We Matter

by Etan Thomas

  Etan: Talk to me a little bit about the support from your peers.

  Carlos: I remember Harry Edwards attempted to educate O.J. as to why it was an imperative that we as Black athletes come together and make a statement or do a boycott . . . O.J. may have been relatively interested from a heritage standpoint, but the economic factor and the fact that he didn’t want to do anything that could in any way, shape, or form, even have the possibility of jeopardizing his economics, made him go the complete opposite way to where he made the proclamation, “I’m not Black, I’m O.J.”. . . It would’ve been tremendous, magnificent, stupendous—any other description I can think of—if O.J. would’ve stood with us, because everybody loved O.J., and by everybody, I mean white folks. You know how big it would’ve been if O.J. would’ve said, “I support the Olympic boycott,” and he articulated the reasons why? You understand what I’m saying? That’s the power that O.J. had and it was all just squandered away as a missed opportunity.

  Etan: So now I look toward LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, Kyrie Irving and Derrick Rose, Kevin Garnett, and the entire Phoenix Suns, Kobe and the entire Lakers team, including the white players, and Jeremy Lin, and even entire college teams and the entire WNBA—white and Black players stood together.

  Carlos: That is the perfect example of what athletes can do when they stick together. Back in ’68, if Tommie Smith had made the statement by himself, they would’ve run over Tommie Smith and said that this man is crazy . . . But the fact that we had an arc of unity, and not just the two of us there, and that strength caused Peter Norman to say, “I support what you guys are doing.” You’re stronger with numbers. And that’s why they couldn’t immediately squash this demonstration with the I Can’t Breathe display of the NBA players, because it was too many of them collectively doing it. And like you said, white individuals step up and support the Black athletes . . . The nucleus of the NBA stepped up—and even if it wasn’t everybody, they proclaimed to the world, “This is not right and it’s time for a change.”

  Etan: When Trayvon Martin was murdered and all of the players on the Miami Heat posed in the iconic picture in hoodies, what went through your mind when you first saw that?

  Carlos: It reminded me of the movie Spartacus. When the guy stood up and said, “Who’s Spartacus?” and the one guy stood forward and said, “I’m Spartacus,” and the real Spartacus stood up and before he could say, “I’m Spartacus,” another guy said, “I’m Spartacus,” then another . . . In essence, the Miami Heat players did the same thing in saying, “Oh, you murdered this young teenage Black man and took him off the face of this earth because he had a hoodie on?” So they made the statement to society, “No, I’m the thug, I got the hoodie . . . we all are wearing hoodies. The whole team. Black, white, or whoever. We all wear hoodies and we are all standing here telling you that you are wrong and we are standing against it.” It was a powerful and important statement. And there is power in that just as we sent a message to the world back in the ’68 Olympics.

  Etan: When you hear critics say that current athletes have no connection to their own legacy and are not following in the footsteps of John Carlos or Muhammad Ali or Jackie Robinson, what is your reaction?

  Carlos: I would tell them that they need to go back and study more and do their research more . . . The players I would even say now are more collective. We didn’t have all the Black boxers come out and support Jack Johnson back in the day and say, “Yeah, he has a white wife and has the right to take this woman across the railroad tracks whether she is white or not.” Now, of course, the circumstances were different back then, but still. Jesse Owens—the same thing when he was dealing with Hitler and the Germans in the Olympics and . . . disproved his myth that the Black athlete was inferior. For him to do that there and come home and be ridiculed—what athletes stood alongside with him? These were individuals.

  But now from a collective standpoint, I actually see growth. I didn’t just see LeBron standing there. I didn’t see Kaepernick by himself taking a knee. I saw players across the NFL taking a knee, holding the Black Power salute; even the ones who didn’t take a knee with him were publicly saying that they support him . . . They didn’t just leave it at “We support Kaepernick”—they went into detail and listed what was wrong in society . . . So those individuals who want to sit back and point fingers, those are like the armchair quarterbacks. You ain’t never been in the game or even came close to the game, but you wanna talk like you’re the MVP quarterback. Let somebody tackle you a few times then you come back and tell me about what he or she did wrong.

  Interview with Juwan Howard

  Hate usually comes with the territory when you are an athlete. Those “brave” fans say some of the meanest, vilest, most repugnant things on Twitter and in online comments sections, which sometimes serve no purpose other than allowing certain people a platform to spew their hate.

  I wasn’t really surprised when former NBA forward Juwan Howard told me of the truckloads of hate mail he and his teammates received while at the University of Michigan during the Fab Five era—a period in which Michigan’s basketball team dominated collegiate basketball thanks to five incredibly talented freshmen. It was enlightening to talk with Juwan about his experiences at Michigan.

  Etan: Can you take me back to the controversy you were involved with at Michigan?

  Juwan Howard: Being a young kid, coming from the inner city of Chicago, to be able to get a scholarship at a prestigious university like Michigan, I was completely elated. I was young, like my other Fab Five brothers. We were all teenagers and just enjoying the ride. Then we started to realize that here are these big-time shoe companies, and the one who was the sponsor of our school was Nike. They would send us a ton of shoes and apparel for us to wear on the court in order to give them the type of visibility they wished to achieve . . . They wanted their brand to specifically be associated with the University of Michigan. So, as we were becoming more mature and aware, we began to realize that this was a huge financial gain for the university and for the Nike company, but we weren’t really benefiting from it. Myself, Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Ray Jackson, and Jimmy King all barely had any money in our pockets to do anything . . .

  We were noticing our jerseys being sold in every single sporting goods store in Detroit. Not just on Michigan’s campus, but everywhere in the state people were buying jerseys with our numbers on them. And we would see the same thing when we traveled outside of the state of Michigan. We had become this global phenomenon, but we weren’t seeing any money from it. And it’s hard for people to understand how that feels unless you have been in that situation . . . So we wanted to take a stand and send the message that we weren’t going to wear this product and allow ourselves to market your brand for you, to exploit us the way you were so comfortable in doing . . . And we had incredible backlash from that. We weren’t even prepared for the level of backlash that we received, but we didn’t care . . . We wanted to not only stand up for ourselves, but we were thinking of the many athletes that were to come after us.

  Etan: Talk a bit more about the backlash you received.

  Howard: We received so much backlash and it was really unexpected. And we didn’t have social media back then. We didn’t have outlets to voice our own opinion and speak to the public, unfiltered. If we had social media at that time? Man (laughing), it would have been crazy. Actually, maybe in some ways it was good that we didn’t have Twitter accounts back then (laughing), but all we had were newspapers and media . . . to paint the picture of us the way they personally viewed us. That’s all the public was able to get. And they were so against us and everything we were about even before we took our stance . . . They didn’t like the fact that we were confident, which they considered cocky, and I still don’t know how we got branded with that word.

  We were a group of athletes who had confidence in ourselves and our skill set and we were confident enough to feel that every time we touched the floor that there was no team that could beat us. Th
e media didn’t like our appearance. They thought the bald heads were representative of a gang, or they looked at us as glorifying a gang image, which I also didn’t understand. Then they would talk about the scowls on our faces. We would dunk on someone and scowl and they didn’t like that . . . Then you talk about the black socks, they didn’t like that either . . . But we wanted to do something different and we wanted to do things our way . . . We were told we were being like a group of militants like Black Panthers on the court, as if that was a bad thing, but there were all types of letters that were delivered to the university and to Coach Fisher.

  A lot of them had a very racist and hateful tone to them. Many were latent with the N-word . . . It was like we were back in the sixties and trying to integrate an all-white school. But we were not going to allow anyone or anything to steal our joy. And we were determined to send a message with every game, every win, that it was okay that you hated us, but we were going to keep winning, and winning our way.

  Etan: You represented so much more than just the Fab Five, you represented Black youth across the country.

  Howard: Well, at that time, I can honestly say that I didn’t know that we were representing the Black community and Black youth until after my freshman year and I went back home . . . I invited Jalen, and as we were walking around Grant Park and I was showing him my hometown [of Chicago], there were tons of people walking up to us, asking for our autographs and asking to take pictures. We could not walk anywhere. And it wasn’t just the regular We are taking pictures with a celebrity, it was like we were getting hugs from young Black youth and they were saying things like, “Thanks for representing us,” or, “Thanks for representing the hood and standing up for our community.” Now remember, we are eighteen-year-old kids at this point. And looking back at it now, that entire experience was really so special.

  Interview with Craig Hodges

  Craig Hodges played in the NBA for ten seasons and led the league in three-point shooting three times. He won the NBA championship with the Chicago Bulls, and along with Larry Bird is one of only two players to win three consecutive three-point shooting contests at the NBA All-Star Weekend. When he visited the White House in 1992 for the ceremonial championship team visit, he wore a dashiki and delivered a handwritten letter to then-president George H.W. Bush critcizing the administration’s policies regarding the poor and minorities. Craig also took a lot of heat for his public criticism of Bulls teammate Michael Jordan for not using his platform to shine a spotlight on injustice. In early 2017, he published a book titled, Long Shot: The Triumphs and Struggles of an NBA Freedom Fighter. There were so many subjects I wanted to talk to him about.

  Etan: What are the main two questions that people ask you about your NBA career? I would imagine they revolve around the visit to the White House and the public critique of Michael Jordan.

  Craig Hodges: There’s a third one that people always ask me and that’s what’s it like to play with Michael. And that’s the fun side, but then for me of course the conversation is many times much more serious . . . What they don’t understand is this is a lifelong commitment for me . . . I am committed to our community and what we desire our communities to look like. People come up to me and say, “Hey, you went off on Michael and told him to do this and that.” It wasn’t about me telling Michael Jordan what he should or shouldn’t do with his money at all, it was more about . . . to whom much is given, much is required . . . We have to love ourselves and support each other and uplift each other, and when we do that, the entire community benefits.

  Now, back to M.J. specifically, he has done things to help the community and has spoken out on issues that greatly affect the community, like police brutality in particular . . . I think a lot of people took it out of perspective when I gave the interview back in the day. I wasn’t going off on M.J.—this was bigger than M.J. This was actually a lot larger than all of us . . . We as a nation have to come to grips with the questions and answers that show how the exploitation of our people and all people of color, whether Black, red, brown, or yellow, has occurred in this country and is still happening today.

  Etan: How important do you think it is to have these public discussions even if some people take them the wrong way and end up missing the entire point?

  Hodges: Oh, I think it’s very important . . . I felt like we as an organization could really get things done and help the people in the city of Chicago a great deal, and I think a lot of guys—not just Michael but the entire Bulls organization as a whole—didn’t see the impact that we could have. And me being from here, I had more of an affinity for it and more of a connection to the community . . . We could’ve been heavily promoting nonviolence and education and employment, etc.

  Etan: In 1992, William Rhoden wrote an article for the New York Times entitled, “Hodges Criticizes Jordan for His Silence on Issues.” What was the overall reaction when this article came out?

  Hodges: I really think people were just focused on the fact that we had won the championship, even to the point that the powers-that-be didn’t want that to be the focal point at that point in time. They didn’t want to look at the hurt of our people or the violence that was going on in the city . . . the fact that we were making all of this money for a franchise that could have been doing so much more to actually help the community. If you look at where the United Center is actually located, and the impact of the community around it once it was built, there were a lot of things we could do not only as individuals, not only as a team, but as a franchise.

  We could’ve been an example for other teams of what they should do in their respective communities to actually have an impact . . . We, as current and former players, have made enough money for our teams and for the NBA as a whole that we have earned the right to speak and say, “Listen, if we are making this amount of money, then a certain amount should be targeted toward urban centers to create jobs and employment for the next generation of young people.”

  Etan: But saying that publicly helps push it along. There is a big difference between having a private locker room conversation and making a public declaration.

  Hodges: Absolutely, and that’s the part that was always frustrating to me. I have heard these guys discuss these issues in the locker room . . . I know they see it. And in this generation, especially with social media, everybody is up to date and fully aware of what is going on . . . I look at it from a different standpoint. I look at it like we should create a base so wide that there is nothing they can do but to give in to our demands . . . We have to tap into our power.

  Etan: How did you have the courage to take a public stand? Especially in that era of lower salaries?

  Hodges: I never made a million dollars in a year. That’s why I respect you as well, because we weren’t the highest-paid guys on the team. We weren’t the ones getting all the endorsements and the ones making all the money on the team. So we were more expendable, when it came down to it, than the superstars. But that only made us have more power . . .

  My granddad was a great sportsman so we watched all the sports and discussed the impact of a Jim Brown, of a Muhammad Ali, of a Curt Flood and George Foreman. And I was always directed to look at those athletes, the ones who stood for something . . . Black people are my first love, and then basketball. And basketball gave me opportunities and opened doors for me my entire life, but I wasn’t going to have one without the other. That wasn’t even a question. I had to study and be intelligent about life and maintain my connection to the Black community as a whole. And that was more important than any sport.

  Etan: So how did you deal with people who criticized you for speaking publicly about these things?

  Hodges: That’s the part that is gratifying for me, the way things have come full circle, because back in the nineties, nobody wanted to publicly talk about what was goin’ down . . . And a myriad of people—my friends, my family—said I was stupid for doing it. They said, “Why are you so committed to putting your neck on the line for Black people
when most of them don’t even care?” And I’m laughing because the goal is still attainable . . . I see it happening. We both have seen people in the locker room who shared our beliefs and felt exactly how we felt. But sometimes they simply were not educated and mentored on the importance of being able to speak truth to power, but also the amount of heart that is required to be able to do that . . . It takes heart to go to the White House and stand by yourself in a dashiki and your culture. There was no hesitation in me because I know who has my back. The elders who have gone and who have come before got my back.

  Etan: Did it surprise you that so many of your peers and teammates didn’t stand with you?

  Hodges: It didn’t surprise me at all . . . I have learned those lessons of history where many people stood by themselves. Muhammad Ali stood by himself. Jim Brown stood by himself for the most part . . . It’s funny, because that’s how bad it’s become. They have so miseducated us that you can have a teammate who will run through a wall for you, take a charge from a big 250-pound mammoth of a human being, they will bust up their whole mouth and knees diving on the floor for a loose ball for you, and not think twice about it, but won’t stand up for Black people. They’re willing to take that pain, but won’t withstand this little bit of blowback from standing up for Black people.