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| Against the Spurs, Tuesday night, Kobe made a $100,000 whoooops. |
For starters. Many of the people up in arms about what Kobe said are bringing up the fact that it was a nationally televised game on TNT, that kids could have been watching, kids who idolize Kobe and emulate his every move. True enough. And how many kids do YOU know who can read lips? How many of them would have known what he said if the internet hadn't detonated like the Death Star immediately after the incident? Had we, the adults, not immediately blown the whole situation way out of proportion, the vast majority of kids probably wouldn't have caught what he said. Shouldn't we be more concerned about kids who, after seeing Kobe's chair punching and towel throwing tantrum, decide that these actions are necessary in their 8th grade AAU games?
Also, how dangerous of a precedent does this set for the league, from a practical standpoint? Is the NBA aware of how many times Kevin Garnett drops F bombs directly under the microphones on the hoops? Are they aware that whenever Kenyon Martin gets pumped up and starts yelling at the opposing crowd, he is clearly not asking them nicely how late Taco Bell is open? How often are you going to slap fines on KG and K-Mart? Especially at $100 grand! It's impossible to actually police the issue, and it's just going to result in a bunch of inconsistent rulings and pissed off players. And now, if they decide NOT to police the issue, a certain member of the Lakers is going to be very upset at how light his wallet is feeling.
But let's get to the actual issue. For the record, I'm all for gay rights, I'm absolutely against hateful and insensitive slurs, and (most of all) I'm totally for punishing Kobe Bryant for anything and everything we possibly can. But all this finger pointing and hand wringing at Kobe is disregarding the larger issue: the word "faggot" has become a common insult in our society. Gay-bashing is rarely the actual intent, but few, if any, of us can truly claim that we have never used the word. Anybody with half a brain would realize that Kobe meant nothing by it, except to use strong words to insult someone he felt had done him wrong. He doesn't think that referee Benny Adams, who he was yelling at, is gay. If Benny was gay, Kobe would more than likely accept him, in the same way that if Charlie Villanueva actually had cancer, Kevin Garnett wouldn't have called him a cancer patient.
In the heat of the moment, the people who are paid to be the most competitive human beings on the planet, and are encouraged by fans to be as intense as they can, say things they wouldn't have said when they have cooled down. The only way Kobe's words actually would have offended anyone, if the camera hadn't been on him at the time, would be if teammate Joe Smith, who was sitting next to Kobe during his tirade, was gay himself and heard him.
And THAT'S the core issue here, in my opinion. This has entered our every day vocabulary; it's something we can say without real meaning. Whether or not you believe that homosexuality is ok, a hateful slur has become par for the course. How could hatred be ok, regardless of what you believe? Hatred leads to Rodney King. It leads to the Holocaust. And of course, it leads to Matthew Shepard. What interests me about this is that the NBA feels that by forcing Bryant to apologize on TV and hitting him with a fine, they think they have dealt with the issue. But blaming Bryant isn't the answer, because it's not his fault. It's ours.
Please don't think I'm excusing myself from this. I'm not. I'm just as guilty as you, or anybody else who has ever jokingly called a friend a fag or a homo. If you want to know, if I want to know, what the real point of all of this is, we need to stop for a second, take a breath, and pry the log out of our own eyes before we try to get the speck out of Kobe's.
And after we get the speck out of his eyes, take two fingers and jab. It's the playoffs, baby!
Another sidebar about if they DO continue policing every little thing like this, there will be a lot of pissed off players like you said. Aaaaand with the possibility of a lockout next year, pissing off the players is something we should probably not do at this point. Telling NBA players that they have to be careful about what they say during games is like telling drunk people to not be stupid. Yeah, they say something or do something that they shouldn't have done, but when they sober up (or the game is over), they cool down and can act like normal humans again.
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