Being a professional basketball player in the Olympics is now passé.
|  | | Vince dunks on poor Frederic Weis and this is a bad thing? |
The columnists say so.
I've been reading a lot during the Games about the preening, strutting, no-class NBA players who are denigrating the Olympics with their presence. How their joyless, bullying performances over the rest of the hapless basketball world are no longer worth the trouble. That it is time to bring back the collegiate players for whom an Olympic gold medal would be a career highlight, more meaningful. Compared to the overpaid, overhyped, pampered NBA player, for whom the Olympics is merely a means to hawk more shoes, more T-shirts. And who could not care less about representing his country.
You know, shut up, already.
This is not a defense of NBA players, many of whom are overpaid, overhyped and pampered. But you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a rotten guy in the whole bunch that's down in Sydney. (Full disclosure alert: I am not in Sydney, Australia; I am in Washington, D.C. So I only can go by what I watch and read.) But they're an easy mark. And you just get tired of the stereotype -- and all the buzzwords that people use to hide what I believe they really mean.
I cannot help but notice that the only time the attitudes of American athletes come up, it's in discussion of sports where African-American males are the predominant group. The track star Maurice Greene isn't "humble" enough; he brings attention to himself. Very few point out the truly amazing friendship Greene has with his chief rival, Ato Bolden. When Germany's Lutz Long helped Jesse Owens in 1936, it was celebrated. So was the friendly competition of decathletes Rafer Johnson and Taiwan's Yang Chuan-Kwang in the 1960 Games. But those friendships crossed racial lines. There seems to be some P.C. standard of behavior that's acceptable; cross it and you are branded.
The U.S. men's basketball team has been dominant in international competition over the last few years. So has the U.S. women's basketball team. So has the U.S. women's soccer team. The men take no prisoners. Neither do the women. As it should be. Lisa Leslie is talking smack with Australia's young star, Lauren Jackson. Brianna Scurry, the U.S. women's goaltender, was, shall we say, liberal with her interpretation of the rule that prevents goalies from moving before the key
penalty shot in last summer's World Cup victory over China. I love 'em all for it. Play hard and don't apologize for it.
But Vince Carter dunks on some guy's head, and gets into a little shoving match, and that's supposedly symbolic of the death of the Olympic spirit. What's the difference? You think Mia Hamm and Tiffeny Milbrett are any less willing to mix it up to win? You think they play any less hard, or
are any less exuberant when they succeed? Amy Van Dyken spits in her opponent's swimming lanes and gives them the evil eye before races and is
called, admiringly, a tough customer. Imagine the reaction if expectorant of any kind, for any reason, left the mouth of an NBA player during the Games.
But the women are plucky and worthy of your admiration, the writers gush. The NBA players, by contrast, are worthy merely of scorn, in part because they're rich. Even Alonzo Mourning's decision to fly back to Miami during the Games to be with his soon-to-give-birth wife is criticized by some (only a few, granted) as an example of the largesse afforded the NBA guys.
I mean, seriously. Take Kevin Garnett's place. Ask your employer for $125 million. Your employer says yes. Is that your fault? Why doesn't anybody ever ask Glen Taylor why he thinks Kevin Garnett is worth $125 million? It's a fair question. (Though I suppose
ol' Glen isn't answering much of anything these days. The union is hoping for a speedy decision on the league's charge that Taylor grossly violated
the cap with a secret deal with Joe Smith. It's not going to be pretty for the Timberwolves, I can tell you that.)
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Vince Carter dunks on some guy's head, and gets into a little
shoving match, and that's supposedly symbolic of the death of the Olympic
spirit. |
(An aside: this hasn't been NBC's finest hour, or hours, has it? If you haven't coughed up a lung or don't have a loved one lying in a broken heap in a dungeon at the hands of some totalitarian state, you don't get a feature from the Peacock. I don't mean to be flip; many athletes have overcome incredible odds and obstacles to get to Sydney, and I personally know folks who work for NBC who have worked damned hard to put the show on. But NBC makes it out like every participant has barely escaped Hell on Earth in order to run the 1,500, or put the shot. Are there no middle class athletes from middle class neighborhoods there? I mean, how hard has Ian
Thorpe's life been, really? He's seventeen.)
And I seem to recall that the athletes from the former Soviet Bloc were the privileged members of that society, the ones who got the
steaks and the attention, while the rest of the country tried to make a roll of toilet paper last a month.
I have no doubt that the NBA guys aren't staying in the Olympic village. Neither is Marion Jones. Nor, I sincerely doubt, Venus or Serena Williams. Steffi Graf didn't. Neither did dozens of other athletes in other sports. But, like clockwork, only the U.S. men are excoriated for being separated from the others.
I'm tired of "amateurism" being held up as a virtue when it comes to the Games. We crossed that bridge a long time ago. There are very few amateurs left. Very few athletes are still holding down two and three jobs to make ends meet. The best track stars get paid. The best soccer players get paid. The best weightlifters get to take home their body weight in steroids.
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I'm not saying any of the NBA players are paupers, but it's a stretch to suggest that they're household names looking to cash in on Olympic exposure for endorsement purposes. Tim Hardaway has a Doritos commercial after 10 years in the league. Jason Kidd had a shoe commercial a few years ago, but hasn't been seen commercially since. Alonzo Mourning hawks Sprite and some performance supplement. Shareef Abdur-Rahim has, uh, nothing. Ditto Antonio McDyess, who replaced Tom Gugliotta, who also had nothing. Ditto ditto Ray Allen -- although Ray did a fine job in "He Got Game." Allan Houston does a shoe commercial with that Norm guy who can build a house with a piece of chalk and some electrical tape.
Carter is, to be sure, the exception. But other than him, it ain't exactly the Fortune 500. All those guys -- Shaq, Kobe, Tim Duncan, Grant Hill -- are sitting this one out. Say what you want about the NBA guys in
Sydney, but you can't exactly say they're in it for the loot. Could it be that they genuinely consider it an honor to represent their country? Or does
that not fit the conventional wisdom?
I'm not arguing that this has been breathtaking hoop to watch. Nor should this U.S. men's Olympic team, or any other, be referred to as the "Dream Team." There was only one of those. Barcelona, 1992. Look it up.
But the object is to win a gold medal. Did you see all those gymnasts bouncing off of apparati last week? Was it pretty? Nope. Did they hand out gold
medals anyway? Sure did.
If America really believes it's time for the pros to leave, and for the Duke kids and the Carolina kids and the UCLA kids to come back, I don't think you'd get a huge argument from the NBA players. (From the Commish? A different story, maybe.) Just remember that the Australians, the Chinese and the Yugoslavs have all spent the last 20 years learning from those dastardly NBA types. They're a lot better than they were 15 years ago, when they were spanking our college kids' butts with regularity.
If you're OK with the U.S. more than occasionally getting beat in basketball, bring the amateurs back.
If you're OK with that.
Are you?
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