Not About a Salary, but a Racial Reality: The NBA Lockout in Technicolor

Not About a Salary, but a RacialReality: The NBA Lockout in TechnicolorbyDavid J. Leonard | NewBlackMan
Withthe NBA lockout reaching a new low (or a return low) with David Stern'sannouncement of the cancellation of the first two weeks, the class of punditshave taken to the airwaves to lament the developments, to asses blame, andoffer suggestions of where to go from here.  Not surprisingly, much of the commentaries have blamedplayers for poor tactical decisions, for wasting any potential they may havehad over the summer, and for otherwise being too passive.   Take HarveyAraton, from The New York Times,who while arguing that the players will need to take risks in order to secureleverage, speculates about a potential missed opportunity:
If it sounds unrealistic tosuggest that the modern player might have considered striking first — or atleast threatening one before last spring's playoffs — that is only because thetactic has become virtually anathema, which is a mighty curious weapon for aunion to concede.
While on the phone, Fleisherlooked up the language in the expired collective bargaining agreement on Pages264-265 that prohibited players from impeding N.B.A. operations. But supposingthe players had gone ahead and walked out on the eve of the playoffs afterthey'd all been paid their regular-season hauls?
Fleisher guessed they wouldhave opened themselves and their individual contracts up to a court action. Ormaybe the owners — petrified at the thought of their profit season beingflushed — might have agreed to a no-lockout pledge for the start of thisseason. Who knows? But sometimes risk begets reward.
Whileabstract at a certain level, the argument makes sense.  Had the players been more aggressive,had they taken steps earlier, had they capitalized on past leverage, thesituation might be different.  Yet,we don't live in an abstract world. The realities on the ground precluded such steps (seehere for my past discussion).  If the efforts to blame players, to demonize them as greedy,selfish, and out-of-touch during a LOCKOUT is any indication how the publicmight have reacted to a player strike, especially one starting at the playoffs,the strategy suggested here is pure silliness. 
Moreover,it fails to understand the ways in which race operates in the context of sportsand within broader society.   Thepublic outcry against LeBron James for exercising his rights of free agency,the condemnation of Deron Williams or Carmelo Anthony for deciding that theywanted to play elsewhere, and the overall vitriol directed at playersillustrates both the impossibility of any player leverage and the ways in whichrace undermines any structural power the players may enjoy.  The owners possess the power of theracial narrative that both guides public opinion and fan reaction. 
Wecan make similar links to the larger history of African American laborstruggles, where black workers have struggled to secure support from the publicat large because of longstanding ideas of the lack of fitness/desirability ofAfrican Americans in the labor force. In other words, fans, just as the public in past labor struggles, seethe black body as inherently undeserving and thus any demands for fairness, equality,and justice are seen as lacking merit.  On all counts, the commentaries fail to see the ways andwhich blackness and anti-black racism constraints the tools available to theplayers.
Eventhose commentaries that ostensibly exonerate the players in highlighting DavidStern's strategy of throwing the players under the proverbial racial bus (hisrace card) with the hopes that the public will ultimately turn against theplayers (mostly there already) erases race from the discussion.   For example, in "Stern ducks, lets NBA players take hit," AdrianWojnarowski highlights the difficulty facing NBA players and how that realityguides the intransigent position from the firm of Stern and owners.  "So, there was the biggest star in thesport waddling onto the sidewalk on 63rd Street in Manhattan on Monday nightwithout the kind of big-stage, big-event scene that the commissioner alwaysloves for himself in the good times," he writes. "He knows the drill now: Stepout of the way, and let the angry mobs run past him and the owners. Let themchase his players down the street, around the corner and all the way to thelockout's end and beyond." Similarly, BudShaw penned the following:
Blaminglocked-out players in a work stoppage? Sounds like a plan, just one that defieslogic.
A playerstrike didn't cause a partial cancellation of the schedule. Commissioner Bully madethe call, doing the bidding of an ownership whose strategy is to watch playerssquirm when they start missing checks and wait for the inevitable wave ofpublic resentment to crash down on their heads.
After DavidStern's announcement, LeBron James tweeted an apology to fans for the lost games.Steve Nash aimed his regrets at those hurt most by the cancellation, saying"sorry to all the employees in and around NBA arenas losing work."The owners are betting you'll read over that and do what fans always do inthese situations. Scoff and say, "Sorry? Sure they are. I'd play for aquarter of what those guys make
Thereason Stern can step aside and "let them chase his players down the street"(he certainly uses language to convey a lynch mob mentality) are grounded inanti-black racism. 
Classmatters and surely the current economic crisis matters, but when the strategyof ownership is to lock their workers out and when those workers offer a concessionof at least 160 million (reduction of player's take of the BRI from 57% to53%), it is hard to argue that class disintentification drives fans and thepublic at large from players to owners. Race and the power of a white racial frame that imprisons black malebodies to a narrative of criminality, danger, pathology and greed, thatconstructs blackness as undeserving, unintelligent, unprofessional, and notpart of the mainstream, highlights the basis of this strategy.
Thelockout isn't simply about increased profits and changing the structure of theNBA so that the Cavs, Kings, and Bobcats have as much of a chance of winning anNBA championship as the Heat and the Lakers (this portion of the argumentremains suspect to me since clearly a NBA finals between the Bobcats-Kingsfinals does little to improve revenues). It as much about breaking the union, disciplining and managing theleague's black bodies in an effort to secure victory in the NBA's assault onblackness.  It is both an effort tocapitalize on anti-black racism through playing on fan/media contempt all whileenhancing their profit margins (constrained by anti-black racism) and power totransform the criminalized black body into a more profitable entity.  
In 2006, Kobe Bryant had not yet returned to his prominence within theNBA.  In wake of accusations ofsexual violence and his often-publicized feud with Shaquille O'Neal, Koberemained a suspect superstar incapable of converting talents to profits for theleague and its corporate sponsors. That year, he did secure his place inhistory when he scored 81 points in a January game.  Notwithstanding the historic nature of this performance, hisdropping 81 on the Raptors led numerous commentators to question Kobe'scommitment to his team/the game, using the moment to lament his inability tobecome the next MJ.  On the web, innewspapers, on sports talk radio, and on the various television sports debateshows, fans and sport commentators debated whether scoring 81 points was indeeda great accomplishment or a sign of a character flaw in Bryant, and thus a signof the precarious future for the NBA. 
Interestingly,similar conversations took place earlier in the season, when Bryant dropped 61on the Dallas Mavericks in three quarters.  With his team up by 40, Bryant did not play the fourthquarter, prompting fans and sports reporters to deem Bryant as selfish for hedid not return to the game in search of Wilt Chamberlin's 100 points in a gamerecord.  Greatness on the court wasone thing, but his purported selfishness, his me-first attitude, and overalldisrespect for his teammates, opponents, the fans, and the game itself,embodied the problems facing the NBA. 
Scoring 81 pointsserved as a signifier for his place as both a dollar sign and a thug within thedominant white imagination; he was marketable, yet limited as a commoditybecause he was unable to transcend the meaning of blackness.  In this instance, he, like so many NBAballers, functioned as the ultimate marker of the decay facing the NBA,functioning as both a source of celebration and a spectacle where thediscursive logic and ideological rhetoric played out on, through and within hisbody.  In other words, Bryant'sgreatness did not propel the league forward because his greatness fedanti-black stereotypes and narratives. 
The NBA'sstrategy of marketing players over teams, of commodifying stars over rivalries provedineffective because of the wider meaning conveyed by blackness within the whiteimagination.  The lockoutrepresents a reversal of this strategy by both undermining the star power ofthe NBA's elite players all while trying to create team parity.   Since the next Michael Jordan, asa post-racial fiction, appears no where in the NBA's future, the league is seton restructuring itself to further conceal its blackness even while it playsupon anti-black sentiments to cultivate support for ITS cancellation ofgames.  It ain't about their salary,it's about the race of the NBA reality that guides the NBA lockout and itsreception.
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David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of CriticalCulture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He isthe author of Screens Fade to Black:Contemporary African American Cinema and the forthcoming After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop(SUNY Press). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan and blogs @ No Tsuris.