The NBA regular season is dead. Steph Curry’s right ankle and knee killed it.
That’s the big-picture takeaway from Curry limping back to the locker room with a knee injury midway through the Warriors’ Game 4 blowout victory over the dysfunctional and disinterested Houston Rockets.
Gregg Popovich and the Spurs took the right approach to the regular season. Golden State chased Michael Jordan, the ‘96 Bulls, 73 victories and immortality. San Antonio pursued a title. So did the Cavaliers, the Thunder and the Clippers, the primary threats to unseat the Warriors.
Just so we’re clear. I’m glad Golden State set the record for victories in a regular season. The Warriors’ pursuit of history provided intrigue, substance and entertainment to a season that otherwise would’ve solely been about Kobe Bryant’s obscene, season-long masturbation.
But the reality is, with Curry undergoing an MRI today which revealed an MCL sprain that will keep him out at least two weeks and raises questions about his health beyond that, the regular-season-coasting Spurs are in better position to win the West than GSW. Maybe that will change. Maybe Steph’s knee and ankle will be fine by the end of the second round of the playoffs. Maybe this is just a scare that will be an afterthought come June.
Regardless, moving forward, all teams will adopt San Antonio’s 82-game philosophy. It won’t just be old teams loaded with veterans that coast during the regular season by sitting their stars. The more we learn about our bodies and the importance of sleep and rest and recovery, the more teams and individual players will choose the Popovich approach.
Media-driven faux and/or over-the-top outrage is not harmless. The consequences can be dire, particularly for poor people of color.
In fact, generating media outrage is a common political tactic used to sway the public to support laws, regulations and wars that victimize the poor. President Nixon launched America’s drug war by propagandizing exaggerated dangers of drug use.
The cocaine-overdose death of basketball star Len Bias and subsequent media hysteria contributed greatly to the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, a bill sponsored by Democrats that strengthened predatory mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Democrats wanted to look tough on crime and they used the media outrage surrounding Bias’ death to get the bill passed.
“We would not have had mandatory minimums if it had not been for Len Bias, because that changed the whole political equation,” Eric Sterling, one of the architects of a law that put mass incarceration on steroids, told Al Jazeera.
Allegedly well-intentioned Democrats used a black basketball star to enact a law that has disproportionately negatively impacted black men. Liberal Democrats now call the ramifications an unforeseen consequence. An objective reading of history would label the ramifications as “predictable.” Whatever the case, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and accidental consequences.
I bring this up because Greg Hardy, Ray Rice and other black athletes are being used as the Len Biases of domestic violence. Personal outrage is driving the media narrative surrounding domestic violence. Sports pundits are building their brands by topping each other in expressing their outrage over Hardy.
Looks like Twitter canceled the social justice warrior revolution. America’s much-anticipated Arab Spring has been aborted in favor of Thursday Night Football. No one should be surprised.
Twitter never was ‘bout that life.
Pretending to be the hub for revolutionary change was just a fashionable branding strategy that backfired. It happens. Malaysia Airlines, after the disappearance of Flight 370 and the shooting down of Flight 17, launched a “Bucket List” marketing campaign. LeBron James did that whole “Decision” thing.
Hipster bloggers convinced Twitter to morph into the angriest, politically correct safe space on the planet. The bloggers acted as George Zimmerman-like, volunteer thought police, patrolling Twitter 24/7 as roving lynch mobs looking for independent thinkers to bully. The price was Twitter’s originality and humor. The thought police turned Twitter stale and dangerous. No one “plays” at Twitter’s house anymore. It’s no place for fun. Kids avoid it. Twitter stock is down 66 percent in the past year. It can’t attract new users.
Time for a new strategy. SJW kicked to the curb for NFL.
Is there anything more establishment than getting in bed with billionaire NFL owners?
Don’t blame CBS for its shitty NCAA Tournament selection show. Blame American culture.
We don’t fix shit anymore. We just put our hands in the next guy’s pocket. Yeah, I just butchered Frank Sobotka’s legendary quote. Long live I.B.S. Local 1514!
CBS has been trying to mask college basketball’s decay for 30-plus years, ever since it wrestled the rights from NBC in 1982. And truth is, college basketball has been in decay since Moses Malone skipped the whole college basketball experience in the 1970s.
Hoya Paranoia, the Fab Five, the purity of Duke, the General, Coach K, Tark the Shark, Big John, Dickie V, “Send it in, Jerome!” and even President Obama’s Bracket have all just been television props intended to distract viewers from a carcass that once carried the souls of Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton, Elvin Hayes and Larry Bird.
Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith, voices of the NBA, are new props, added in recent years to create the illusion that basketball’s most important ambassadors follow a dying brand. It’s not hard to understand why CBS extended the selection show from one hour to two. Have you seen college basketball’s regular-season ratings? Can you really blame CBS/TNT from trying to ring some value out of the $11 billion it gave the NCAA to broadcast college hoops? Next year they should turn the selection show into a 24-hour telethon and announce three teams an hour. Better yet, I’d demand the selection committee completely snub the highest-ranked team in the country, so that there’s something controversial and debatable to talk about. Do something to make Jay Bilas’ head explode on live TV.
The cost of orchestrating an in-your-face, disrespectful and non-strategic civil rights campaign via Twitter is now coming into view.
Maybe now the well-intentioned youth swept up in the Black Lives Matter propaganda will realize the most sophisticated and surveilled country on the planet (USA) won’t be revolutionized in the same 140-character fashion as a CIA-manipulated outpost in Northern Africa (Tunisia). Maybe now the young people who define pro-black as anti-white and dismiss any thoughtful admonishment as respectability politics will begin to recognize the courage and wisdom of strategic civil disobedience.
The Twitter slingshot Black Lives Matter brought to a drone fight has failed to duplicate the “Arab Spring.” It has wrought “Trump Winter.”
Congrats, Black Lives Matter! You didn’t lie. You told us this wouldn’t be our grandparents’ civil rights movement, a movement that produced voting rights, access to schools and eventually President Obama.
Diss-respect, race-bait politics has drastically expanded the Republican base, moved Donald Trump close to the White House and crippled the University of Missouri’s budget. DeRay McKesson and the other BLM activists are the toast of the Tea Party. What the Tea Party couldn’t do in 2012, BLM has done with an ease and swiftness that brings a wide smile to the face of white bigots. Four years after America re-elected a black president by a wide margin, America is as racially polarized as we’ve seen it in 40 years. This isn’t America post-Rodney King or OJ Simpson verdict. Those were one-offs, moments of division sparked by singular events.
I’m going to try to handle this latest sports racial “controversy” with sufficient tact and empathy.
Seahawks safety Kam Chancellor and ESPN broadcaster Cari Champion are both well-intentioned and sincere. They believe they’re fighting discrimination by using their platforms to publicly shame two white women who made the mistake of not recognizing Chancellor’s celebrity and conducting business on Chancellor’s terms.
Chancellor and Champion, black people, are not fighting racial discrimination. They’re being allowed to use their platforms to fight for wealthy celebrities to have their celebrity recognized and catered to at all times. They’re making the same mistake Champion’s white colleague Britt McHenry made in her infamous interaction with a tow company employee.
Many people wondered why ESPN failed to fire McHenry when video of her condescending, “I’m in the news, sweetheart. I’ll fucking sue” tantrum surfaced.
This is the second installment of “Country Corner with Uncle Bobby,” a new J.School feature written by Bobby Glanton-Smith. Read the first article here.
The thing about growing up country and poor is we never acknowledged our poverty or lack of big-city sophistication around strangers. Mama kept us suited and booted at church, when we went into town or to any important school functions.
We looked the part.
The young man LeBron James don’t look the part in Cleveland. He left his King’s crown in Miami and applied for Emperor status back home. He claimed new territory that no other player had ever staked a claim to in the history of sports. He wanted all the power, all the responsibility of building a champion. He wanted the power Michael Jordan could never wrestle from Jerry Krause in Chicago. It’s looking like LeBron brought the wrong tailor with him to Cleveland. City folk might say “The Emperor has no clothes.” In Murfreesboro, we’d say “LeBron shit and fell backwards.”
Power corrupts and exposes. The Emperor is now dealing with the unintended consequences of wielding power that compromises the ultimate objective of winning championships.
I’m too old to subtweet. I keep it plain. LeBron built a bad roster and now wants us to believe his “beautiful mind” is just too beautiful to be understood by ordinary folk. Oh, we understand. Hell, we overstand. LeBron blessed the acquisition of Kevin Love and publicly supported the re-signing of Tristan Thompson, a player repped by LeBron’s sports agency. LeBron defended the acquisition of the mercurial J. R. Smith and the often-injured Iman Shumpert and assured everyone that Kyrie Irving would flourish alongside the Emperor. Really? That ain’t what I’m watching when the Cavs play.
Here’s my social media philosophy: Judge my columns. Enjoy my tweets.
It’s my attitude because I believe there’s often a disconnect between what people think and what they believe. We think all kinds of foolish things that we don’t really believe.
Example: I think I’m the perfect man for NBC’s Tamron Hall. I think this most days. Do I believe it? OK, bad example. Better example: I think I’m as handsome as Denzel Washington. Do I believe it? Not really.
My point is, the thoughts spewed on Twitter and Instagram are often incomplete and not reflective of people’s genuine beliefs. Our thoughts help shape our beliefs. The expression of thought also exposes our thinking to higher levels of thinking. That’s what I absolutely love about social media, the opportunity to expose my thoughts to pushback from others. I try not to overreact to people’s thoughts because I know I think a lot of stupid things, too. I’m far more confident in what I believe.
It’s important to be tolerant of people’s impure and incomplete thoughts.
The vigilante journalists, social justice warriors and feminist media personalities determined to stain Peyton Manning’s legacy won a fleeting victory Monday.
During the most memorable retirement ceremony since Lou Gehrig declared himself “the luckiest man on the face of the earth” 76 years ago, a reporter asked Manning to comment on a two-decades-old controversy the New York Daily News reshaped into the second coming of Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill.
You could hear champagne corks popping all over social media. Peyton Manning was shamed for all of three or four seconds on one of the greatest days of his life. A segment of the sports media held him accountable for an allegation we don’t know to be true but one that fits important, clickable agendas – sexual harassment and white privilege.
It’s a victory that will hurt black athletes and black people in the long run. That’s a consequence the politically correct won’t share with “Black Twitter,” the group that has come to see Manning as the embodiment of white privilege. The truth is, Peyton Manning as racial-wedge issue is a loser for black people. We lose when we diminish a man for moving past mistakes made in his youth.
Before I go further, let me be clear: The single inquiry regarding Manning’s Tennessee locker-room incident did no damage to Manning’s classy retirement ceremony. Manning easily brushed it aside, the media gathered in Denver eventually laughed it off, and the national media pretty much ignored it all together. ESPN’s audio feed mysteriously short-circuited during Manning’s reply.
Stephen Curry captured our imagination Saturday night.
The reigning MVP and leader of the defending NBA champion Warriors entered a rare entertainment galaxy, a solar system inhabited by truly transcendent stars, the performers who make us contemplate the meaning of art and leave an indelible mark on the Zeitgeist.
The Saturday Night Special Curry unloaded in Oklahoma City felt like Michael Jackson unveiling the moonwalk while singing Billie Jean during “Motown 25: Yesterday, Tomorrow, Forever.” Curry’s 2015-16 season is a remake of Jackson’s Thriller, an endless release of shimmy-worthy, Scoreboard Magazine hits. The 46 points and 32-foot, game-winning dagger Curry dropped comprise the performance that launched Curry to a higher stratosphere.
The Thunder controlled Saturday’s contest pretty much start to finish. They outplayed the Warriors, leading by as many as 14 points and for all but 29 seconds. Golden State had lost 11 of the 12 previous times it had visited OKC. Early in the third quarter, Russell Westbrook, the second-best player in the league and the freakish, muscular anti-Curry, crashed on the MVP’s ankle, sending Curry into the locker room hobbling.
They make movies about what Curry did once he returned. He finished the night with an NBA-record 12 three-pointers, including the heave heard round the league.
