We Matter

by Etan Thomas

  Smith: Unfortunately, some of us have the mind frame that if it’s not happening to me, then why should I be concerned about it? So those coaches saying, “No, it’s not happening to me, but I am concerned and bothered and frustrated by it,” that raises a different type of awareness that I don’t think we could do on our own.

  Etan: Who surprised you the most?

  Smith: Steve Kerr and Van Gundy. Only because Steve Kerr has typically been very quiet and mild-mannered, and he spoke with so much intensity . . . And Stan Van Gundy just blew me away because of the passion behind it . . . as if he himself was experiencing this. Or that it happened to his brother or father . . .

  Etan: Moving from the NBA ranks to the high school ranks, there were a lot of coaches who collectively with their team took a knee. What did you think about that?

  Smith: I never understood the problem that people had with Kaepernick . . . If you think about this, how can we as a country not support that? He took a knee in order to make a statement, and he explained his reasoning and his logic very eloquently afterward, so whether you agree or disagree with what he was actually saying, how could we as a society not support his right to do so? I thought it was beautiful what he did. I thought it was beautiful what the college players and high school players did. I thought it was beautiful what the WNBA did. But for people to be upset with them to the level that they were upset just baffled me.

  Etan: A lot of the young people are saying, “We protest, y’all are mad, we riot, y’all are mad, we speak out, y’all are mad, we take a knee, y’all are mad, and then we’re killed by the police, and y’all are silent.”

  Smith: I have a little bit of a different viewpoint. I think that it’s almost like they want you to be violent. When you riot, they expect that and they can accept that. And they know how to react to that. But when you . . . express your opinions and your viewpoints eloquently, as Kaepernick did, and as a lot of the high school and college athletes I saw did, that’s more intimidating. They don’t know how to handle that. The thought-provoking responses are met with more hostility. Intelligence is probably the sharpest weapon and intelligence is feared . . . You are mentally challenging me and I can’t handle that, and it makes me even more angry. That’s what we dealt with then, and that’s what we deal with now.

  Etan: I coach AAU and I know you do as well. How important is it for a coach to also be a mentor, specifically at the amateur age?

  Smith: I have been blessed to have great coaches who were also great mentors . . . Basketball teaches lifelong lessons, and we should utilize sports as a vehicle to be able to instill those lessons into our young men. I think the educational value that sports can provide is severely underrated. People think that it’s all about winning and getting buckets, and it’s absolutely not. I have a kid on my team and I was talking to his parents, who were telling me that they felt their child should be playing more, and that they were considering moving him off the team because they were not happy with the amount of playing time that he was getting. So I told them, “Your son is going to go to the next team, and he is going to play about the same amount of minutes.”

  But on my team, he has a quality he’s learning that is far beyond basketball. If Johnny says, “Let’s all meet over here at ten,” every single one of the players will be over there with Johnny. Some CEOs don’t have that quality . . . And his parents were completely unaware that he had that potential inside of him, but I have been nurturing and encouraging that, and it will be invaluable to his character far beyond his basketball career, wherever that may take him. So you would be doing him a disservice by removing him for a situation that is nurturing a special quality in him.

  Etan: How important is it for the Inside the NBA crew on TNT to use your forum to educate and lead in the same way we were talking about?

  Smith: Well, it wasn’t always that way, but I think as of late, it has become that. I think that Charles [Barkley] has a lot to do with that, honestly. Even though we may not like some of the things he says, his ability to bring unique ideas and nonbasketball vernacular to our show all started with him, and people have to recognize that. People look at us as the voice of basketball, and it’s important for us to be able to tackle all types of issues, and to not shy away from anything if that’s what’s on the hearts and minds of the people. We are not the game, but we are the voice, for sure, and we have separated ourselves to be able to make that statement.

  Interview with Adam Silver

  Like Ted Leonsis, the commissioner of the NBA, Adam Silver, has said that he values and respects the opinions, thoughts, and beliefs of the players even when he doesn’t necessarily agree with them. The NFL, obviously, with what we are seeing happen to Colin Kaepernick, may be quite different, but when I spoke with Silver, he expressed great pride about how he personally values activism.

  Etan: What makes the NBA different from other leagues?

  Adam Silver: I feel like I really only know this league, and I will say that, to me, I inherited a legacy of activism within this league. People like Bill Russell, who not only was an activist in terms of things that mattered in society, but also even on behalf of player rights. Bob Cousy, another person who I’ve gotten to know well over the years in the league, who is one of the founders of the Players Association along with Oscar Robertson. There was a precedent and a history here at the league of using the league and our players’ voices on important issues that mattered far beyond the game of basketball . . . I like to think it would be no different at any other well-run company that has highly valued employees. It’s critical in this day and age that your employees do feel that they have a vital voice about the direction of the company and about the conditions under which they work.

  And so, when the Donald Sterling matter happened, my first instinct was to turn to our players, and at the time, Chris Paul not only was a member of the Clippers, of course, but he also was the president of the union . . . We quickly established a rapport in terms of how we were going to deal with this situation. A lot of credit goes to Kevin Johnson, former player . . . Kevin happened to be leading the search for a new executive director at the Players Association, so he was also someone that, in essence, I could partner with at the time . . . We could talk through the implications of Donald Sterling’s statements and what made sense and how as a league we should react . . .

  I will say, what is special about this league and something I’ve worked very hard at, is making sure that players feel safe having a voice on important societal matters, because I’ve heard from employees in other industries, other companies, athletes in other situations, where they have told me they have a strong point of view but they’re concerned that it will have a direct impact on their employment . . . I think that because of the strength of the Players Association, players have felt comfortable and safe speaking out on issues that matter to them . . . In fact, we’ve made it a point to encourage players to be active participants in our system. To have a voice . . . They have a point of view about what’s happening around them. I qualify it by saying “in a respectful way,” but that’s just me.

  Etan: With the Donald Sterling situation, none of that happens if you don’t listen to the players, you know what I mean? None of that happens if you don’t make the decision to value what the players actually think and feel.

  Silver: Right. Well, again, I’d say that we are a league that is roughly 75 percent African American. The speech in question here was, of course, directed at African Americans, and I felt that the players had life experiences that I, by definition, could not have had . . . I felt it was very important to understand from a player’s point of view exactly how those words were impacting them. And to understand even from them what their expectation was in terms of the league reaction and also how it was affecting their ability to do their job. Because, remember at the time, it happened early on in the playoffs, but the Clippers were very much alive in the playoffs. Even in fairness to Chris, and others on the Clippers, who were being ask
ed by some people to boycott games, to stage protests, that they also were focused very much on their game and basketball, understandably. In part, they were looking to me. They wanted to let me know how they felt but they were also looking for me to lead . . . I think for many of the players I spoke to, they were not in a position to even know the range of options that were available to them with the league.

  The answer is yes, it was my job to bring all of those points of view together. Whether those be the players, whether it be other NBA owners, business partners of the NBA. So that then became my job: it meant that I had to be the ultimate decision maker. But again, having the support of all these various constituencies and the players’ willingness to talk with me directly and share their feelings . . . was very impactful on me.

  Etan: What you are saying, just so we are crystal clear, is that you have pretty much given them a safe space—as long as they speak respectfully, of course—to utilize their voices and follow in the tradition of Bill Russell, Kareem, and Oscar Robertson, without fear of repercussions.

  Silver: We are not a political party, we’re a business. But I also feel as a business in this day in age, especially when I think of our young fans, and we probably have the youngest fan base of all the major sports, that there is an expectation that we are going to stand for something . . . What I have tried to encourage among those players, and even among our fans, is to not become one-issue voters when it comes to the NBA. There is a type of person who can say to me, “Well, if that’s your position, I’ll never watch an NBA game again.” I really made an effort with those people to say, “Well, all right, but just because we disagree on this issue, I would hope that ultimately you would respect us for having a point of view, and I’m very interested in understanding why it is you disagree with us . . .” I’ve had those same discussions with some of our players, and some of our owners for that matter as well. The Sterling issue seemed very straightforward; some of the others we’ve been involved in have not been as straightforward. There are genuine policy disagreements. But there I felt, once again, we have this platform and sometimes it’s a platform just to encourage dialogue . . .

  People have made the comparison of our arenas to modern-day town halls. You have people from different walks of life all coming together for a common purpose to cheer for a team or cheer against a team, and we should be mindful of that and encourage people that it is safe to express a point of view. It doesn’t mean that they have to agree with you, but what I would like to encourage back is that people would respect the league. Respect our players’ point of view.

  Chapter 6

  Standing Up for Black Lives Matter Matters

  On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner was choked to death by NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo. It was videotaped and afterward shown on a continuous reel on every major news station. Although NYPD policy clearly prohibits the use of choke holds by its officers, that didn’t stop Pantaleo from literally choking the life out of Eric Garner while arresting him. No weapon was found on Garner, nor was he suspected of any other crime outside of selling “loosies,” a term for single cigarettes out of the package. To make matters worse, at the end of 2014, after hearing the case for two months, the grand jury decided on December 3 not to indict Pantaleo for the killing of Eric Garner.

  A few months later, in February 2015, the NBA All-Star Weekend was held in New York City. The killing of Garner was fresh on everyone’s mind, with the event in the very city where this tragedy took place. I wanted to do something meaningful. Something powerful for the New York City youth who were understandably upset about what had happened. So I decided to hold a Black Lives Matter event. I wanted to do it for all the young Black and Latino men and invite different NBA players to discuss Black Lives Matter, including the recent killings by the police and how the youth can survive in a system that is built for them to fail.

  I connected with Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem and they were more than happy to host the event. I warned Pastor Thomas Johnson that the program might be met with some controversy and criticism—considering how this would be happening during the NBA All-Star Weekend, and just coming off of the Eric Garner murder. The pastor told me that his predecessors in the church always prided themselves on activism and community engagement.

  I connected with Paul Forbes and his Expanded Success Initiative program, and with some administrators at New York City public schools, who were also extremely interested in their students taking part in this event. The church’s capacity was a little over 2,500, and within a few days we had exactly 2,500 students confirmed to come. I reached out to Alonzo Mourning, Isiah Thomas, John Wallace, Chris Broussard, and Kevin Powell. BET connected me with actor Hosea Chanchez and we had our panel set.

  As discussed earlier in the book, I then reached out to Emerald Snipes, daughter of Eric Garner, and invited her to participate. I told her she didn’t have to speak if she didn’t want to, but I wanted her to come if she felt up to it. She said she would be there.

  Once word started spreading, there were a lot of people who didn’t like what they were hearing and didn’t want to see it happen. They attempted to pressure me and the church not to hold the event, or to water it down to the point that it resembled an NBA Cares program (no offense). Some NYPD officers said it sent the wrong message. Their key problem was with the term Black Lives Matter.

  My family proudly wearing our Black Lives Matter shirts together.

  Interview with Bomani Jones

  I wanted to delve further into the misrepresentation and misinterpretation of the phrase Black Lives Matter with Bomani Jones, the sports journalist and ESPN cohost of Highly Questionable with Dan Le Batard. Naturally, he had many thoughts and opinions, as he has covered this topic multiple times.

  Etan: I want to read a tweet of yours from a few years ago: “Why can’t people just be honest and say, ‘I really don’t care if black people die’? The excuses sound every bit as racist. We’re not fooled.” I would love to hear you expound on that quote.

  Bomani Jones: Well, when an unarmed Black man is killed by the police, we wind up playing these intellectual games where the attempt is made to justify the fact that somebody has been killed. No matter what happened. For instance, Officer Darren Wilson, who killed Mike Brown, got over half a million dollars raised for him on Facebook and GoFundMe with the title “Support Officer Darren Wilson.” Half a million dollars!!

  Etan: Well, Daniel Holtzclaw, the Oklahoma City police officer who was accused of sexually assaulting eight different African American women while on duty, raised seven thousand dollars in less than a week before GoFundMe was forced to take it down, but I’m sure his numbers would have ended up being comparable to Darren Wilson’s had it remained on the site.

  Jones: And that’s just my point. That’s absurd! And the only thing that people know about these cops is that Darren Wilson killed an unarmed Mike Brown, or Daniel Holtzclaw raped and sodomized a bunch of Black women, and they donated! They said, “You know what, I would like to support this person and give my hard-earned money to them.”

  So what winds up happening—if you start from that point, and think that’s something that should be rewarded, to do that means you have to justify whatever the action is . . . And they end up stacking up all of these nonsensical reasons and it leaves the rest of us to wade through all of this “logic,” because those people wind up getting the benefit of the doubt where we have to respect their perspective and disprove it before we get to any other discussion. And instead of dealing with the reality—that the value of the lives of Black people are placed lower than the value of the lives of everybody else in this country—we end up having to justify the forensic evidence and everything else and try to debate every ridiculous possibility that is raised as a justification for the police yet again killing this particular unarmed Black man . . . It would be a whole lot easier if people would just tell the truth. Just say, “Hey, we don’t care about the lives of Black people.”

  Etan: And that�
�s why the term Black Lives Matter then becomes a “controversial statement,” which it really shouldn’t be.

  Jones: There isn’t anything really bold about the statement Black Lives Matter . . . You would think that the response to that from more people would be, “Of course they matter, why wouldn’t they?” We didn’t even say that it matters a lot, just that it matters. They can’t even give us that it matters at all? Not even a little bit? It has to be met with the opposition of, “No, all lives matter”? . . . Instead of them asking themselves, “Why would this subgroup feel the need to point out that their lives matter? What is going on in society to make this subgroup feel that their lives don’t matter?”

  Etan: Shortly after LeBron and D Wade and Chris Paul and Carmelo made their statements regarding Black Lives Matter before the ESPYs, you said that while you were glad they spoke out, you wanted to hear something from the white athletes who haven’t by and large been very vocal on this topic.

  Jones: Not only that they aren’t speaking on it, but they aren’t being asked to speak on it. They aren’t even asked to pick a side, lend their voice, use their platform to “bring about change” like the Black athletes are consistently asked to do. The police are treated in the discussion as whiteness, right? It’s Black people on one side, and we have the police on the other, which I believe is also telling . . . But nobody really asks white players to weigh in on this discussion in any way, shape, or form . . . And if we’re going to be honest about this, mainstream America, if I may use your term, would be more apt to listen to a Peyton Manning or a Tom Brady or a Kevin Love if they had something to say on these matters. White athletes could have a tremendous effect on not only the psyche of the masses of mainstream America, but they could move the needle toward actual justice. There is tremendous unrealized potential and unused power . . . because white athletes are simply not asked or pushed to enter into the discussion, and that’s really unfortunate.