed

Etan:
I'm looking at different networks who have traditionally liked to stay away from anything outside of athletics. Especially dealing with politics, especially dealing with anything outside of the court or field or whatever. Of course, most recently probably Jemele Hill. She was told to stay in this certain lane and only talk about these certain topics, even on her personal Twitter, and reprimanded when she didn't fall into those guidelines, and then they decided to part ways.

Etan:

I look at that, and then I look at the contrast of people, like maybe a Sage Steele, who are not being told, at least not yet, to stay in that same lane. And it's okay for them to venture outside of that lane, as long as they're taking a certain position.That's the hypocrisy to me, and we can speak on it to be quite honest. For a network like ESPN, are they picking and choosing? Or is one okay and one not okay? Or is it stick to sports, or is it not stick to sports? Which one is it? Because it's hard to see if you're just looking at it from the outside in.

Carron J Philips

Look, you are talking to somebody that has been banned from ESPN networks for years, for something I wrote about ESPN. Everything you said is correct. That is a network, that is a place, for all the amount of Black people that they hire, no one else can compete with. That was the name of one of my columns a couple years ago was that ESPN values Black bodies, but not Black problems.

Carron J Philips

When you have someone, like a Sage Steele, you have to understand, she checks off two boxes. She's a woman, and she's Black. Even if, though she doesn't want to check off the box of being a Black woman.

Etan:
(Laughing) Right

Carron J Philips:

She's a double minority right there. Listen, don't get wrong, for all the things I've written about. Let's be clear, she is very, very good at her job. She is one of the best.But the way that she presents... Bi-racial family, she has historically been the type of Black person that White people feel comfortable around.

Etan:
I understand what you’re saying

Carron J Philips:

They can be accepted in multiple circles and their political alignments or sayings or ideologies are going to be more on their side than people like me and you. So, when you have someone like that, they do get a longer leash to use that metaphor than somebody that's Black as hell, like the homie Jemele because she just going to keep it a buck with you.

Etan:
Right.

Carron J Philips:

So when you compare it to a Sage Steele it's like, "Oh." The things she said about Kaepernick or just the long litany of things, which blows my mind, that they're still up on her Twitter or her IG and she still to this day hasn't deleted anything, she is going to get a longer leash because she is the one that Jimmy Pitaro is going to have over for dinner at his house rather than Jemele Hill. We know these people in real life and we've worked with it. We've been on teams with them. You've seen them in the building at work. You know the ones that we like to say that White people label as the good ones.

Carron J Philips:

She's one of the good ones and when you're one of the good ones, you get a little extra room to boogie and maneuver and do things that the rest of us know, they wouldn't let our Black behinds do.

Etan:
Over a year ago you wrote a brilliant article that been called Sage Steele is ESPN's Candace Owens and it's time for her to go. You laid out a lot of the... a brilliant case as to her past statements, her history, like you said, that she has not deleted that she has stood by. Not even been told to retract. Not reprimanded for in any way, shape or form. Which brings us to her recent statements that went viral. That she also will probably not delete as well. She told Jay Cutler on his podcast that it was fascinating that President Obama indicated that he was Black on his census form considering his Black father was nowhere to be found, and Social media went crazy. Twitter was like, "Wait, she said what?" Like all over the place. I tweeted out that she is exactly who we thought she was.

Carron J Philips:

Or who Black folks in the industry... we knew she's always been.

Etan:
Right. So this shouldn't have come as any surprise, right?

Carron J Philips::

Yeah. Everything from that interview that has blown up the last couple days as you said. I've been getting texts. Like, "I know you're about to write about this. I know you're going to jump on." I'm like, "No, I've already written by her twice." I'm just happy that the world is now seeing because my Twitter timeline has just also been white people being upset and being done with her. I'm like, "Once they done with you, it's really a wrap

Etan: (laughing)

Carron J Philips:

But let me be clear, when I said in the first piece that it's time for her to go, I meant from ESPN. I never said the woman shouldn't work again because like I said, she's very, very good at her job. ESPN isn't the place for her. I mentioned Fox News and I would not be surprised if that's where she lands with a Will Cain or an Emmanuel Acho because she's going to fit right in with those two.

Etan:
(Laughing) That's tough. Ok, do you remember when she was on Sports Center, it was a UFC fighter...

Carron J Philips:

The playing with the hair?

Etan:
Yes !!!! I saw that. I was like, did she actually lean over? So let’s refresh the story with the audience who didn't hear. So, she was on air in the middle of talking about the UFC fight. She was asking a very good question, something to the effect of, "Do you have to hate your opponent in order to defeat him?"

Carron J Philips

Which is a really good question.

Etan:
Great question. So, In the middle of her question, he's looking at her and he says, "Can I touch your hair?" Live on TV. Now, you know, Black people, we know that's a no, no. Something you never even tolerate. But she leaned over said, "Yeah, sure, go ahead." I was like, "Is she serious?" On live TV ? I was like, "Wow, is he actually petting her?" That was the moment that a lot of the Black community was like, "Okay, we know exactly who she is.”
Was that a moment that surprised you?

Carron J Philips

No, I remember when it happened and I laughed. It wasn't necessarily me being shocked, but you know, the old proverb, when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. Then after that moment, it was people telling me more stuff or sources coming to me and giving me more info on her. When the situation happened and I wrote the first piece, it wasn't like I needed to do all this research. The Sage Steele file in my phone or in my head, I had been updating for years.

Etan:

There's a lot.

Carron J Philips:

There was so much material, from her speaking engagements she had, the IG posts like we said she didn’t delete. I know some people wanted to be like, "Wait, that's harsh, give all the examples and the evidence.” and by the time they got to the end of the article they were like, well... Facts, ain't feelings.

Etan:
Let's go back to some of this history, because not everyone is aware of her history. She told the New York Post and I quote, “people come to us for sports and that for the most part, we leave social and political issues to the news networks” Now, this was in the midst of everything going on with Kaepernick, with athletes like Lebron and the entire NBA gaining ground and speaking out and everything like that. That was her position that she took on ESPN. It was close to the time when Jemele hill was having her battle as well. So it was kind of a... "Y'all look at Jemele hill as this, I'm over here as this." That's how I interpreted that.

Carron J Philips:

Because that was around the same time. She also had some comments about Jemele, where she was basically like, "She did that. She knew the rules. She shouldn't have popped off. I keep my mouth shut. I keep serving this lemonade and making sure everybody in the big house happy." That was the energy of the statements or tweets she was making around that time. Which is funny when you go back and look what she said then to the New York Post and then fast forward to last year to her going to the Wall Street Journal about being upset that she was excluded from having a conversation about Black athletes and all the Black people at ESPN.
Not even all of, them just a small group of them having this conversation that was outside of sports. But it was like a couple years ago, you said this wasn't the place for it.

Etan:
Right.

Carron J Philips:

So when you weren't brought up to host that show, you said you got excluded, but you told us this ain't what you wanted and what we shouldn't be talking about. But now when you’re not invited to the party, you’re mad because you couldn't get in and don't nobody want to dance with you. But you told us you don't dance. So
why would we waist the invite ?

Etan:
(Laughing) that’s a brilliant analogy. You know, it's interesting even looking at some of her past comments about Kaepernick. They extend beyond just the regular right wing position, which was, if he's good enough to play, he would've been playing. You heard that all the time. Right? But she went a little further than that. She compared him, which was amazing to me to even see. She wanted to go past where the right wing conservatives went. She compared him to Greg Hardy. Do you remember that?

Carron J Philips:

Sage Steele tried to compare a Black man that sat down first and then kneeled after having a conversation with someone who was in the military because he wanted to kneel in peaceful protest because he wanted cops to stop treating Black bodies, a like target practice. That's it. That's the part everyone forgets.
That's all he said, "Stop shooting us."
That's all he wanted. She tried to compare that man to a man who has, I'm going to do this very lightly with air quotes, allegedly. Okay. But in multiple domestic dispute allegations and situations, multiple allegations against violence against women, because those are two different things. We have seen photographs of the alleged damage. Greg Hardy got another job in the NFL with the Cowboys after all of this. Then he went to the most violent sport ever, the same sport of the man who rubbed her hair on TV, and he became an MMA fighter. That's who she tried to compare him to. If you can't understand the blatant flagrant issues that are disrespectful in that, then you should probably click off this show now because you don't understand what we’re talking about anyway.

Etan:
Right.

Carron J Philips;

But still trying to make that correlation between two Black men on two different ends of the spectrum just because they put on a helmet and some pads. Because that's the only thing they have in common, is asinine at worst. Just belittling of someone's humanity at best.

Etan:
Right. So that brings me back to my original question. Why is one tolerated, promoted, celebrated on ESPN and another, in talking about Jemele hill, who said a statement that many could say was proven to be correct. I'm referring to Donald Trump being a white supremacist.

Carron J Philips:

Not proven. It was correct the day she said it.

Etan:
But when she said it their reason was... You know what, let me take that back. They didn't necessarily say that they disagreed with what she said. They just didn't want her to say it. That's what I took from it. But one is okay. One is allowed. But all the stuff that we just talked about that Sage Steele has done she's not even been reprimanded for. That brings me back to ESPN because people only do what they are allowed todo. When people talking about Steven A. Smith and they was like, "He does all this."
And I’m like, "Yeah, but ESPN allows it."
ESPN rewards him. ESPN makes him the face of ESPN. He's paid more than most professional athletes. So going back to Sage Steele, what message is ESPN sending ?

Carron J Philips:

We all saw what happened to Jemele because she's the thing you can point at to show how wrong they are. Ask Cari Champion about her experiences. Let's ask so many other Black people who have been in positions of power or face fronting positions on that network of being on your TV every day and what they've had to go through and those are just the stars, right? The writers, the TV people, we not even going to get into the producers. The people in HR, the booking producers who bring people on the show, the researchers, all of these people I know in real life. I've heard stories and know what goes on. As someone who's tried to work at that network, be on that that network's airways and in different capacities over the years, you get to a point to where you understand how the game is played over there.

Carron J Philips:

It's like I said earlier, they love the coolness and the word we retired, the swagger that Black people... and the soul and the juice and the sauce that we bring. But when it's actually time for it to get saucy, they going to add some water to it and bland it up because they just don't want us to be unapologetically Black all the way.
Now, I have to say, there have been some things that have changed. There have been some promotions. I do know some folks in power, but it is like everything. The jury's still out. I'm waiting to see, because last summer America told me that we were going through this racial awakening and things were going to change.
I think I wrote something every week through that summer that was like, "No, the hell it's not."
So now, it's been a little over a year later, and people are starting to be like, "It's a little bit changed but the change that I thought was going to happen ?

Etan:
That's definitely a good point. Let me just end with this because a lot of times when everybody was up in arms about Sage Steele and rightfully so, the comment was ridiculous. But she is who we always thought she was. But then we have to go back to ESPN and ask the question, why do they reward that? Why do they allow it? Why is she promoted? Then it gets to another topic was, Sage Steele is playing the game, whether she believes it or not. We'll take that part off though, because I feel that people like her, people like Jason Whitlock, people like... I know you don't agree, but I feel that they say what they know is going to... It's like in the movie, remember Bamboozled back in the day, and they put the blackface on and he's like, "I'm going to give the people what they want. Then they get rewarded it for it. So should at least some of that outrage be directed towards the people who are allowing and promoting it and rewarding it ?

Carron J Philips

First off, shout out to Bamboozled, I'm happy you used that analogy because that is just underrated Spike classic. That still holds up to this day. I got the VHS. But to answer your question, it's on ESPN. It's on those powers that be. My prediction is, she's not going to be around much longer. She's either going to get fired or that contract isn't going to get renewed whenever her contract is up because there have just been too many things over the last year or two that have become like a black eye for ESPN.
We know that is a network that doesn't necessarily like to do drama. They like to stay in this land and try to be as clean as possible because they want love and appreciation and your subscription dollars from both sides of the aisles.

Etan:
Good point

Carron J Philips:

So when you become a headache to one side or the other, they will get very creative. Maybe if you're not on TV it's more, or you're not hosting six o'clock you're hosting 12. They will find something to do with you. If you don't fall in line with what they think you should do or say. There are millions' of examples of that. But there probably isn't going to be an immediate reaction from ESPN to where they hold her accountable, which is what you want

Etan:
Yes, that’s what I want.

Carron J Philips:

But what’s happening is that they're getting exposed. Starting from Jemele to getting all the way here, from everyone that's left and all the things that are coming out. You are starting to see... Everybody's starting to get that peek behind that curtain. The wizard of Oz ain't what you think it is, and It's those things that's going to ultimately change things or get some people removed or fired. Now, is there ever going to be this wholesale change? I don't think so. People call me a cynic. I'm just a historian. This is just how America works. But as all these examples that we've seen since what, 2016, 2017 with ESPN. And ESPN is always going to be the big dog. This is how massive they are. ESPN is inescapable. Even if you don't want to watch the TV shows, you got to watch the game. You got to watch the documentary. One of their talking heads is going to speak to you. It's impossible to get away from them.

Etan:
Agreed.

Carron J Philips:

But people are starting to see... Like even this conversation right now, people weren't having this conversation three, four years ago. If they were, there wasn't someone you could point to like a Sage Steele to where you can also point to episodes that got us to this situation where the powers that be have also done repeated things so publicly that made you scratch your head and be like, "Wait, what's up. What's going on in Bristol? Why is so and so leaving? Why did they leave?" We're starting to have these very public conversations or we're releasing these tweets or we writing about stuff and people just tuning for the game but they’re like "What is this Sage Steele drama? She said what? She doesn’t get reprimanded ? Well they didn't let Jemele Hill talk like that. Why did she leave? And why did Michael Smith leave ?

Carron J Philips:

We got to be in those meetings and we're going to bring up points and we're going to hold you accountable. We're going to show you why the way that you've been doing stuff for the last couple decades has been wrong or how it could have been better. That's the moment we're in right now to where, what you want. I know what you want. It might not come right now

Etan:
Right.

Carron J Phillips:
Or If it does come, it may be later. But people are starting to see, as I like to say, the BS. That's where we’re at right now.

Inhumanity on the border forces NBA players to question if the US has changed

“We want fair treatment for Haitian refugees”.

Those are the words NBA hall of famer Dikembe Mutombo used when I asked him about the Haitian refugees being brutalized and subject to mass deportations at the US-Mexico border. It’s a statement that shouldn’t need any more explanation in a country that once said: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”.

Unfortunately for Haitians, those words don’t appear to apply to them. Refugees from the Caribbean nation have been forced from their country by a combination of devastating natural disasters, poverty and political instability.

America’s welcome has included deporting thousands of the refugees to Haiti, a country some of them have never been to. But as well as the bureaucratic indifference to the plight of the refugees, there have been more visceral examples of the inhumanity shown by the United States. Images at the US-Mexico border captured by photojournalist Paul Ratje showed two Black men being pursued by a white security agent on horseback, who used his reins like a whip. Humans being treated like cattle is horrifying enough in any context, but the images were particularly repellant in a country founded on slavery.

‘They treated us like animals’: Haitians angry and in despair at being deported from US

There was relief when the regime of Donald Trump left the White House. But Ratje’s photos left many wondering if this is the change they voted for. Is trading someone who promotes, initiates, and supports evil (Trump) for someone who allows evil to continue (Biden) an improvement? 

And those who have doubts include athletes in the NBA, where 75% of players are Black – some of them with roots in Haiti. Olden Polynice, a human rights activist and 15-year NBA veteran, was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. During a recent appearance on my podcast, I asked him for his thoughts on the treatment of Haitians at the border.

“My first reaction was sadness. I’ve seen this movie before. In 1993 when I did my hunger strike [to protest US policies on Haitian refugees] we had the same situation. But it wasn’t the coronavirus back then, it was the Aids epidemic. And America was spreading the false notion that Haitians were bringing Aids into the country and they began putting them in Guantanamo Bay. So I have already seen this. It’s history repeating itself.”

The end of historic injustices are exactly what NBA players have fought for in recent years – highlighted most clearly in the months after the police murder of George Floyd. Former NBA All-Star Joakim Noah told me the scenes at the border were a reminder that the journey is not over.

“The images of border patrol agents on horseback whipping Haitian asylum seekers are appalling and unacceptable. These are human beings who have lost everything and are knowingly willing to face such injustices to their human rights because there aren’t any better options,” he said.

“Of course immigration is complex, but no human being should be treated like an animal in order to find a better life – it’s shameful and inhumane. We fought so hard over the past few years to shed light on police brutality in brown and Black communities and to hold accountable those who abuse their positions of power. We need to hold the Biden administration accountable to process immigrants and asylum seekers according to international law and to hold border patrol and vigilantes accountable for their abuse of power.”

It is not just Polynice and Noah who were saddened by America’s treatment of the refugees. After a few days of anger from the public, Biden condemned the inhumane treatment of the Haitians and said that anyone who has mistreated refugees at the Mexico border “will pay”. It’s important to note that details about actual policy change were absent from Biden’s remarks, as well as those of Vice President Kamala Harris. There is no suggestion that America will now abandon the mass deportations and give the Haitians the same dignity and opportunities they give to refugees of other nationalities. 

Biden’s comments far exceed anything Trump was willing to do – after all, he couldn’t even condemn white supremacists after the 2017 Charlottesville hate rally. But “better than Donald” is a low bar for Biden to set himself.

“We voted for these people, and politicians can be some of the biggest gangsters in the world. And whatever they say to get elected, isn’t always what they do after getting in office. They say bring us your tired and your huddled masses and come to a place of freedom, but the problem is, it’s not for everyone. It should be about human rights, but these people don’t see it that way,” says Polynice.

“The Haitians deserve the same that you gave to the Cubans that came over here, the same that you gave to the Afghans, the same that any other group of people receive from the United States. No more no less. Just give us the respect of valuing our human rights. That’s all we want.”

America voted for a changing of the guard, and in some cases NBA players actively assisted in that change. The expectation was for a massive change in policy. But rounding human beings up like cattle at the border seems like the same old America to many of us.

Metta Sandiford-ARTEST IS MANY THINGS BUT HE WAS NEVER CRAZY

In 2013 I was part of a trip put on by the NBA Players Association to Africa. Among my fellow players on the tour was none other than Metta Sandiford-Artest, then known as Metta World Peace. It was nearly a decade removed from The Malice At The Palace, when players and fans had fought at a game between the Detroit Pistons and Indiana Pacers. The NBA came down heavily on Metta, who was suspended for 86 games and fined $5m for his part in the incident.

On the trip, Metta and I talked a lot. We reminisced about our days in college, when my Syracuse team and his St John’s team battled on court. Metta was the same player in college as he was in the NBA: fiery and passionate. I asked him about an incident that stayed in my memory. When we beat St John’s in the dying seconds at Madison Square Garden, Metta approached one of the refs about a missed call. The ref shrugged him off and said something to the effect of: “The game is over, shut up and go home.” 

Metta promptly lost it. He knocked over a TV camera and had to be restrained by players and security. At the time he reminded me of the Incredible Hulk, unable to control his fury.

In Africa, as he recalled his outburst at The Garden, Metta said those types of incidents happened throughout his life and he was working on it. Then he added something I’ll never forget: “I’m not crazy”. I told him I didn’t think that was the case, instead he reminded me of a superhero who wants justice but sometimes picks the wrong way of fighting for it. “Nobody has ever said it like that before,” Metta replied.

I understood why he would be upset in many instances. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not attempting to minimize disproportionate responses in any way shape or form. Indeed without the proper boundaries, guidance and tools needed to deal with unjust situations, a disproportionate response can be dangerous, especially as a Black man in America.

But now, almost two decades after he was excoriated on national TV for his role in The Malice At The Palace, Metta has rebounded from issues with his temper and mental health, and has done the difficult work to not only save himself, but to help others.

I remember after he won the championship with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2010, one of the first things he did was thank his psychologist, Dr Santhi Periasamy.

To give context for that comment, back then, an athlete admitting any type of mental health issue was opening himself up for endless ridicule, from fans and the more unkind sections of the media. According to Johns Hopkins University, around 25% of American adults suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. But the ridiculous theory runs that fame and money somehow insulate athletes from human suffering.

Indeed, athletes themselves were not always aware of how mental health could affect their own teammates. I recently interviewed Metta’s former teammate Jermaine O’Neal to discuss his documentary about The Malice At The Palace. O’Neal opened up about how much he regrets not being aware of the mental health issues Metta was struggling with at the time.

“I was young. I did not know anything about mental health. I wasn’t mature enough to understand what this man was going through. While we [were] worrying about wins and losses, [Metta] was worried about how he’s going to handle his life daily,” O’Neal told me on my podcast, The Rematch.

These days, teams take mental health much more seriously than when Metta and I played. The NBA and NFL both require teams to have mental health professionals on staff, a policy that was pretty much non-existent 20 years ago. Unfortunately, loudmouths such as Piers Morgan and Megyn Kelly never miss an opportunity to embrace their inner bully and attack playerssuffering from mental health issues. In fact, Kelly has gone as far as criticizing the US Open for providing “quiet rooms” for tennis players struggling mentally, proof – if any was needed – that her own inner mean girl is alive and well.

Nowadays, Metta has become a mental health advocate. He travels the country educating people on mental health. He encourages young people dealing with mental health challenges that they are not “crazy” but that with the proper coping techniques they can lead a very productive life. He even auctioned off his NBA championship ring and donated hundreds of thousands of dollars of the proceeds to charities across the US.

“I believe in … providing kids with someone to talk to because it’s so expensive. I pay for parenting counseling, marriage counseling and anger management, and it’s very expensive,” he told ESPN in 2010. “This will be for children of all demographics, rich or poor – preferably the rich can pay for their own psychologists – but it’ll be a great way to help kids who don’t know where they’re going in their life at this point.”

Metta’s former coach at St John’s, Mike Jarvis, said he has seen his former player’s growth.

“It makes me feel proud, and honored, and blessed to have had the opportunity to work with him and to learn from him,” Jenkins told me for my show, The Collision. “He is not crazy like people tried to label him, this is part of his mission. God has put him in a position where he can help other people. So I’m really happy for him and I am proud of what he is doing and I hope and pray that he will continue to let his light shine.”

I couldn’t agree more.

MARC LAMONT HILL: THE 76ers CODDLED BEN SIMMONS THEN TURNED ON HIM

Ben Simmons has demanded a trade from the Philadelphia 76ers, per Keith Pompey of The Philadelphia Inquirer. Simmons reportedly informed the 76ers that he wants to be traded and doesn’t plan on attending training camp if a deal isn’t done by that time.

On “The Collision: Where Sports and Politics Collide” with Dave Zirin, our guest was Marc Lamont Hill, a political columnist, commentator, host of BET News and Black News Tonight, and lifelong Philadelphia 76ers fan. He unpacked everything about the Simmons situation from who’s to blame, if a reconciliation is possible and potential trade scenarios involving the 25-year-old. 

Etan Thomas: “Let’s take it from the top: Where did the Sixers go wrong? And did they do anything wrong in their handling of Ben Simmons?”

Marc Lamont Hill: “They went wrong. I mean, the big picture thing is: Ben Simmons, to me, isn’t a point guard. And I've said this since he was drafted. He is a very talented basketball player with a wide-ranging skill set with, of course, one glaring omission, which is shooting. Ben Simmons is not an extraordinary playmaker. He's a great passer. He has great court vision. Lots of guys do who don't play point guard. And I think the fact that he has such deficiencies in the halfcourt [means he] really is not an effective facilitator in the NBA. I mean, you see guys take 15 steps back when he gets the ball at the top of the key, because he's not a threat. He's not a threat on pick-and-roll. I mean, we can go on down the list. This is why Ben Simmons is a problem in the halfcourt.

“So, the Sixers never forced him to develop a shot and they never played him in any position other than point guard. And I think some of that was due to playing to Ben's ego. Brett Brown had no control, and Etan, you know this. The coaches are trying to make the team too. When you're a coach like Brett Brown, a rookie coach, no one knows who you are, you got one shot at this and you do what the owners say, and they said, ‘We want Ben on that court. We want Ben playing. We want Ben as the point guard.’ Brett Brown couldn't sit Ben if he wouldn't shoot a jump shot. He couldn't sit Ben Simmons if he didn't follow instructions. And Ben had no commitment, in my estimation, to being a better shooter, not in a way that I think most NBA. But when you fast forward to the Doc Rivers era, that horse is out of the barn, and Ben wasn't a shooter. That's just not who Ben was. But where they went wrong was they failed to support him. Doc Rivers comes out and says, ‘Ben's a great point guard. He's a great player. Y'all don't know basketball if you think he's not or if you think he's a problem.’ And he was lying to us, y'all. I mean, come on.

“When a point guard goes 1-for-2, or any player goes 1-for-2 from the free-throw line in four-straight possessions in the fourth quarter of a playoff game, and Doc says, ‘Well, I will take one point per possession,’ that ain’t it. We all know you've got to make your free throws. You can't be a 50% free-throw shooter. So, Doc coddled him and played to his ego because he didn't want to mess with his head. He said, ‘I'm not taking him out in the last seconds of the game.’ But then by the end of the Washington series and the beginning of the Atlanta series, he had to take him out, because you can't have a guy that can't make free throws in the game.”

Etan Thomas: “You said he coddled him, but did he support him at the end? Just to be fair, and I love Doc. But I saw Doc in the post-game press conference after they lost and they asked him something like, ‘Can you be successful with Ben Simmons as your point guard?’ And Doc said, ‘I don't have the answer to that question.’ I was like, ‘Oh, that was a little chilly.’ So, what was your interpretation of that?”

Marc Lamont Hill: “My main interpretation was that Doc Rivers had finally become a Philadelphian, because that's what Philly does. We love you, we coddle you, and then we throw you away in a moment. We go from one extreme to the other.”

Etan Thomas: “That's cold.”

Marc Lamont Hill: “But you know it's true. What Doc Rivers did there was wrong, because first of all, you don't throw your player under the bus at the end of the game. He wasn't wrong. His analysis wasn't wrong. He wasn't wrong to say that, ‘I don't know if Ben can be the starting point guard on the championship team,’ because none of us know the answer to that question. I mean, I think that's obvious. The problem isn't that. The problem is you don't say that in the press conference. And Joel Embiid didn't do him any favors, either. He basically blamed the game on him. Was he wrong? Of course not. Do I want my point guard to give up a wide-open dunk because he's afraid of potentially getting fouled and having to make free throws? Of course not. But that's not what you do at the press conference.

“So, the Sixers mishandled him in terms of throwing him under the bus, but they put him in a position where he was extraordinarily sensitive leading up to that, and they played to his ego and coddled him. And so the combination of those two things was not good. Ben is thin-skinned and then they threw him under the bus in a way that even a thick-skinned player would be angry about. And I think that that combination is really bad. The Sixers never developed Ben Simmons, but Ben Simmons has to take responsibility for that too, because Ben Simmons never hired a shooting instructor– he let his brother be his shooting instructor. Many NBA players, coaches, etc. tried to develop Ben's shot and rebuild, reconstruct his shot the way Lonzo Ball did. He refused to do it. He doesn't want to listen to instruction. You can't get better if you're not willing to take instruction.”

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Dave Zirin: “That's true. One of my coaches said to me, "You can't learn how to jump 45 inches, but you can make yourself into a decent shooter." Everybody from Magic Johnson to, you said it, Lonzo Ball has been able to make themselves into an acceptable shooter or at least acceptable enough to stay on the court during close games. Marc, one of the things that makes you so dynamic – and I'm not just trying to gas you– is you've got this academic bonafide, but you also keep your ear close to the ground. So, where are the Philadelphia faithful right now? Are they on Team Sixers or Team Simmons in how they're feeling about this?”

Marc Lamont Hill: “There are people who are still Team Simmons, but look, I'm Team Sixers. I want him traded, not because I want to throw Ben under the bus, [but] because at this point, his mind's not here. He may develop into a great player, but he won't develop into a great player here. And I think most people here either think that or there's a sector of Philly fans that are saying, ‘We don't think he's great. We think he's a fraud. We think he has all these skills, but they don't matter if you can't be in the game. They don't matter if you have to sit the fourth quarter. They don't matter,’ etc. And then there's a slice of people that say, ‘Y'all just don't get how good Ben is. And y'all don't understand how he affects the basketball game. The eye test shows how good Ben is, and we should keep him. We're making a huge mistake.’ I think that percentage is 25%. The other 75% want him to leave for various reasons.

“I personally say, ‘Trade Ben, and I hope he goes to a place that will let him play small-ball 5, that will let him play the 4. And as Ben develops even a reasonable shot or is just willing to attack the basket, [he’ll be fine].’ Because let's be clear: It's not just that Ben can't shoot, it's that he won'tshoot. He doesn't even keep defenders honest. And so when you have those kinds of dynamics going on, you can't thrive. So I say trade Ben to a place where he can thrive and we get [some pieces back] that will allow the Sixers to be competitive.

“The other problem with the Sixers faithful is we've seen so many bad trades, man. We traded Allen Iverson for nothing. Remember when we traded Charles Barkley for, who was it, Andrew Lang and Jeff Hornacek? And then the next year, Charles was in the NBA Finals. Jeff Hornacek turned out to be a great player, but he didn't last long here; he played well in Utah afterward. Tim Perry was a great Temple player, but not a great NBA player. We've been on the wrong end of too many bad trades, and so we're just skeptical that we're going to get back a bag of magic beans for one of the most dynamic players of this generation.”

Etan Thomas: “Well, Marc, let me ask you this: I've seen some footage of Ben shooting in pick-up games and things like that in the summer, so it looks like he's been working on his shot. He was working out and shooting jumpers. And while everybody could look good in the summer, that at least shows that he is working on it. Would that be enough to warm up some of the 76ers fans, the fact that he is at least trying to work on it?”

Marc Lamont Hill: “Every summer, he says [this]. First of all, if you give me an hour in the gym and a camera phone, I can look like at least Seth Curry. You know what I'm saying? If I can edit the footage and you give me 30 [minutes]...”

Etan Thomas: “Hey, no offense to Seth Curry. He's a good shooter.”

Marc Lamont Hill: “I love Seth Curry! Seth Curry's one of the top 10 shooters [in the league] right now. Seth Curry is great, he's just not Steph Curry. But Ben Simmons ain't even Mark Curry!”

Etan Thomas: “Dang, that's tough. That's tough.”

Dave Zirin: “Shout out to 'Hanging with Mr Cooper.' (laughs)

Marc Lamont Hill: “Exactly. But the thing is, I mean, there are two problems. One, maybe he is killing it at LA Fitness, right? I don't know...

Etan Thomas: “(laughs) You gonna keep on with the jabs, huh Marc?” 

Marc Lamont Hill: “I'm having a rough day, man. This trade’s got my mind all messed up. But look, if Ben is able to shoot in competitive runs in the summer, [does it matter if he doesn’t shoot] when he gets the ball wide open in the corner? At this point in the NBA, that’s the red meat of the NBA offense, a corner three – who wouldn't take a corner three, right? If he came to the NBA game and [doesn’t shoot], it's not just a physical issue, it's a mental issue. And I think that's the part that we have not given Ben enough grace for. We can't be out here protecting Naomi Osaka, as we should, and we can't be over here protecting Sha’Carri Richardson, as we should, and then beat up on Ben when he talks about mental illness.

“And this is a mental problem, whether he says it or not – and he has alluded to it. When you're at the point when you're 6-foot-10 and athletic and won't dunk the basketball in an NBA playoff game because you are afraid of the consequences of having to go to the free throw line, then it's become at least a mental block that we have to take seriously. And instead of bullying him about that, we have to figure out how to develop him. Sports are tough, and I know all of that, but I do think there's more to this than just his lack of desire to get better. I don't think he doesn't practice basketball. I do think he's stubborn about reconstructing his shot. I mean, you don't have to be an NBA pro to look at his elbow and look at how he doesn't square up and look at his body language at the free throw line. He's just not a very good shooter. And you can have bad form and make it, but you can't have bad form and miss it. So I think it's both.”

Dave Zirin: “Let's talk a little bit about Joel Embiid's reaction to this. To me, [if] Joel Embiid doesn't get hurt, he's the MVP this year. So we're talking about one of the short-list, top-level players in the entire league and a team leader. And he tweeted:‘For clarity, I love the criticism. I love when I'm told I can't do something. It makes me work harder to prove everyone wrong, but not everyone is built like that.’ I've read that tweet over and over because I'm thinking, is he trying to show support or is he basically saying, ‘Yeah, we're done’?”

Marc Lamont Hill: “That was the worst show of support I have seen in a very long time. I don't want that kind of support. He basically said, ‘You know what? Be nicer, because some people can't take it.’ Right? ‘Some people are insert any hyper-masculine, inappropriate adjective here’ He's basically saying, ‘Yeah, Philly shouldn't be doing this.’  Right? He's saying, ‘Philly should not be treating players like this. Philly fans are problematic for how they respond to players, but it made me better. I'm not complaining, but everybody can't take it.’ And implicitly saying Ben can't take it. And he's not wrong. Ben is thin-skinned. Ben is not used to having to be criticized. He's been the star basketball player his whole life. He's the number one pick in the NBA draft. He's not used to that, but he's not wrong. But I think Ben is going to take that as another jab, even if it was intended as a show of support.”

Etan Thomas: “It's interesting, because Joel was doing good with the tweet right before that. He tweeted, ‘Stop using my name to push people's agendas. I love and hate drama, but I love playing with Ben. Stats don't lie. He's an amazing player. And we all didn't get the job done. It's on me personally. I hope everyone is back, because we know we're good enough to win.’ He had some other tweets saying the same thing. And then he had the one today. It's like three or four great tweets, and then one line that was just a little bit different.”

Marc Lamont Hill: “Yeah. That was the tell right there. And these guys, they've grown into a good relationship. They didn't always have a great relationship. They've grown into a great relationship. They like each other. They want to play together. But I think, again, it was also an assertion of power. If you really subject that to scrutiny, when he said, ‘It's on me,’ what he's really saying is, ‘It's really on me because it's my team,’ i.e. not Ben's team. So, I mean, there's all kinds of layers of authority being asserted, even in his so-called show of support. 

“But Joel Embiid is 100% right. It is his team. If everybody comes back, they are good enough to be competitive. They're not good enough to win unless Ben magically starts shooting the basketball. If Ben starts shooting the basketball, the team gets instantly better. I mean, the team getsinstantly better. But that's a lot of ifs in somebody's career. But the ultimate thing is Ben and Joel don't fit. They don't fit personality wise. They don't fit basketball wise. They take up the same space on the court. This marriage just doesn't work. And I think it's time for the Sixers to think about what kind of pieces, realistically, they can bring back. Not the Daryl Morey ‘give-me-half-your-team’ trade requests, but a real, sincere trade request to bring in some players that can fill out the Sixers' roster, give them some bench depth, give them a playmaker at point guard who can score, but also not be compromised [defensively]. Ben Simmons is probably, and y'all might disagree, the best on-the-ball defender, in my estimation, in the NBA right now.”

Roundtable: Which NBA team had the best offseason?

Dave Zirin: “Yeah. He's on the list, for sure. And if used right, that's an absolutely lethal weapon.”

Marc Lamont Hill: “Oh, it's a completely lethal weapon. There was some talk about him going to Golden State, which isn't going to happen just because it's a ridiculous request, but imagine him on Golden State with a healthy Klay Thompson, a healthy Steph Curry. I mean, suddenly you've got an amazing team with an extraordinary defensive dynamic that can get out on the open floor, etc. In a place like that, Ben would thrive. Ben would absolutely thrive there. And that's the type of environment Ben wants, but Ben [doesn’t have leverage]. Ben has four years left on his deal. He don't get to pick where he goes. The Sixers need to bring back some young players, some draft picks, and somebody who can score. But again, it's hard to do that when you've got a player who everybody in the world just saw not play so well in the playoffs.”

Etan Thomas: “Yeah. But as you mentioned earlier, you have to look at the 76ers' past and the way that they've traded away players. I mean, I still think Markelle Fultz is going to do great when he's healthy. I think he's going to blow up, and he was on pace to do that before he got hurt. But I think, who are they going to get back for Simmons? And I really do feel that Ben Simmons is going to blow up wherever he goes, but I'm looking at realistic destinations. I mean, you throw out different things. I heard Toronto and, like you said, Golden State. But what realistically are you going to get back that's going to equal Ben Simmons?”

Marc Lamont Hill: “Again, it's one of those things... You have two approaches, right? You wait for the superstar; you go superstar for superstar. That's plan A. That rarely happens in the NBA, because you rarely have two [stars available]. You rarely get the Danny Manning [for] Dominique Wilkins kind of deal, right? You rarely get the kind of star-for-star approach. You usually end up getting back pennies on the dollar, because usually if you're trading a superstar, it's because it's a so-called distressed asset. Right? So not to commodify the player, but just to think about the logic of it. So that would be where I began.

“So when you asked me what I would want to get back, Dame Lillard would be plan A. And if Dame Lillard says, ‘I want out,’ I think the Sixers are the primary destination, even though they're going to have to also give up Tyrese Maxey, which I think is a lot to give up because I really think he's a player. But you can find another Tyrese Maxey, no matter how good he is. Dame Lillard's in his prime right now. If you give me three good years of Dame Lillard with Joel Embiid, I think you'd have a puncher's chance at a championship every year, as long as you keep Tobias Harris and you have strong role players, like Seth Curry, etc.

“If that doesn't work, then you've got to go and talk about what package of players you can get. Minnesota seems to have the best haul of pieces. Sacramento would be interesting, but they said, ‘We're not giving up [Tyrese] Haliburton. We're not giving up De'Aaron Fox,’ so that's a non-starter for the Sixers. Buddy Hield is a guy that everybody's willing to trade for, but they're not willing to give up so much. The Lakers had that challenge. I don't want Buddy Hield here as my replacement for Ben Simmons. It doesn't make basketball sense. It doesn't make any sense. I personally think Minnesota is probably the best suitor right now, given what we see on the table. 

“The question is do you, as a Sixers team, want D'Angelo Russell as your primary return here? You'll get a shooter. You'll get a decent playmaker. You'll get somebody who's not afraid of the limelight. But you also get somebody who's been on multiple teams. Again, he's like a Tobias Harris. He's a great player, excellent player, but also a guy who sometimes gets traded because he's not the number one option. He might be the number two or the number three option on a great team. Give me D'Angelo Russell and some pieces. At this point, it might be the best thing on the table. If you get a lineup with D'Angelo Russell and Tobias Harris and Joel Embiid isn't terrible. But you're not defending like you did last year.

“The last thing I'll say is: we can't underestimate what Ben Simmons does on the basketball court. Ben Simmons as a defensive rebounder, as a help defender and as an on-ball defender… Ben Simmons is an all-world defender, and he makes up for a lot of the mistakes. And as Danny Green gets older, and Seth Curry... Seth Curry's just not a defender. When you have these shooters on the floor that don't defend well, all of these 3-and-D guys on the Sixers, losing an extraordinary perimeter defender like that is no small thing.”

Etan Thomas: “Is there any scenario where you can see it working if Ben Simmons comes back, if none of those trade scenarios work before training camp?”

Marc Lamont Hill: “I remember when Kobe Bryant was saying there ain't no way he was coming back to the Lakers and he wanted to be traded. It's happened before. I've seen guys [change their mind]. But the problem is this: Kobe wanted a better roster. This isn't a roster issue. This is an accountability issue. This is a support issue. This is an ego issue. This is a team [issue]. These issues are deep. And so, I don't know if this can be fixed. I'm not convinced that it can be fixed.

“Do I see a scenario where he comes back? Yes. Philly is not taking a bad deal, so I think the most likely scenario is [Morey] brings him back. He doesn't go to camp, but his agent, of course, Rich Paul, convinces him to actually play the games so that he doesn't look like a cancer. And then we see the James Harden situation, where five-to-10 games in, you have a trade. I think that is possible. But I'd love to be a fly on the wall in that locker room, man. I would love to see him and Doc talking. I'd love to see him and Joel talk. I mean, I'll be at the game just for that.”

JERMAINE o’NEAL ON RECONCILING WITH METTA WORLD PEACE: I DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH

Watching the documentary “Untold: The Malice At The Palace” that premiered on Netflix on Aug. 10, it’s apparent that there was quite a bit of tension between Jermaine O’Neal and Metta World Peace (who went by Ron Artest at the time) following the Malice at the Palace.

The relationship between O’Neal and World Peace was already strained prior to the brawl, and it only got worse afterwards. Apparently, the friction intensified even more when Metta asked for a trade from the Indiana Pacers after the Malice at the Palace. O’Neal revealed that he wasn’t happy to see World Peace win a championship with the Los Angeles Lakers, and viewers left the documentary with many questions about their relationship.

Is there still a rift between O’Neal and World Peace today?

I interviewed O’Neal on my show, "The Rematch," and we broached this topic. He explained the tension and expressed a tremendous amount of regret – not for having his teammate’s back during the brawl, but for not fully understanding everything that World Peace had been dealing with for a long time. 

Etan Thomas: “I want to shift gears a little bit and ask you about Metta World Peace. I was watching ‘All The Smoke’ and you told Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson that y'all have spoken recently. You sat down at the BIG3 and you had a chance to talk. I was so happy to hear that because I know that y'all weren't on good terms for a while and there was a lot of friction. But that’s great, that you sat down and spoke. Talk to me about that reconciliation process?”

Jermaine O'Neal: “Man, it was something that was much-needed. We all wish we knew back then what we know now – when we were at 23, 24 years old. I went through a process in Portland where it was like fight, fight, fight, fight, fight for everything, for every inch, [for] every minute. I wasn't playing, so I had to keep showing my worth. I went through that for four years. Through that process, I went to two Conference Finals, right? So I saw it, I understood what to do and what not to do. So, I felt like when I left there, it was only about one thing: Win, win, win, win. Right? That's it. Just show people who you are. Because I felt slighted for four-straight years by not getting a consistent opportunity. So, when I got [to Indiana], it was like, I wasn't really trying to hear nothing but, 'Hey, let's come in here and work.’ And I was young, I was 24 years old. I did not know anything about mental health. You know this like I know it, if you were speaking about mental health back then, it was devastating to you, because nobody was educated about it. If you heard someone needs help with mental health, you'd say, ‘Oh, he crazy.’”

Etan Thomas: “Right.”

Jermaine O'Neal: “You wouldn’t want to put ‘career’ and ‘crazy’ together in the same sentence because [you wouldn’t] have any longevity in that particular sport. I think the Pacers did a really good job on holding it together. I’d try over and over and over and over to reach out, ‘Hey, Ron, let's go to dinner.’ It was always, ‘Ron, let's do this.’ And then finally, he kept saying, ‘No.’ And then he kept wanting us to quit [asking]. And I was like, ‘Wait. Does he not like me? Or does he not like the team? Does he not want to be here?’ And it started to eat at me, like a virus. And bro, I just was so angry all the time with him, because he would call press conferences in the parking lot somewhere and we're getting the information when the media is getting the information – or even, in many cases, afterthe media. There was no conversation amongst the players with him saying, ‘Hey, I feel this way.’ And so I did not know how to handle that. 

“And as a brother, as a teammate, we're together all the time. You spend a lot of time with each other in the locker rooms and everywhere else, planes, bus rides. And I wish that I knew more [about mental health] because if I knew more, then my aggression towards him doesn't expedite his anxiety or his dislike – whether it was [about] me or being on the team or that basketball environment. He just was like, ‘I'm not messing with you.’ We just play, and then after that, boom: no conversation. And I think it's important for people to know that when we shot the doc, we shot it separately. The only conversation I had with him about the doc was the initial conversation of, ‘Hey, this is what I'm looking to do. It's a Netflix deal. All I need you guys to do is just be open and candid about how you viewed it.’ But we never saw each other at any point during the filming of that doc."

Etan Thomas: “Oh, okay. I didn't know that.”

Jermaine O'Neal: “Yeah, we shot it separately. So, when I saw him describe his process of that night – his counting to five, how he had to really take things in. Not only did it put a lot of perspective on that night– and how, when Ben Wallace pushed him, that started his process. So he then goes to lay down right away because he's trying to get himself together, right? Ben throws the headbands, wristbands at him. Now, it takes him up to level two. Now, the water is boiling at this point, and you see the bubbles are about to boil out of the pot. And he had jumped up and he told me, ‘You better get him!’ He kept saying, ‘You better get him!’ And he laid back down. Then, when the cup came, it was like number three, and that was the most heightened level. And I understood it. It made complete sense to me.

"But what it also did is put into perspective how he handled things as a teammate on a regular basis. When things got tight, in its most intense form – whether it's our level of communication to each other or in games – [this is how he would think]. Like, I remember we were in Memphis and we didn't have a good game and Coach was yelling or whatever; he went in and he knocked over the heating pads that they would put in the hot water. He knocked it over and it damn near got on everybody, and people are jumping out of the way because it's piping hot water! We've seen [his] reactions – breaking the camera in New York coming through the tunnel, right? And it all was like a flashback. And I’m like, ‘Damn, he's been trying to handle thisforever.’ And while we're worrying about wins and losses, he's worried about how he's going to handle his life daily.”

Etan Thomas: “Yeah.”

Jermaine O’Neal: “And so I felt a certain way when I saw that and I thought… We've talked multiple times before and especially after the doc about different things. But shoutout to Ron – I can't call him Metta –for being so open and honest and vulnerable. Because we know the media and public opinion can be cruel sometimes. So, I had to say that, man, because that meant everything to me. Actually, and I also didn't know what he said when he won the championship and he was on the court with Steve Smith and all of them.”

Etan Thomas: “Yeah, I remember seeing that live. In case anybody didn’t see it, the first thing that he did after winning the championship with the Lakers – before he answered any questions – was talk about you guys. He said he was supposed to win a championship with that Pacers team and that he had so many regrets about how it all went down and that he felt like a coward because he left Indiana. And he’s saying all of this on live TV right after they won the championship!"

Jermaine O'Neal: “I never saw that. Somebody told me, but I was so mad with him, I didn't want to see nothing, hear nothing, nuh uh! Like, when I did the doc, I said, ‘I wasn't happy that he won no championship! I was mad as hell!’ Like, ‘After what he did with us, why would he get to win it and I don't have one?’ Even at that point, I wasn't mature enough to understand what this man was going through.”

Etan Thomas: “Wow. When I saw him say that stuff after winning the championship, I realized, ‘Wow, he was really hurt by this.’ He acknowledged that he didn’t handle certain situations well, but he also said that he didn’t know how to handle those situations and it’s something that he was working through. And that’s the mental health part that was non-existent in the NBA until, really, just a few years ago.”

Jermaine O'Neal: “Yeah. And I gotta say this: People, when we hear ‘mental health,’ that is so wide-ranging. I mean, I'm watching myself over 17 years having mental-health issues. That doesn't mean I have the same mental-health issue as Ron or any person that deals with it at that level. But it's more of emotional distress or a level of sadness about something. We just watched Naomi Osaka go through that now– her process from the Olympics. I watched her yesterday on television doing an interview and she broke down crying."

Etan Thomas: “Right, because of what happened in Haiti.”

Jermaine O'Neal: “Yeah, it was about Haiti. And it's just people, we've got to understand what that is. We're all vulnerable to mental-health issues, just some people's severity is more significant than others.”

Etan Thomas: “Right. But I was really glad to see that y'all went back and started talking again. I’m really happy about that. I remember when he laid on the scorer’s table and was trying to calm himself down, a lot of the discussion was about that and so many people didn't understand what was happening. With mental health, people just didn't get it – and they're just now startingto understand or attempting to understand it. We're not robots; we have things we deal with like everyone else. We have different emotions that we have to figure out how to manage. That was the problem for so long: so many in society looked at us as robots or as video-game characters – like they just start the game and we just play and that was it, there were no feelings or anything like that. And that's just not reality.”

Jermaine O’Neal: “You’re absolutely right.”

David Aldridge: The Media Failed To Tell Full Malice At The Palace Story

David Aldridge was a guest on my weekly show, "The Collision: Sports and Politics," with my co-host, Dave Zirin, and we discussed the Malice At the Palace documentary that was just released on Netflix.

The documentary presented a thorough and complete examination of the infamous 2004 melee that turned the entire basketball world upside down. 

"Untold: Malice At The Palace" does something that the media as a whole failed to do back in 2004: Tell the whole story from everyone’s perspective who was involved, including the players and fans who played a part in the fateful night — Auburn Hills security, Auburn Hill police officers and the specific Oakland County prosecutor handling the case. This is the complete viewpoint everyone should have been privy to back in 2004, but instead, the vast majority of basketball fans were only presented a one-sided, skewed view of what actually took place. 

To discuss this in more detail, we had David Aldridge as our guest. Below is our conversation about the event itself, and its mishandling.

Dave Zirin: Welcome to The Collision! He's Etan Thomas, I'm Dave Zirin, here from your home of jazz and justice, 89.3 FM. WPFW also being broadcast on 99.5 WBAI in New York City. Etan Thomas?

Etan Thomas: Yes, sir.

Dave Zirin: So proud to introduce D.C.'s own, American University's own, the Hall-of-Famer, the dean of basketball broadcasting and sports journalist for The Athletic, the man himself, David Aldridge. David, how you doing, sir?

David Aldridge: Gentlemen, what's happening? How you doing?

Dave Zirin: Well, Etan and I have been talking all week about this Malice in the Palace documentary on Netflix. So we've been thinking about what we were talking [about] before, about what we were discussing 17 years ago, and how our perceptions have changed, who got it right [and] who got it wrong. So I just wanted to ask you if you could take us back then, for yourself, where were you and what was your first reaction when you saw the punches flying in Auburn Hills?

David Aldridge: Ah, man, my first reaction... I was sitting on my couch and my first reaction was, "Ah, man, I wish I was still at ESPN," because I knew exactly how this was going to go down. But they decided to go in another direction, as TV companies do. And it's okay, that's what happens to all of us eventually. But it was bad. Look, the visual was bad. The reaction was bad. We had Jermaine on our show, our podcast, a couple of weeks ago when it was premiering on Netflix. And I've talked to Jermaine about it over the years and I know it's obviously a very difficult subject for him because of all of the different things that were going on at the time. People don't realize this, that Jermaine had lost his stepfather the year before, who was in Indiana with him, was really kind of looking out for him, and had to deal with that on top of everything else, and then trying to compete for a championship at the same time.

I had always liked Jermaine. When I interviewed Jermaine the first time, he was 17 years old at the RTP in Orlando in 1996. And Jermaine was always one of the most thoughtful young cats that I talked to. He just always was a very deep thinker, even at a young age. And I'm just happy that he's gotten a chance to kind of get a more balanced view of what occurred that night out to the public, so that the public can kind of make up its own mind. I would say, [and] you asked Dave at the beginning who got it right and who got it wrong, look, when it comes to mental health, we all got it wrong. I'm at the top of the list. I did not know how to deal with people that had mental problems in 2004. I don't think many people did in the NBA.

And I think, if that had... If Ron Artest, Metta World Peace, Metta-Santiford Artest, as he likes to call himself now, if he was coming up now, it would be a completely different — there would be a support system in place for him that just wasn't there in 2004. And I think that would've... That may have changed everything in terms of how his career turned out. What happened that night, the perception of what happened that night, all of it would have been different if it had happened now.

Etan Thomas: D.A., thanks for coming on The Collision, always appreciate your commentary. Let me ask you, because watching the documentary and reminiscing about everything... I was in the league at that time, and I just remember the way that the media covered it — ESPN in particular -- and the way that it was shown and how they criminalized the athletes. It was all the athletes. The word "thug" was thrown around a lot, [as well as] menaces, savages, all these different descriptive terms, but then nothing was really said about the fans. And I remember talking to my peers about it. We had this big conversation in the locker room with the Wizards right after it happened, and I want to ask you this question: do you think that a lot of the media, after seeing this documentary and being shown different parts of it that they weren't privy to, do you think a lot of the media maybe owe the players an apology with the way that they described it, and described it so one-sided?

David Aldridge: Do they owe them an apology? Maybe. Would they give them one? I doubt it. So, I mean, I'm just being real with you, Etan. People, whether it's the media or just society in general, very few people have the kind of self-reflective gene in them to realize when they've made mistakes and to own up to those mistakes.

It is a failing of the journalism business in general that the resolution is never as prominently displayed as the charge. You know what I'm saying? The charge is on page one, the resolution is on page 18. And that's a failing of journalism but, again, it doesn't have anything to do with sports. That's journalism. We just fail at that as journalists. But there's no question that the media went overboard, just like they did with Latrell Sprewell, with PJ Carlesimo. And again, I'm not trying to make myself the center of this, but I think when I was at ESPN, when the Sprewell thing happened, I was able to go on TV and say, "No, the NBA does not have an epidemic of players choking their coaches."

Etan Thomas: Right, and that was important because that was becoming the narrative. 

David Aldridge: Right, so I was there to say no, this is not something that's going to happen... I remember, literally, one guy in particular with ABC News asked me that. "Is this going to happen a lot now? Is this just the way things happen now?" No, it's not. Look, the majority of reporters, media in the NBA... whether they're covering the NBA, or the NFL, or baseball, or whatever, are white males. And those are the people that, especially, certainly in 2004, were setting the agenda in terms of, this is how we're going to view this incident. Right? And in the documentary, you see Bob Costas, who usually is a pretty thoughtful guy on many subjects, just going right to "thug". You know what I'm saying?

Etan Thomas: Yeah, and a lot more media too.

David Aldridge: And it's not surprising in retrospect, because in 2004,  the league didn't know what to do with Allen Iverson — had no idea what to do with him. [The NBA] could not figure out the first thing about: how do we deal with Allen Iverson, the most popular player in the league?

So, how did they deal with him? Well, they airbrushed the tattoos off of his body when they put their hoop magazine out. I broke that story, by the way. Me and Rick Telander, at the Chicago Sun-Times, broke that story. So, they didn't know what to do with it. Allen has an incredible following, not just among fans, but among players. AI was the guy that a lot of guys looked up to coming up at that time. And so, the league didn't know what to do. And they had no idea how to handle it. They didn't know how to talk to these young men. They didn't know how to... They didn't relate to these young men at all. And so, they went to the default, which is, "Well, it's got to be the music that they listen to." And you see this today, with people in my business — some people in my business, I'll put it that way. Continually talking about rap culture and rap this, and rap that and rap the third.

And that's unfortunate, because it's a total mischaracterization, I think, of the circumstances under which a lot of the young men grew up and what they relate to and what they consider important. And the media failed. And what happens when you have an incident that goes beyond sports, is that a lot of people who don't know anything about sports wind up talking about sports.

So, you have people on network news, who've never been in an NBA locker room, who don't know anybody in the league, talking about the league as if they're experts, and that's problematic. But that's what happens when things like this happen that go beyond the sports page.

Dave Zirin: David, my mind is exploding with questions based on what you just said. But if I just have to choose one, I'll start with this. When you say that the league did not know how to relate to Iverson, the league did not know how to relate to hip-hop, the league did not know how to relate to this generation of players, are we really talking about [former NBA commissioner] David Stern, or was it broader than David Stern?

David Aldridge: Well, it was broader than David Stern, but David Stern had the hammer. Now, let's not get that twisted. David Stern was the guy, okay? He was the guy that set the tone. It's in the documentary. "Was this the unanimous decision?" he said, "Yes. One, nothing." There was no doubt that David Stern was making the decisions about how the league was going to react to this. Now, did he get advised by owners or other people that are in his circle of influence? I'm sure he took some calls and talked to people. But there is no question, and I don't think anybody, even in the league, would deny that this was Stern's call. He was wanting to set an example on somebody and it happened to be the Pacers, much more so than the Pistons. And he did. And it was David's league. He ran the league with an iron fist for 30 years. And he told the owners that: "It's my league."

And the fact of the matter... I mean, the real of it, guys: David Stern is hired by the owners, which means that he can be fired by the owners. If they don't like what he's doing, they can get rid of him. They didn't for three decades.

Okay? Because they liked what he was doing. They liked the kind of law-and-order mandate that he had, and the way he kind of kneaded out justice as he saw it over the years, along with other things. And he made them a lot of money too, don't get me wrong. I mean, that's part of it too, is that he made the owners a lot of money. [But] you didn't hear [Pacers owner] Herb Simon complain and say, "This is unfair to my team. Why did you do this to my team? You shouldn't have suspended Ron Artest for the rest of the season. That was wrong." You didn't see no interviews from Herb Simon. So they were all in line with what David wanted to do.

Etan Thomas: Let me ask you this. After you left ESPN — and I can say this, you don't have to say this, but I can say — if you were at ESPN, I think, at that time, there would have been at least a more balanced discussion as to, "No, this isn't all one-sided. Let's also take a look at what the entire NBA culture, including the fans, need to improve on as well." You know what I mean? And that just wasn't the discussion. There were panels, there were, "What's wrong with the NBA? Is the NBA full of thugs. Are they all criminals?" The rap music, like you said, the clothes, the hair, all of this stuff — was there anybody at ESPN to have that balance? Or after you left, was there just nobody else.

David Aldridge: I think there was a conscious decision made that they were going to go towards more debate. I'll put it that way. They wanted to have debate as their central thing. I was there for eight years, and when I got there, they had Peter Gammons and Ed Werder. Peter Gammons had been in The Boston Globe, Ed Werder had been in The Dallas Morning News, Chris Mortenson had been in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I've been with The Washington Post. They hired sportswriters. They hired people that knew the leagues that they were covering, knew the people in the league, knew everybody, knew the players, knew the owners, knew the GM's, knew the coaches, knew the agents. They started to get away from that because they felt like they had to do more than just cover the games.

And you can do that, but you then sometimes leave yourself kind of vulnerable on nights like the Malice at the Palace, when you need somebody who's covered the league for 15 years at the time who might be able to have some context. Then what was missing was context. Yes, this is bad, but the NBA has had way worse fights in the 50's and 60's. They used to go in the stands all the time in the 50's and 60's. Red Auerbach used to fight fans on the regular back in the day. So you need somebody who can say that, to point that out and say, "This is bad, but it's not the first time this has ever happened in the NBA's history." And they didn't have that.

Dave Zirin: Yeah. And I'll tell you, watching the documentary, and I was wondering if you had the sense of this at the time, David, because I did not have a sense of this at the time: the degree to which the players were besieged. Because that's what the documentary did so well, was that. Because ESPN, I remember at the time, it was all about Artest going into the stands. It was all about Stephen Jackson throwing punches. It was all about that slide across the floor with Jermaine O'Neal, but not about how, and they showed this in the documentary, them looking around and wondering where the security is and seeing the encroaching thousands. I mean, that must've been just absolutely terrifying.

David Aldridge: I will say, this is the one thing I learned from that documentary. Because if you're immersed in this stuff, as people cover the NBA, you knew most of it, right? But what you didn't know, where were the cops?

There were no cops. There are cops at every NBA game. There are hundreds of cops at every NBA game that I've been to. You see cops everywhere. They're in the voms. There are the voms, which are the little areas where the players go, between the court and the locker room. They call them vomitoriums, that little area underneath where you see them throwing everything at Ron Artest, beer and popcorn and everything, right? The cops are always there. You know what I mean? They're always ready to go wherever they need to go, to break whatever they need to break up.

And one of the police officers literally said there were three cops in the building. There were three cops on the floor, let's put it that way. And that, to me, is the most damning part of this documentary — that there was no law presence whatsoever. It was literally fans just coming on the court. When do you see a fan just walk on the court?

Etan Thomas: And not just popcorn and drinks. They were throwing chairs. Multiple times. They showed the one chair that almost hit Jermaine O'Neal, that hit the other fan, but there were multiple chairs. And I was just so curious as to why the media never told that part of it.

David Aldridge: I think part of it is, as the doc says, some of this was not available to the media, but some of it is just being lazy, I think. And again, the narrative kind of leaps ahead of the conclusion.

The narrative is, players go into the stands and fight fans. The conclusion is, fans get sentenced to prison, you know what I mean? For doing dumb stuff. The D.A., in this piece, I think, comes off as one of the heroes, who said, like, "No. We're going to prosecute these people. They need to be prosecuted for instigating." The guy said, if John Green doesn't throw the cup, none of this happens. You know what I mean? It's squashed. It's like Reggie said: it's what happens all the time in NBA. Guys come together, there's a little push, a little shoving. Ain't nobody really trying to fight in the NBA, you know what I'm saying?

So it would've been that. It would've been, like, maybe Ben gets suspended for a game and that's it. And it didn't happen that way. And again, I'm not excusing, but Ron shouldn't have gone to the stands. He shouldn't have done it.

Stephen Jackson shouldn't have gone to the stands. You can't do that. No matter how stupid people are acting, you just can't do that. Now, was it [warranting] a season-long suspension? I would argue it shouldn't have been a season. I would have argued 30 games for Ron, and maybe five games [or] ten games, for the rest of the guys. But again, David Stern's operating with a different set of priorities than maybe David Aldridge is, you know what I'm saying?

Etan Thomas: We're about to end, and it went so quick, but I want to ask you this related to today, because we still have issues with fans today. So as soon as fans were let back in from the COVID-19 pandemic, you saw the incidents. A fan spit on Trae Young, they threw the popcorn on Russell Westbrook, a fan ran onto the court right in front of Dwight Howard. So is the NBA doing enough now with fans, or what should be done moving forward?

David Aldridge: I think, Etan, it's very dangerous what's going on now. Because I think it is a combination of people coming back from COVID, wanting to get back in the stands, wanting to get back to their normal "lives" and be able to be fans and yell and scream and do all the things that, I think, most of us understand fans have perfectly within their rights to do. You can boo, you can cheer, you can hope the opposingguy misses, but when you start throwing the N-word around and throw popcorn and beer at people, now you've crossed the line.

You just can't do that. So, it's a combination of that, with people paying a lot of money for these tickets, and the NBA's got to think about this, and I don't think they think enough about this. People feel like, "I paid $4,000 for these two tickets. I can do whatever the hell I want, and I can say whatever the hell I want." And they have to think about that. I don't know what you do. You can't have seminars with fans. I don't know. But there's got to be some way to articulate to fans that... It doesn't matter if you're sitting courtside, you don't get to just say whatever the hell you want. You know you don't. That doesn't give you the right to do that. Maybe you do PSA's [or] you have some sort of public relations campaign, I don't know. But they have to do something, because I think this could be a real problem, as I suspect the league will be pretty close back to normal in most places by the start of next season, with regards to attendance.

I think most people are going to let fans in. And look, I think 95% of fans are great, and they're fine and they don't go over the line. And they're good people, and they want their home team to win, and I get that. And they handle themselves accordingly, it's just that lunatic 5%. And again, another good point they made in the documentary, and I think Reggie Miller made this, was the fact that the game was a blowout meant all the knowledgeable fans were like, "Well, this game is over. We're leaving."

So the arena was half-empty by the time the brawl started, because all the — I hate to say it this way — but I think all the more intelligent fans were like, "Well, this game's over. We'll come back. We'll get them next time." And then they left. And so that left all the drunks, basically, in the stands to kind of act ridiculous. And yes, you’re absolutely right. The media failed at not showing the full story back then. I can’t argue with that. 

The Sha’Carri Richardson discourse shows most fans don’t care about athletes as people

As I came to know in my own NBA career, the reality is most people don’t care what athletes are going through personally. Just do your job, entertain me and keep your issues to yourself

When it comes to athletes, nobody cares about your pain.

That much is apparent after listening to all of the discussions on sports radio and television and reading comments across social media in the week since Sha’Carri Richardson was dropped from the US Olympic team after testing positive for marijuana.

On Tuesday, Richardson’s last hope of competing at the Tokyo Games in the 4x100m relay, which is scheduled after her one-month suspension will be completed, was dashed when she was left off USA Track and Field’s 130-person roster for this month’s Summer Olympics.

One talking point that has been repeated time and again is that Richardson has accepted her punishment and everyone should just move on. But what was she supposed to do? Not accept the sanctions? Fight against the US Anti-Doping Agency, USATF or the US Olympic & Paralympic Committee?

All she could do after seeing her sensational results from the US Olympic trials disqualified was say she was sorry.

“I apologize,” Richardson said on NBC’s Today show. “As much as I’m disappointed, I know that when I step on the track I represent not only myself, I represent a community that has shown great support, great love. ... I apologize for the fact that I didn’t know how to control my emotions or deal with my emotions during that time.”

“We all have our different struggles, we all have our different things we deal with, but to put on a face and have to go out in front of the world and put on a face and hide my pain,” Richardson said. “Who are you? Who am I to tell you how to cope when you’re dealing with a pain or you’re dealing with a struggle that you’ve never experienced before or that you never thought you’d have to deal with. Who am I to tell you how to cope? Who am I to tell you you’re wrong for hurting?”

Richardson’s essential admission that she had self-medicated to cope with the death of her birth mother in the days before the US trials was met with a surprising callousness and lack of compassion from the talking heads across sports and general news media, many of whom have returned to the same points again and again:

 “What kind of example is she setting as a celebrity?”

 “Are we supposed to bend the rules because someone has a sob story?”

 “We have rules for the norm, not for the exception.”

 “It’s unfortunate that she initially tried to rationalize this. She had a good reason but it’s not enough to justify you violating restrictions.”

 “She knew the rules, she broke the rules, end of discussion.”

(It’s interesting that a lot of the critics who are now declaring that “rules are rules” tend to be the same people who loudly and proudly flouted the public health guidelines of wearing a mask or social distancing during a global pandemic. Or the same people who refuse to honor the results of a democratic voting process and are holding onto a false claim that the November election was stolen from Donald Trump despite zero credible evidence of voter fraud whatsoever. But I digress!)

This week I spoke with former NBA player Al Harrington for my show The Rematch. Harrington, whose company Viola Exracts is one of the nation’s leading producers and licensed wholesalers of premium quality cannabis products, made the case that marijuana was not in fact a performance enhancer and therefore shouldn’t be on the banned list in any sport. He highlighted the contradiction of addictive opiates being passed out like candy in professional sports but an organic pain-management alternative like marijuana being illegal. He recalled how he was given an anti-inflammatory called Celebrex and instructed to take two in the morning and one at night for most of his career; only years later did the FDA require Pfizer, the drug’s manufacturer, to pull Celebrex from US pharmacies because its risks of heart, stomach and skin problems clearly outweighed the benefits.

Harrington also discussed the irony that Richardson won the trials in a state where marijuana is legal for both medical and recreational use. He advocated for Usada and the USOPC to re-evaluate what he called a very “outdated” rule, especially as many countries around the world are now accepting cannabis in some form within their countries. He discussed the benefits from a medicinal standpoint of the plant, not only for athletes but everyday people dealing with anxiety, depression, as well as joint pain.

But what stood out to Harrington most was the lack of compassion toward Richardson he saw in the general tenor of the media coverage.

“You have to think, she had to be really low,” he said. “She knew she had to run in four or five days, she knew there was a possibility that she could test dirty, she had to be really low at that moment to say, you know what, I’m either going to do this or I’m going to do that, and her that was probably way more detrimental to her health. That has to let you know that she was in a bad spot.

“I lost my dad when I was eight, and I remember what that did to me. I can imagine what she is going through. And having to then go out and compete?”

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“Yes, rules are rules, and I will always acknowledge that. But it’s time for us to change this old, outdated rule. Sha’Carri Richardson smoking weed four or five days dealing with her mother’s passing did not make her run that 100 meters in 10.65 seconds.”

As I came to know in my own NBA career, the reality is most people don’t care what athletes are going through personally. They just want them to perform at an optimal level and that’s all they care about. Entertain me and keep your problems and issues to yourself. If you’re required to talk to the media, who cares about your depression or anxiety? Just do your job, Naomi Osaka. If your mother just passed away, who cares how you’re feeling, Sha’Carri Richardson. These are the rules and you better not break them.

Let me be clear: I’m not advocating for anyone to break anti-doping regulations, which in place there for a reason. But certain situations like Richardson’s need to evoke a sense of compassion and nuance that at best cause a reevaluation of the rule itself, but at least serve as a reminder to fans that athletes are in fact human beings.

I played alongside Jordan. I’ve seen the pressure on athletes like Naomi Osaka

When I saw the news of Naomi Osaka’s withdrawal from the French Open I thought of two people: my former teammate Michael Jordan and my 13-year-old daughter, Imani.

With all due respect to the greatest basketball player of all time, family comes first so I’ll deal with him later. So on to Imani. As much she has enjoyed me sticking up for my former teammate Kwame Brown’s struggles with the media, she thought it was just as important to defend Osaka.

Imani is a huge fan of Osaka and it’s easy to see why. Not only is she a brilliant player, she is also an advocate for social justice. I remember the pride Imani felt last summer when Osaka wore masks at last year’s US Open displaying the victims of police brutality, and encouraged people in Japan to join a march in support of Black Lives Matter.

Now, I could dive into the hypocrisy of the French Federation Tennis president Gilles Moretton fining Osaka for not taking questions from the media … then having the audacity to refuse to take questions from the media about why he fined her. I could discuss the irony of people wanting athletes to shut up and dribble, but then complaining when they do.

But it was Imani who saw the humanity in Osaka, who has spoken of her battles with depression and anxiety. Imani explained to me that Osaka uses techniques to deal with her anxiety such as wearing headphones before matches and listening to her pulse to calm herself down. She played me a videowhere Osaka, through a forced smile, told the media at a press conference that she was “so sad right now” and followed her words with a deep breath.

As Imani asked me: “Who in their right mind can’t tell that she is struggling with depression? Is it just that they don’t care?”

I told Imani that the hard truth: many times the media – and, indeed, the wider public – don’t care about what a player is going through, they just want the story. I still remember when I first realized this. I played alongside Jordan for two years with the Washington Wizards. As an NBA player, I was used to a certain level of game but the scrutiny Jordan was under was on a completely different level.

I remember when he was going through his divorce. One day, I came in early to get some treatment and saw MJ turned toward his locker, just sitting there, looking at nothing. He didn’t even hear me walk into the locker room. After practice, one reporter asked if a divorce was inevitable, and he cut them right off, telling them it was none of their business. I turned to our teammate Christian Laettner and said: “Why would they ask him that?” Laettner looked at me and said: “Because they don’t look at us as humans.”

It was tough enough for Jordan to deal with those questions at the time but he was in his late 30s, had been one of the most famous people on the planet for more than a decade and was not, as far as I am aware, dealing with any mental health issues. When we played, answering questions at press conferences was a dull, occasionally annoying, part of the job. But imagine dealing with those questions when, like Osaka, you’re 23, prone to depression and, as Japan’s most famous athlete, the face of the Tokyo Olympics. No wonder she wanted to step away.

If there is one positive from this situation it is that there is more awareness of mental health issues among athletes than when I played. A torn knee ligament or broken hand was understood. But depression or anxiety? No way.

It’s absurd for a person who has never dealt with any mental health issues to even comment on how someone like Osaka should conduct themselves. So I asked Chamique Holdsclaw, who played in the WNBA for 11 years and is now a mental health advocate and the subject of the documentary Mind/Game: The Unquiet Journey of Chamique Holdsclaw.

“I am so proud of Naomi for prioritizing her mental health on the world’s stage,” she told me. “As a mental health advocate who found the courage to speak out against the stigma and shame of mental illness after I retired, I admire her fortitude being one of the most notable athletes today, to advocate for self care and knowing that her mental and physical health are both incredibly important. No matter how the media portrays this situation or whether or not people agree with these outdated rules and regulations, she has made a powerful statement that will positively impact the next generation of athletes and young people about mental health.”

Hopefully what comes from this is a shift toward viewing athletes as humans and not robots or video game characters. It is great to see the outpouring of support Naomi Osaka is receiving from athletes such as Steph Curry, Kyrie Irving, Serena Williams, Martina Navratilova, Billie Jean King and Laurie Hernandez.

But I’ll leave the final words to someone I know well: Imani Thomas of 13U Metro Volleyball East. She wrote: “Naomi Osaka is a very strong woman. By leaving the French Open, she taught women of all ages, all around the world that taking care of yourself is more important than anything.”

53 years later John Carlos still sees the IOC as a money-chasing dictatorship

I recently had the honor of sitting down with Dr John Carlos for my podcast, The Rematch. I wanted to get the thoughts of the man who made history by protesting in support of human rights on the podium alongside Tommie Smith at the 1968 Olympics. His views are particularly timely given the International Olympic Committee’s intention to enforce its infamous Rule 50 in Tokyo this summer. Under Rule 50, athletes are banned from protesting on the podium, field of play or at ceremonies (they can still express political views on social media or in interviews). It may as well be called the John Carlos and Tommie Smith rule.

It is unclear what punishment athletes will face if they ignore Rule 50 and protest, but in 1968 the US Olympic Committee, under pressure from the IOC, expelled Carlos and Smith from the Games. Carlos told me he is concerned athletes will face similar punishments this year in Tokyo.

“The IOC is standing firm on their position from ‘68,” he said. “They don’t want any type of demonstration whatsoever. They don’t want a social demonstration, moral demonstration or political demonstration. Now, my concern is that the United States Olympic committee initially endorsed the kids and allowed them to stand on their moral character. But my concern is … if any young individuals decide to make a statement, whether the United States Olympic committee will be there to support them, back them, or throw them under the bus”.

Any hope that the IOC has softened over time is dampened by the fact that Carlos has never received an apology for the events of 1968, despite the fact that he and Smith faced death threats and widespread exclusion on their return to the United States.

“I confronted the IOC about an apology and they told me: ‘We didn’t do anything to you. The United States Olympic committee did that to you.’ Which technically is true, but it was under the direction of the International Olympic Committee. The IOC put a mandate on the US Olympic Committee and said: ‘If you don’t kick these guys off the team, we’re going to suspend the whole United States Olympic team.’”

As well as its refusal to apologize to Smith and Carlos, the IOC’s defense of Rule 50 is odd to say the least.

“The mission of the Olympics is to unite and not to divide. We are the only event in the world that gets the entire world together in a peaceful competition,” IOC president Thomas Bach said last year.

“I ask them [politicians and athletes] to respect this mission of the Olympic Gamesand in order to accomplish this mission we must be politically neutral. Otherwise we would end up in this divisive and boycott situation. I ask them to respect this political neutrality by not using [the Olympics] as a stage for their political purposes.”

I find this insulting. Wearing a shirt that says, “Bernie Sanders should have been president” is a political statement. “Black Lives Matter”, on the other hand, is not a political statement, but a human rights statement.

Besides, Carlos told me the idea that the Olympics isn’t inherently political is a fiction to begin with.

“I would tell the International Olympic Committee, first of all, you need to come out the stone age,” he said. “You need to realize that times have changed. People’s visions and people’s views have changed. The people who represent you, you should have a concern about their pain. These are things you have a responsibility to instead of putting up a fictitious statement like this is an a political institution – it’s been political since it’s been there. If it wasn’t political, you would have one Olympic flag and everyone would have the same Olympic jersey on. But you have flags all over the Olympics. What you’re doing is running a dictatorship”

Smith also addressed the issue of athletes from different countries showing solidarity with each other, just as Australia’s Peter Norman did with Carlos and Smith in 1968. Carlos said Norman demonstrated the crucial role white allies can play when they stand in solidarity with Black people, as well as the importance of unity and the moral courage to stand up for human rights. They seem like ideals the Olympics should want to embrace.

Imagine, for example, the message it would send for athletes from around the world to stand together and protest against the violations of human rights happening right now to Palestinians.

Carlos has had 53 years to think about politics, the Olympics and protests. But he does not believe protests and human rights are the main motivations for the IOC. Instead he sees its driving force as something far more basic – and a good deal less lofty.

“We had one of the most dire times in world history with this virus that has been going around,” he said. “And they will force the Games through [despite] the virus. We’re gonna bring athletes from all over the world to host these Games, for [the IOC’s] bottom line … No matter who is at the helm of the International Olympic Committee, they are protecting their interest: money.”

The ugliness of NBA fans attacking players

I had the honor of attending The ESPYS two years ago when Bill Russell was honored. During the presentation, they showed a video montage of all that he had to endure while winning championships and the racial epithets that were hurled at him night in and night out. Especially after he started speaking out about racism and segregation. And this was from the home fans. 

The next day, I interviewed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and we discussed what he had to endure from fans who, for some reason, always wondered why he wasn’t the warmest person when it came to fans. 

“When you are playing in front of people who are calling you names that are just revolting and vile, and letting you know that they despise you, while you do understand how ignorant they are, that is a very dangerous setting that can get to a point where the situation is on the edge of violence,” Abdul-Jabbar said.

How warm and inviting would you be if day in and day out you looked into the crowd and saw what often resembled an angry white mob in the stands with hate in their eyes and racial epithets being hurled from their mouths? 

NBA players have always been held to high standards of professionalism, but there’s always been a double standard when it comes to spectator abuse. Remember the Malice at the Palace, the infamous 2004 brawl during an Indiana Pacers-Detroit Pistons game that ended with the suspension of nine players for a total of 146 games? Plenty of blame was immediately placed on Indiana’s Ron Artest, far less so on the fan who threw a beer at him or the two others who jumped the rail and squared up toe-to-toe with him.

Nine years before that, Steve and Nick George were two “fans” who harassed Houston Rockets guard Vernon Maxwell during a game against the Portland Trail Blazers. They cursed at him and allegedly hurled racial epithets at him the entire game. Then one of them allegedly brought up Maxwell’s wife’s miscarriage. That led to Maxwell slowly walking up into the stands and punching him in the face. In the aftermath, the man sued Maxwell and the NBA handed him one of the strictest punishments for a player at that time. The NBA suspended Maxwell for 10 games and fined him $20,000. Nothing much was said at the time about what should happen to those fans.

My former teammate with the Washington Wizards, Antonio Daniels, who is now a New Orleans Pelicans analyst, knows full well fans are not afraid to stoop to the lowest levels. 

“As a player that played in the league for 13 years, I have had some fans say some egregious things to me,” Daniels told me. “People have heckled me about the passing of my brother where, if there wasn’t a barrier between me and that fan, we would have had issues.”

Unfortunately, these types of incidents aren’t behind us.

In this week alone, we had a fan spit on Trae Young in New York, another fan dump popcorn on Russell Westbrook in Philly, and a group of fans in Utah verbally assault Ja Morant’s family with racial epithets. This all happened on the same night. 

The NBA took swift measures against the fans. The Philadelphia 76ers, New York Knicks and Utah Jazz announced they had identified the particular fans and banned them from their arenas indefinitely – which was the right move. You have to set the tone and the standard, or else fans would feel free to do whatever they want once they enter an arena, as they have historically been left without repercussions. (Sounds similar to the issue with police, doesn’t it? But I digress.) 

Every athlete has a story like this. 

Every away building is a hostile environment with passionate fans rooting for the home team, and sometimes fans cross the line. For me, the place that always stood out was Salt Lake City. I can recall countless road trips in Salt Lake City and being shocked by the faces of hate glaring back at me from the crowd. There were clear racial undertones to the heckling that seemed to hover in the arena. 

Marcus Smart of the Celtics also confirmed that he’s witnessed racism in Boston aimed at opposing players.

“I’ve heard a couple of them,” Smart said, according to Jay King of The Athletic. “It’s kind of sad and sickening because even though it’s an opposing team, we have guys on your home team that you’re saying these racial slurs and you’re expecting us to go out there and play for you.”

So again, Celtics general manager Danny Aingeand all of the people who are acting shocked that former Celtic Kyrie Irving would suggest that there is racism in Boston, it’s true

But the real question is, how do fans really view athletes? I think back to the movie Gladiator, where the crowd was cheering for more blood and more gore as the gladiators fought to the death. I thought about the scene where the blood was splattered on a woman and she gave a sick smile as she wiped it off with her finger. Do fans even look at athletes as human beings? For a fan to actually spit on a player quickly answers my question.

Have we progressed from the times of Russell and Abdul-Jabbar being called the N-word and every other racial epithet you can think of? 

Morant’s family definitely wouldn’t say so. 

Basketball is supposed to be an arena where people can be unified as everyone cheers for their team to win. It’s supposed to be a time where all political, social and religious differences can be put to the side. Instead, many times it exists as the exact opposite. A time where the country’s ugliest, nastiest, most vile, deplorable behavior is on full display for the world to see.

‘He was just different’: Kobe Bryant stood out among the high school Class of ’96

I was playing NBA 2K21 with my son Malcolm, and I was the all-time Los Angeles Lakers. My lineup was ridiculous. Shaquille O’Neal and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar down low, LeBron James at the 3. Kobe Bryant at the 2. And Magic Johnson at the point. Malcolm was running with the Milwaukee Bucks and abusing me with Giannis Antetokounmpo. But during the game, he said, “They make Kobe too good. I know he was nice, but dang.”

Then he asked, “He was your high school class, right? Class of ’96, so you played against him. Was he just nice like that his whole life?”

I told him Kobe was nice for a few reasons: He worked out harder than anyone I had ever seen in my life; his concentration and focus was on a whole different level even at a young age, he was a student of the game and he studied tape, and he wanted to play like Michael Jordan, so he copied and perfected all of his moves. He just had that Mamba mentality way before it became his mantra. 

Even back in high school when we were coming up. I never played against him in high school, but others from our class did.

Tim Thomas was in our class. In high school, Thomas was actually ranked ahead of Kobe. He was bigger, stronger and could play every position on the floor. But Thomas soon found out Kobe was different.

“What sealed the deal for me was the McDonald’s All American game in ’96,” Thomas said. “His approach was completely different. In an all-star game, you’re gonna go hard, but you’re not gonna go as hard. So the practice is gonna be where you just wanna get the sets, and kind of go through it. They didn’t really want guys to get hurt. Just get in, get out. But Kobe was on 1,000. He wanted to show everyone that he was the best player in the class. We were going through the drills and everyone else is walking through it and he’s going full throttle, dunking the ball, boom, boom, boom. So we all kind of knew at that moment: This guy is different.”

He set the tone for the rest of the class that day.

“When the game started, everyone knew not to come out and treat it like another all-star game,” continued Thomas, who went on to play 13 seasons in the NBA. “If you don’t bring it, you may be embarrassed because at least one guy is definitely bringing it.”

Mike Bibby remembers that game, too. Bibby was one of the top guards in our high school class. 

“You could tell his work ethic was second to none at that age,” Bibby recalled. “You could tell he was loaded with confidence. Going out there and knowing he was the best player on the court every time he stepped out there.

“You would’ve thought he was a pro back then.”

Bibby says watching Kobe back then was like watching a young MJ. 

Bibby would go on to play 14 years in the NBA and had many memorable battles with Kobe’s Lakers. He said Kobe was the hardest worker he’s ever seen.

“To be on top of the game like he was and still work like he did, it’s something you don’t see even back then, even nowadays,” Bibby said. “You get a lot of guys who are at the top of their game and they kind of start coasting, taking it easy. I did it. I felt sometimes I could take the day off, but he never did that. … People were going out, he’s in the gym.

“His will to win was tough to match.”

Mateen Cleaves, also a member of the ’96 class who played in the aforementioned McDonald’s game, remembers that same mentality during an NBA preseason game.

“To understand the Mamba mentality, let me tell you this story,” said Cleaves, who won a national championship with Michigan State and played six seasons in the NBA. “I’m playing against Kobe in the league, and I was playing with another superstar player – I won’t say his name – that made a comment about Kobe being selfish. So we’re playing the Lakers in preseason. And you know, top players in preseason, it’s just to get a little sweat. Get up and down a little, find your rhythm. Kobe told this guy before the game, ‘I’m coming at you.’ And it’s preseason. So I’m sitting there like, ‘Uh-oh, this about to be good.’

“And I’m telling you, the first 10 plays, Kobe went at this guy so hard Phil Jackson had to take Kobe out, because he was going playoff speed, in preseason, just because a guy made a comment about him before the game. He was just different.”

When I entered the league in 2000, I finally witnessed firsthand what the Mamba mentality was all about. 

Kobe and I had the same agent, Arn Tellem, at the time (this was before he made the switch to Rob Pelinka, but Rob was still one of the agents under Arn). I was sitting in Arn’s office in LA talking about plans to work out for the summer. Kobe had just finished signing about 100 basketballs, walked by and heard us talking.

He had been in the league for four years by then, and I wasn’t even officially a rookie yet. He told us about pickup games at UCLA and the sand dunes we should definitely do. Then he told us about his regimen in the offseason. He would go to sleep around 10 or 10:30, sleep for a few hours, get up and work out, go back to sleep around 4 a.m. for a few hours, get up around 7 a.m. and work out again. That way he could get extra workouts in throughout the day and didn’t have to waste time sleeping through the entire night. Honestly, at first I thought he was joking, but he was all the way serious.

When I told my son this story, he looked at me like it was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. I have to admit, if I wasn’t there to hear it myself, I would’ve thought it was pretty far-fetched too, but that’s what Kobe said. And Pelinka backed his story and told me, “Yup, that’s his regimen in the offseason.”

I didn’t pick up his offseason program – I did not have the Mamba mentality to work out at 1 a.m. – but the message was received.

Kobe became what he became because of that mentality. That’s what pushed him to never be satisfied no matter how many awards and accolades he received. To always feel the need to prove himself. To outwork everyone no matter what the situation. To step up to every challenge no matter how big or small.

We had a supertalented high school class, which also included Jermaine O’Neal, Shaheen Holloway, Richard Hamilton, Stephen Jackson, Jason Hart, Ed Cota, Kenyon Martin, I could keep going. But there’s only one Black Mamba, and it was an honor to have come out of the same high school class that produced Kobe Bryant.

Rest in peace, Kobe aka the Black Mamba.

Former NBA GM confirms false narratives hurt Kwame Brown, others

Pete Babcock is a former NBA executive, who served as the general manager of the San Diego Clippers, Denver Nuggets and Atlanta Hawks. He also worked in a variety of capacities -- from scouting to coaching to player personnel -- with the New Orleans Jazz, Los Angeles Lakers, Milwaukee Bucks, Toronto Raptors and Cleveland Cavaliers over a 42-year period. In his final two seasons, with the Denver Nuggets, he also served as president and minority stakeholder.

After my most-recent article (“After 20 years of public degradation, Kwame Brown is fed up”), Babcock replied on Twitter: “Great perspective Etan. It is sad how these false narratives gain a life of their own around the league. And even sadder that we all (mostly) bought into them.”

In the article, I wrote: “The public degradation and the false narratives perpetuated by the media actually hurt Kwame financially, as NBA teams listened to those narratives regardless of whether they were factual or unsubstantiated… They began broadcasting a false narrative that was detrimental to Kwame when it came time for teams to sign him. It lowered his market value. They remembered what was said. It didn't matter that there were no facts or proof; the rumors that were created by the media impacted these decision-makers.”

The response to the article has been great. However, some members of the media and other naysayers pushed back on how the false narratives perpetuated by Stephen A. Smith, Skip Bayless and others could have possibly affected Kwame financially. 

In response, I followed up with Pete Babcock so that he could go into a little more detail about his comment and how the media influences NBA front offices. He spoke from personal experience about how false narratives hurt two other prominent players, and the regret he feels for allowing these narratives to affect him. This was a very honest and open discussion. 

Etan Thomas: Mr. Pete Babcock. How are you doing, sir?

Pete Babcock: Fine. How are you?

Etan Thomas: I'm doing good. You are a former NBA GM and you worked around the league over a 42-year period. That's an impressive resume. You've been in the game for a long time.

Pete Babcock: I've “been around a long time,” just means you're old. It doesn’t mean anything special (laughs). But I was very fortunate and got a chance to do a lot of different things in the league and work with a lot of great people over the years.

Etan Thomas: Great, great. You made a comment under my article on Kwame Brown, saying, "Great perspective, Etan. It is sad how these false narratives gain a life of their own around the league and even sadder that we all (mostly) bought into them." Tell me a little bit about what you meant. Go into a little bit more detail because I thought it was very interesting.

Pete Babcock: Well, my experience was that there were certain players that maybe got labeled one way or another. I'll tell you the two that jump out, that I feel the worst about in the sense that I listened to the rhetoric that was out there... Craig Hodges and Mahmoud [Abdul-Rauf], both of them. The rhetoric out there... the message from their teams basically was they were washed up, that [they] lost a step and they couldn't play any longer. And I bought into that rhetoric, which I think most teams must have because nobody was signing those guys. Both of those guys could shoot the ball. Even if they'd lost a step, everybody's looking for shooters, especially coming off the bench. And I should've known better because we drafted Craig Hodges with the old San Diego Clippers. I had a relationship with Craig. I knew Craig. We got him in, I think, the third round. It's back when we had 10 rounds of the draft. And Craig was a really good player for us. Then, he goes on and obviously has the success he had in Chicago.

If I had to do it over again, knowing what I know today, I think I would've signed both of those guys. Partially because we needed shooters, but probably I would've also done it just because I think it was the right thing to do because nobody was signing them and they deserved an opportunity to continue playing. But my point is whether they lost a step or not -- and I don't know the answer because we never brought them in -- but from my perspective, I can't speak for other GMs, but I wish I would've given them an opportunity to come in and play for us and see if they could help us win games.

Etan Thomas: It's interesting. We had this situation pop up recently, and I mentioned it in the article, with Carmelo Anthony. The word around the NBA was that he couldn't play anymore, that he was a troublesome player, that he caused trouble -- all of the different things that were put out there by different sources. And it was just amazing to me how everybody believed it, and he was out of the league for a year!

Pete Babcock: Yeah. And sadly, that's why I commented. I think it happens too often, where management buys into what they hear and it scares them off a little bit or they just… It's not like an official “blacklist.” It's not that you're blackballed from the NBA. There's nothing sent out saying, "Don't sign this player." But people buy into the rhetoric that's out there. And they assume that it's accurate or they don't want to take a chance.

And, like I said, if I could go back and do it over again, both Craig and Mahmoud, I would've signed them both. Not just one of them; I would've signed them both. And I was wrong in not doing that. And then I could find out for myself. And, as I said, it's extra sad for me because I knew Craig really well because we had drafted him. I knew what kind of person he was; I wasn't concerned about that at all. I was just concerned that the word out of Chicago was he couldn't play anymore.

Etan Thomas: You said that there's not an official blacklist put out and nobody tells you, “Don't sign this player.” But do you think it's possible that baseless things are intentionally put out by whoever because they know this will have an affect on teams and they don’t want this player signed? It seems too calculated for all of these different cases to just happen by accident.

Pete Babcock: No, that's a fair point. I don't know if I have a good answer to it, but [when] something happens, whether it's a political statement like Kaepernick or if it's [something else] that develops a life of its own, then people are afraid. They're going, "Well, gee, what do we do? If we bring this guy in, our fans are upset with us; a certain segment of the fan base is upset." I don't know if there's a good answer to it, but these things take on a life of their own.

And I never knew Kwame Brown, but I heard stories about his work ethic being questioned, his motivation to improve, [that] he just didn't have the burning desire to maximize his potential that he had as an NBA athlete. And I listened to those things and I figured, "Well, it's probably accurate," because you figure that the word coming out of Washington was the reality.

Etan Thomas: Yeah. And that's why right now, you see Kwame taking issue with certain people who repeated those things. There’s video of Stephen A. Smith repeating those things over and over and over again. He was going to college campuses and repeating this stuff. He was repeating it over and over on ESPN. Every opportunity he had, he would say these things. But I was teammates with Kwame and I saw how hard he worked and his motivation. It was just the opposite of everything that you just said. After reading my article, a lot of people were shocked that the media can have that amount of influence and affect a player’s contract talks. But what you're saying right now is that they definitely do have an effect, right?

Pete Babcock: It does have an effect. And whether it's professional sports, whether it's the political arena, it doesn't matter. Stuff gets perpetuated and repeated over and over again. On the plus side with the media, they can work hard and do their research, but it depends on who they talk to. So, they talk to people who believe whatever the false narrative is. So, if you're in the media, it's like, "Well, I talked to so-and-so. And they told me they worked with this player firsthand and this is what their experience was. So, I know for a fact that the player doesn't work hard or the player doesn't [do this or that] because I heard it from this person who actually worked with him." So, it's not always where the media is intentionally trying to spread false information. But, again, as I said, these things develop a life of their own and it just builds and builds and builds. And unfortunately, that's [only worse] with social media today. It's worse today than it has been in past years because of the propensity of social media. It didn't used to exist.

When I started in the league, there was no talk radio even. They didn't have sports talk shows. When I was in Denver is when they first started. And in the beginning, I'd get calls from talk radio shows. Irv Brown started a talk show, and Irv was a long-time referee and had coached. And they started this talk show. But they would call me in the morning and say, "Hey, we're going to propose on our show today a crazy trade that we know you would never make, like you should trade Fat Lever for this, this and this. And we know it's crazy, but it'll generate a lot of calls. People will phone in. So, don't think that we really believe that you should trade Fat Lever, but we're going to throw it out there. We're just letting you know ahead of time." So, I'd say, "Fine. It's your talk show. Talk about whatever you want to talk about." But eventually, the stuff became a little more sensationalized, a little more attacking. Not their show, but just the medium itself... It was viewed by people who were in the business, on the franchise side of things -- whether it's coaches or GMs -- almost feeling like the talk-radio medium and then social media as almost a negative, like all they do is attack all the time. So, I don't know what the answer is to it, but it's part of reality now.

Etan Thomas: You brought up so many interesting points. And those are two of Kwame's points right now. One is that these talk-show personalities, like Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith, become the source even though they're reporting things that aren't factual or they're baseless or they're not verified. And, like you said, it takes on a life of its own. That’s how rumors spread, and then people accept them as true. And you said that some GMs do their research and some don't. Some listen to these reports, whether factual or baseless, and then others don't. How often does that happen? I mean, you said "most." Of course, you never want to say "all." But is it something that is the norm, where people -- GMs, presidents, teams -- listen to those rumors?

Pete Babcock: Yeah. Again, I can't speak for everyone. It's all an individual thing. But I think, in general, too often in management, you're swayed somewhat by the public perception that's out there. And so, [with] the draft, when you're making a decision on who to draft and there are rumors out there, "Well, this guy has a questionable character," or, "He's got this red flag about whatever." If you really do your research carefully, you can find out whether it's true or not. Sometimes that public perception sways management, and they'll go like, "I'm not going to take a chance. I don't know if the story's true, but our fans think it's true, or there's enough out there that people might think it's true, or we don't want to be associated with it, so we're not going to draft that player," whoever it may be. So, yeah. Again, it's one of these gray areas. You can't really divide it into the right or wrong, or yes or no. It's a gray area. And I think it depends on the individual. And one GMs going to be different from another.

And, as I said, I think it was a big mistake for me not to sign Craig and Mahmoud when I had an opportunity to. I don't know if other GMs would feel the same way. But I had no problem personally with Mahmoud, his religious beliefs and his [point] that he was making. That didn't bother me a bit because I felt he had a right to do that. Now, maybe had we brought him into our franchise, I'm sure there'd be fans who would've been upset with me about it, but I wish I would have gone [through with it]... If I could go back in time, I would've addressed it, definitely.

Etan Thomas: In my article, another connection I made is that a lot of these things were specifically done toward Kwame Brown since he came into the league straight out of high school. I was part of the Players’ Union, and I sat across from David Stern. I heard him repeat those same things that Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless said about Kwame and attach it to why high school players should not be allowed to come straight to the NBA, why there should be an age limit. But from what you heard about Kwame Brown, in particular, just speaking for you, did that make you kind of think twice about drafting a high-school player?

Pete Babcock: Yeah. It would factor into my thought process because my thought process, when I was working as a GM and we were allowed to draft high school players, was, in general, stereotyping most 18-year-olds [as] not mature enough yet to handle the business of professional sports. [It wasn’t that] physically they aren’t capable of playing, but I would look back at myself when I was 18. I was way too immature. If you had thrown me into any kind of a business at that point, I wasn't ready to handle it. But that's a generalization. There are always exceptions to the rule. I'd go out and watch LeBron play. I'd watch Kevin Garnett play. I'd watch Kobe play. And it's like, these guys are exceptions because their talent level was so above board of what was normal for that time. I coached Kobe's dad with the old San Diego Clippers. And so, I knew the family. I remember going to see Kobe play a home game at his high school and met with Joe and Pam, his parents, at the game and talked to them for a while. And I knew that he was most likely going to come out. They hadn't made a decision yet, but he most likely was going to come out. With those guys, those three in particular were so talented that, yeah, even though maybe conceptually I thought that there should be an age limit of players coming in, I would've drafted any of those three players.

Etan Thomas: But when you heard all of those things about Kwame Brown, did that change how you viewed high school players because of what you heard specifically about Kwame?

Pete Babcock: For me, personally, I would still want to research the player carefully. I'd want to study them, do all the background on them, spend time with them personally, get to know them as an individual. And then, for me, I would make the decision based on how successful I thought that player could be and [whether he could] help our franchise be successful. So, I would hope that I wouldn't let the Kwame Brown situation, whether accurate or inaccurate, factor into my decision-making going forward. But I would take it all in. I would try to study it all. And so, again, I don't know if it's that gray area. I don't know if there's a good answer to it.

Etan Thomas: So, it could be a factor, but not the factor?

Pete Babcock: Right, right. You'd look back and you say, "Okay, what's past history tell us about high school players?" Then, you go through all the high school players who have come into the league and succeeded, those that didn't succeed. And why did they not succeed? Was it a lack of talent? In judging the player's physical ability? Something that happened, just immaturity or lack of preparedness for getting involved with this hard-nosed business of professional sports? So, you try to factor all that in.

Etan Thomas: And the problem is that with Kwame, what you're factoring in is a false narrative.

Pete Babcock: Exactly.

Etan Thomas: Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, at the beginning of last year, there was a narrative that COVID was a hoax. Regardless of who started it or what station promoted it or whatever, it was out there. And then some people behaved accordingly, although all of the data showed that it was very real and people were dying. That just shows you how strong narratives are. So, going back to Kwame Brown and why he wants to hold the media accountable for how they portray athletes, he's using himself as an example to show how they can negatively impact a player’s career. This is bigger than just Kwame Brown. It’s about the media having a responsibility to present the facts. Would you agree?

Pete Babcock: Right. Absolutely. Without question.

Etan Thomas: Thank you. That's what I needed. I appreciate you being honest about this. A lot of people just never made that connection. They never thought of it like that. Before, people were like, "Oh, athletes just need to get tougher skin. Everybody gets criticized." Everything like that. We're like, "No, let me break down how it all works!" And especially when it's a false narrative, it’s unfair. The story could have been "Kwame Brown, even at the young age of 17 and 18, was able to persevere through an impossible situation with Doug Collins and Michael Jordan on his back, and he never broke, although they tried to break him.” But that's not the story that was told. If GMs constantly heard that story, that would've had a different effect, right?

Pete Babcock: Well, Etan, let me tell you a story that went around the NBA. And you would know, since you were there. And I'm just going to tell you what was heard around the NBA. It was a story around the NBA, and it could be totally false, I have no idea. But [the story goes] that when Michael Jordan came back to play, one of the reasons he came back to play was to try to motivate Kwame. And that he started his Breakfast Club that he had in Chicago -- where they'd have early-morning workouts and Michael would bring guys along to work out early before practice and then take them to breakfast, and then they'd go to practice. And that when he came back to play, he tried to get Kwame to come to his early practices and Kwame said, "No, I'm not getting up that early to work out." Now, that's a story that went around the NBA.

Etan Thomas: That's completely false. I was there. That is completely false.

Pete Babcock: I'm asking you because you were there. You lived it. But that's what was heard around the NBA.

Etan Thomas: Wow.

Pete Babcock: I don’t know who started that; I have no idea. I never heard it from Michael. He never said it. But somebody started that and it developed a life of its own.

Etan Thomas: Wow. And that’s the interesting thing: They don't ask the people who were right there! They don’t ask any players or Michael or Kwame. Those should be the main sources that you ask for something like that, right?

Pete Babcock: Exactly. But that's the kind of thing that you would hear. So, talking to teams, they'd go like, "Oh wow. This guy... Michael Jordan asked you to work out with him, and you turned him down?! I mean..." 

Etan Thomas: Wow. Yeah, no.

Pete Babcock: If you hear that story, you're going, "Who wouldn’t want to work out with Michael Jordan?" If he ever asked you to come work out with him, you go work out with him!

Etan Thomas: Earlier, you said the radio host told you that they were going to put something out there and they knew it wasn't true. They knew that trade wasn’t going to happen, right?

Pete Babcock: Right.

Etan Thomas: But they knew it was going to gain attention and stuff like that. I saw with my own eyes the media making things up about Kwame that would get attention. So, all of a sudden, stories like, "Oh, he didn't know how to order food from a restaurant. He didn't know what a dry cleaner was.” All of this crazy stuff. And those stories got all of this attention in Washington. And I'm sitting there like, "Wait a minute. We go out to eat on the road all the time. He knows how to order food just fine. What are they talking about?" And that's the problem with the media wanting sensationalist things that get clicks and attention. That's where the media has to be held accountable. It can't be like the National Enquirer or the tabloids where they just put out rumors or anything like that. If you're an outlet like ESPN or The Washington Post, you need to have some factual basis to what you report and what you allow your media personalities to say. 

After 20 Years of Public Degradation, Kwame Brown Is Fed Up

“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses. The press is so powerful in its image-making role." - Malcolm X

I didn’t want to touch on any of this. I even tweeted that I was going to mind my business on this.

However, since Kwame Brown posted that first video on his IG account (plus additional videos on IG Live and his YouTube page "Bust Life"), there have been multiple media outlets that have reached out to me to inquire if I would come on their show. They wanted me to get in the middle of what was going on with Kwame and Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes, and my answer has consistently been an adamant, "No." I told them that they were not going to use me to fan the flames of this beef. When I first caught wind of it, I immediately tweeted that I hated seeing good Brothas beef to this level over something that could’ve (and should’ve) been fixed with a phone call, and I still stand by that.

I also have a lot of respect for all of them. I am still amazed at all of the work that Stephen Jackson has done around the world after George Floyd was murdered. I’ve interviewed both Stak and Matt for my show, "The Rematch," and for my new book on white supremacy and police brutality that I’m currently putting the finishing touches on (shout out to Haymarket Books). Kwame and I have been friends since we were teammates with the Washington Wizards for four seasons, so I have always been in his corner. I immediately ordered some shirts from his clothing line for me and my son. (We got "Momma’s Cooking" and "My Momma’s Son" shirts).

I support all of these Brothas. I do believe they will eventually reach peace in their own time and show all of the world how Brothas can resolve differences peacefully, and then, maybe even work together and achieve something that Pac and Biggie never got the chance to do. Again, I fully believe that will happen in time. And when they do squash the beef and make peace, I want to hear all of the media who have been fanning these flames to be just as loud as they are now... but I doubt we will hear a peep out of the media about that. They love to promote drama and infighting, especially with Black people. It gets ratings and that’s why I emphatically told them all, "No." I’m not coming on any of your shows to join you in fanning these flames. 

In addition to the media, a lot of NBA executives and former Wizards executives started reaching out to me, saying, "Hey, we know you and Kwame were always friends. You should talk to him." My answer to all of them was, "And say what, exactly? Kwame is a grown man, and y’all are just worried that he’s coming for y’all next. So, no, I am not interested in speaking to Kwame on your behalf."

Kwame has a long list of people in the media who have consistently degraded his image, his family and his reputation. They have attacked him as a man for two decades and he has finally had enough. 

It’s like the movie "Kill Bill" when Uma Thurman had the list of all the people who tried to kill her and was crossing them off one-by-one. Well, that’s what Kwame is doing right now. So Stephen A. Smith, Skip Bayless and all those other media people who have assassinated his character for literally 20 years are now feeling the wrath of Kwame Brown. 

Many people have asked why I keep bringing up the media and why I'm so anti-media. They say it’s the media’s job to report, and Kwame, Stak and Matt are doing all of this themselves on their own platforms. People say to me, "What about sticks and stones?" and, "Kwame is being too sensitive," and, "The media criticizes all athletes," etc.

Yes, the media’s job is to critique athletes' play. So for instance, if they report that a player isn’t rebounding the ball the way they should or that their defense is lacking or their shot is off or they aren’t playing up to their potential, that’s all fair game.

But when the media attacks someone personally and creates a false narrative about a person’s character and manhood, that’s an entirely different subject. It is done far too often now that media personalities are treated like celebrities and paid salaries comparable to professional athletes. It seems the louder they are and the more negative they are, the more they are rewarded.

With Kwame, it was so much deeper than the media simply “talking bad" about him. The public degradation and the false narratives perpetuated by the media actually hurt Kwame financially, as NBA teams listened to those narratives regardless of whether they were factual or unsubstantiated.

In fact, false narratives kept Carmelo Anthony out of the league for more than a year. NBA teams were scared to touch him. So, yes, Kwame has a valid reason to be upset with the media because they took money out of his pocket with the way those false narratives destroyed his character. 

The media could’ve told the story of how he persevered through an impossible situation in DC with Michael Jordan and Doug Collins, and how he fought through unbelievable adversity at 18 years old. They could’ve covered how he never broke despite Collins and Jordan's attempts to break him. Instead, they began broadcasting a false narrative that was detrimental to Kwame when it came time for teams to sign him. It lowered his market value. They remembered what was said. It didn't matter that there were no facts or proof; the rumors that were created by the media impacted these decision-makers. 

In one of Kwame’s videos, he briefly mentioned how he was treated in DC and how the situation was set up for him to fail. He also said, "Ask Etan Thomas, he’ll verify everything I’m saying." This led to my phone being flooded with even more calls, so I decided to reach out to a few other former Wizards so we could all verify Kwame's remarks. I brought Jahidi White, Tyrone Nesby and Chris Whitney on my show, "The Rematch," to discuss what we collectively saw. And just for the record: Kwame didn’t exaggerate one bit about how he was treated in DC. In fact, we also recalled a few horror stories that Kwame left out. 

But the media didn't tell those factual stories. All they had to do was ask someone who was actually there. I was there and Istill asked others for their account. Do some actual investigative work!

But that’s not what they did. And one of the biggest culprits was Stephen A. Smith. There are countless videos -- and I will include a compilation so nobody thinks I’m exaggerating -- of Stephen A. Smith bashing Kwame. He said, “He’s a scrub, he can’t play the game of basketball, he has small hands, he can’t catch the ball, he's got bad feet, he can't really move... he doesn’t really know what he’s doing, he doesn’t have a post move that he can commit to memory, he has no game whatsoever, he plays no defense, he doesn’t have the heart, the passion, or anything that comes with it." He called him a "bust" and constantly called out Kwame's work ethic; for example, he said, "He didn’t work hard in 10 years," and, "[He] never worked and put forth his due diligence." Stephen A. refused to pronounce Kwame's name correctly. He called Kwame “nothing” and actively campaigned for the Knicks not to sign him.

At the end of this compilation, you'll see that there's actual footage of Stephen A. Smith going on a speaking tour to colleges, high schools, and middle schools to continue his public degradation of Kwame. He exploited every opportunity to further these false narratives. He shouted fabrications that were simply baseless. The footage shows him telling college students that Kwame was immature and not ready mentally, emotionally or psychologically. 

Now, I’m no lawyer, but I would think that Kwame Brown has a slander case that he could bring against Stephen A. Smith (and a lot of media members) considering how he was defamed, as long as there's no statute of limitations. He would likely win because the proof is readily available. 

Roundtable: Who's the best college player that never became a star in the NBA?

I remember seeing articles about Kwame not knowing how to order food in a restaurant, which I knew was a lie because me and Kwame went out to eat on the road and he ordered food just fine. There were stories about how he didn’t know how to use dry cleaners. People wrote that he was depressed. Not to mention the pieces about how he was garbage and a bust and shouldn’t be in the NBA. They used words like "worthless" and a "waste." None of that was true or accurate, but that’s the narrative that was constantly repeated over and over and over again until everyone just believed it. 

When you repeat something a million times, there will be people who believe it and act accordingly. It shifts their opinion. It’s like brainwashing. And that’s exactly what the media did with Kwame. Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless, in particular, did this and there are many others who joined in (and I’m sure Kwame has them on his list). That’s why I told any media member who reached out to me that I had zero interest in talking to Kwame on their behalf.

That narrative the media created was used in more ways than a lot of people know. For a large part of my NBA career, I was on the executive board for the Players' Union. I was also part of the negotiating team. I was one of the people whom Billy Hunter consistently included when we sat across from David Stern and the NBA Board of Governors to negotiate the collective bargaining agreement. I remember Stern using Kwame Brown and that same narrative that was broadcasted by Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless and others as a justification as to why we needed to create an age-limit rule. They said that teenagers aren’t mature enough and that Kwame didn’t even know how to order from a restaurant and how much of a “disaster” it was to have young high-school players thrown into the throes of the NBA. He actually quoted the same narrative Stephen A. and others were constantly repeating, and I heard that with my own ears. 

Of course, Stern didn’t use the examples of Kobe Bryant, Jermaine O'Neal, Kevin Garnett or LeBron James to show that high-school athletes can successfully make the jump to the NBA. And yes, this position was loaded with hypocrisy. To have no issue with sending an 18-year-old overseas to war but adamantly objecting to them playing in the NBA because they don't have the mental, physical and emotional capacity to handle it is almost laughable. Also, there was no objection for European players turning pro at 13 years old over in Europe (and I never once heard David Stern or anyone else use Darko Milicic’s failures to justify why there should be an age limit for Europeans). They welcomed them with open arms. Stern wanted to expand the NBA worldwide so he wouldn’t say anything against that expansion, but he had no problem using Kwame Brown as the poster child for the age limit. 

People always ask me: If you have such an issue with the media, why did you become a member of the media? The reason is because I want to do things differently. One of the main reasons I created "The Rematch" was to give athletes a platform to retell their story. I wanted to give each individual an opportunity to reclaim their image from these false narratives created and spread by the media. My hope is that this makes the media as a whole rethink they way they cover athletes in general moving forward. 

To all the media who joined in with Stephen A. Smith, Skip Bayless and others to assassinate the character of Kwame Brown over the last 20 years: Before you say something about him now, you really should think it through -- or the next video he makes might be about you.