One Year After Pacers-Pistons Fight, Tough Questions of Race and Sports - New York TimesAs much as Stern, who became commissioner in 1984, could make you crazy with his bullish attitudes and unfailing buoyancy, there was no doubt that he loved his league, and cared about those who passed through it. No less a social commentator than the Berkeley academic Dr. Harry Edwards - never a wallflower when he sniffed racial injustice on the American sports scene - counted himself as an admirer, calling Stern “an honest broker of the product who, at the end of the day, respects the men who play in his league and the community from which they come.”
Given his liberal politics and his longtime relationship with the African-American community, it was a delicate balancing act to be the top N.B.A. cop, to operate a league that was trying, as Stern said, to “bridge both populations,” the predominantly corporate crowd in the premium seats that accounted for roughly 18 percent of the league's $3 billion in revenue and the younger demographic driving the licensing and merchandising sales.
Handling the fight in Auburn Hills was akin to walking the racial high wire without a net. Even as he punished the instigators to calm sponsors and fans, Stern was privately troubled by the belief that the behavioral bar was set higher for a league largely dominated by African-American players making huge sums of money. And who, as Stern put it, “are unencumbered by helmets, long sleeves and pads.”
Few modern athletes seemed to rouse negative emotions the way pro basketball players often could. Even in N.B.A. fights that were confined to the court, the sight of large black men rushing off the bench to throw punches at one another tended to evoke outcries in the media and from fans about the end of sports civilization as we know it...But insisting that the fight was just a one-time event - “the perfect storm,” he said - was no way to acknowledge the mistakes and missteps made by the N.B.A. in particular and the basketball industry at large that had helped create the conditions for the chaos to volcanically erupt.
People I have known for many years who were at the Palace of Auburn Hills that night spoke of the anger in the air, palpable and ugly, a gladiatorial ambience that over the years had become pervasive in too many N.B.A. arenas. This was partly attributable to the intensity between physical rivals, but it was more a byproduct of a regrettable marketing scheme to create an in-your-face product that was edgy enough to resonate with the young and rebellious, those who would buy the jerseys, play the video games, create the buzz.
However, the fans paying a king's ransom for the expensive seats were much less forgiving, more easily antagonized upon the sounding of those deep-rooted racial alarms. Drunk or not, too many basketball fans had reached the point where they objectified the players, related to them as societal stereotypes and through flimsily disguised racial codes. If the imagery of large black men beating on defenseless white fans was alarming, the too-widely accepted pastime of affluent whites feeling empowered to verbally abuse half-dressed, sweaty black men should have evoked even more discomfort and disturbing American historical chapters.The irony was that, the more the fans shelled out for their seats, the closer they got to the action, the wider the gulf between them and the players seemed to grow. The arguments over which side of the basketball divide was more to blame could be carried on ad infinitum but, when all was said and done, the sad spectacle revealed more about profiteering than it did about punches, more about how gluttonous corporations had steered the sport off course and over time created a powder keg ready to blow on a short racial fuse.
This is a book I'm looking forward to reading.
Crashing the Borders: How Basketball Won the World and Lost Its Soul at Home
The NBA is partially culpable, with their long-term marketing agenda of celebrating the individual player over the team, and by the leagues insistence upon hyping the so-called gladiatorial ambience.
I think the Pacers and the Pistons are going to end up in the E.C.Finals this year.