the bone conductor

and honestly, it drives me crazy that a black member of the media would even bring this kind of shit up. there’s still plenty of actual racially-motivated double-standards being perpetrated, both in the coverage of the league and the way it operates; using this kind of crap as an example just kills your credibility. here’s a constant perception that the league has an image problem - despite record sales, attendance, etc., - because of the overtly-obvious hip hop/thug image some of the players have that a few white guys in a few news rooms just can’t seem to get past.

it’s okay in the nfl, of course. in the nfl you can take drugs, cause a shooting riot in a vegas strip club, have half the team arrested in the course of a season (hello cincinatti), and that’s okay. no one worries about the sponsors abandoning the league: exactly the opposite in fact. hell, in hockey, guys fight every night, but that’s okay too, because those are white guys and we know they’re okay. but in the nba, an accidental elbow during a game (not even called a foul 5 years ago) is now an ejection and a suspension, and an off court altercation or run in with the law, guilty or not, convicted or not, will cost a player a 10th of the season and their salary, at the very least. because we can’t let those thugs get out of control and ruin the game (and scare the sponsors)!

anyway. first off, i agree that bird has done a terrible job overall as general manager, and if he wasn’t god of indiana basketball from his college days, and larry legend from the nba (aka the hick from salt lick, as he called himself) he’d probably already be out of a job (although with the job some other gms have done over the years you never know… elgin baylor, a brilliant player and all around class guy by all accounts, was just awful for the clippers for years, for instance, before the team finally kind of turned it around at least for a few years. to be fair, the clippers have one of the cheapest and worst owners in sports, but that’s another story. and don’t get me started on larry brown, who absolutely did one of the worst coaching jobs in sports history with his brief tenure with the knicks before thomas came on board. it turns out, constantly pouting while you attack your players to the press isn’t super effective, coaching-wise.

but even without all the extremely embarrassing and absurd off the court drama that thomas and the knicks have been involved in (and even here, the comparisons are pretty unbalanced; you could talk about the trail blazers from a few seasons ago (aka the jail blazers) and their insistence on doing things like getting busted every other week for having an ounce of weed wrapped in foil in someone’s pocket and trying to get through a metal detector at the airport (brilliant!) in that class maybe, but that’s about it, as far as basketball is concerned anyway. football, now, that’s a different matter, as already mentioned), the difference between he and bird is a) thomas is the coach - when bird was the coach for 3 seasons, the pacers were an elite team every year, and he took them to the finals his last season before following through on his promise to only coach three years to avoid burnout, basically kicking himself upstairs at that point, more or less - as well as the general manager, and thomas has been simply, almost uniformly, horrendous in both aspects. he’s crippled the team for years with a series of signings and trades that, in most fantasy leagues, probably wouldn’t have even been allowed because they were so terrible, moves that gave his team an outrageously high salary while destroying their chances to get out from under them by making them long term deals for players who either can’t play, never could play, won’t play for thomas, or all of the above. the bottom line is he has *actively* destroyed the on-the-court product; if he hadn’t the other stuff would be news, but thomas would have at least as many defenders as antagonists, because it’s sports, and if you win people just don’t care that much about the rest of it. even now just about everyone will give thomas credit for making some very good choices in the draft over the years, consistently finding talented players. it’s not that the knicks are terrible, it’s that they don’t even compete half the time, and because of the just completely absurd deals that thomas has handed out, it’s not likely to change any time soon. comparing that to what bird has done in indy is just stupid. also, you know… it turns out thomas works for the new york knicks. the media scrutiny and pressure there, remarkably, are just a little higher than they might be in indianapolis. go figure.

and for the record, i’ve never liked bird, think he was just a little over-rated as a player - not a lot, just a leetle bit though (heretical as that will sound to about 99% of nba pundits), and i think if you want to talk about some racist things in the nba, maybe you could bring up how all of the white guys on the team from boston back in the 80’s have all ended up with coaching general manager gigs, despite at least two of them clearly not knowing what the hell they are doing (i’m talking about you, mchale) while a guy like kareem abdul jabbar, who is extraordinarily intelligent - at least as smart as anyone unfortunate enough to be reading this, certainly - had as much impact on the game as anyone, and oh yeah, holds the all-time record for scoring, is in the top three in just about every category there is, won a record 6 mvps (bird won 3), and 6 championship rings (twice as many as bird or his ex-celtic cohorts managed), couldn’t buy a coaching gig until the lakers threw him a bone and made him a consultant assistant assistant to help with their big guys. that’s maybe the most extreme example, but not the only one.

the ironic thing here, as well, is mr. jackson neglecting to mention that the same thomas once said of the same bird, back when they were playing against each other (and thomas’ team consistently being on the losing end) that “if he was black he’d be just another player.” which is clearly absurd, although again, back then, with most white sports fans still getting used to rooting for the black guys that had “taken over the league” and the boston-centric east coast media fawning all over bird, there may have been just a grain of truth (see: over-rated as a player, very slightly, once again).