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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT AND SOCIETY men” wrestling for position underneath the basket, a style which tends to lead to physical altercations. The 1977-1978 season was perhaps the nadir of the pugilistic NBA, with at least 41 fights. One stood out: on December 9 th , 1977, black power forward Kermit Washington, considered one of the strongest players in the league, punched white guard Rudy Tomjanovich in the face with such force that it nearly killed him and curtailed his career. Suspended for two months, Washington was at first less than contrite and placed the reaction of fans in a distinctly racial and political context, saying, “Who buys the ticket to the game—white people or black people? The answer is white people. So they were going to come down on me, the big black guy who beat up the two white guys” (Feinstein 50). At a time when very few NBA games were broadcast nationally, “The Punch” became a national issue, the subject of a New York Times editorial and fodder for Saturday Night Light. “The Punch”—or rather the widely disseminated video footage of the event, repeatedly broadcast on television—”forever changed” (Smith 134) the public image of the NBA. The Punch’s immediate and lasting impact was due to its apparent confirmation of historically persistent white stereotypes about violent black masculinity that the mainstream (generally white) media had continually reinforced. While fear of black physicality can be traced at least back to slavery, it is constantly maintained by the media’s tendency to present new information through existing frames of reference and the tendency of audiences to rely on those same frames. As Stuart Hall put it, “We mainly tell stories like we’ve told them before, or we borrow from the whole inventory of telling stories, and of narratives” (1984). The potent effects of the reports of drug abuse and violence on the NBA’s public image (and popularity) reflect the connotative meanings that white Americans associated with “blackness” at the time. For example, studies have shown that sports broadcasts tend to emphasize the physical attributes, “God-given” talent, and negative off-field characteristics and personal interests of blacks, while whites receive almost the opposite treatment (Rada and Wulfmeyer). Coverage in the press was often subtle. For example, the Washington Post on January 17 th reported that NBA Commissioner Larry O’Brien fined Boston’s [white player] Dave Cowens $2,500 and Atlanta’s [black player] Wayne (Tree) Rollins $1,500 yesterday for fighting during a game at the Boston Garden last Friday. Some sources around the league had expected Cowens to be suspended as well as fined since he threw the first punch. But the NBA report indicated that Cowens’ action came in response to an elbow by Rollins that went undetected by the officials. Therefore, the NBA said, Cowens’ punishment was limited to a fine. (D4) After noting that the league was “trying to crack down on violence” since The Punch, the article listed a number of “other incidents” during that seasons, all of which involved black players. This subtle bias is representative of most of the media’s coverage of the NBA during this period. The third socio-cultural factor leading to the NBA’s struggle during its “dark ages” was the strength and visibility of its union, the NBA Players Association (NBAPA). While “labor troubles” are often cited as part of basketball’s undoing in the 1970s, they have rarely been linked to race. In 1970, NBA and ABA team owners agreed to merge the two leagues, but the unrecognized NBAPA quickly filed a class action suit (named Oscar Robertson v. NBA after African American player Oscar Robertson, then NBAPA President) claiming that a 228
merger would form a monopoly and restrict player mobility (George 186). In 1973, a judge ruled in favor of the union. Developments in the NBAPA suit received regular publicity from 1970 until 1977, when it was settled out of court, and was often characterized in terms of players thwarting the best interests of owners, leagues and fans. As with most union negotiations, working conditions were as critical as actual wages (George 187), although the media presented greed as the players’ real motivation (Fortunato 167). The declining power of organized labor in the 1970s may have contributed to an environment unsympathetic to the player’s union, but it is not the primary context in which to understand the perception of the NBAPA. Seen in the context of the accumulation of wealth by young black men, as opposed to the broader American labor movement, poor treatment of players and a lack of public sympathy to their concerns fit into a historical pattern of white reactions to black financial success. Young black men who had already earned more money than some whites would in their entire lives were organizing collectively to demand even more. From this perspective, the NBA players’ drug of choice—cocaine—can be seen as a marker of class. As Boyd (2003) puts it, “cocaine was a drug for the beautiful people, the wealthy, the stars, the glamorous ones for whom money and access were no object” (23). By using cocaine, NBA players implicitly signaled that their wealth and power allowed them to ignore racial boundaries. Historically, African Americans who amass economic or social capital and/or rise in status—individually or collectively, as personal fortune or political movement—threaten the status quo that has privileged white Americans. During a the 1970s, a decade of relative scarcity, young black men who crossed the interrelated boundaries of color and class via their economic position posed a threat to the social order of white privilege. Black Style and White Prejudice MATTHEW SCHNEIDER-MAYERSON As the rival leagues competed, the ABA and NBA developed distinct styles that developed racial associations. The ABA operated without a television contract and on the edge of a pecuniary cliff for most of its existence (1967-1976), which forced the league to experiment in order to draw more fans. Rule changes, most notably the introduction of the three-point shot, were supplemented by the active recruitment of athletic players to create a guard-oriented style of play that emphasized movement, athleticism and showmanship. Players, coaches and owners were attentive to their fans’ desires: they developed a red-white-and-blue ball, inaugurated the Slam Dunk Contest, and promoted individual players as celebrities (Andrews 14) in order to increase attendance. Fans, players and critics often refer to the ABA as a “black” league (Boyd 2003; George 181; Andrews 14). The ABA did indeed have a slightly higher percentage of black players than the NBA, but more importantly it was “dominated by a Black aesthetic” (George 181), which is usually described as some combination of “improvisational,” “creative,” “athletic” and “intimidating” (George xvii). In the mid-1970s ABA attendance was actually increasing at a greater rate than the NBA, even without the exposure of national television (Kirchberg 146). Indeed, after the merger, many players and journalists questioned whether the NBA’s dwindling attendance had something to do with its slow-down, drag-out style of play. As Boyd noted about the relationship between white fans and black players, “they love your performance, but they hate you” (2003, 39). As we have seen, the league may indeed have been too culturally and politically “black” for whites at the time. The NBA thus faced a dilemma: how to harness the “black aesthetic” that whites found appealing while rendering “blackness” invisible? 229
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Page 13: Robertson, Oscar (2003), The Big O:
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