It was the late 90s and a star (well a star in his mind) high school wide receiver was talking trash on the practice field.
The kid liked to talk. His teachers said he had a gift. Words just flowed from him naturally and instinctively without much thought, but with much ease. He was using that gift to berate any and all defensive backs on his team by letting them know they couldn’t guard him in 1 on 1 press coverage.
He was so confident (some would say cocky) that he challenged the entire secondary. He said he would beat all four of them for TDs in a 1 on 1 drill. He said go get whoever is left at the school and bring them out to the field to view his domination.
Slowly a crowd started to gather – maybe 10 or 20 kids at first as he took on his first challenger.
Quick move, swooosh TD. One down, three more to go.
Our cocky WR easily scored two more TDs as the crowd now swelled to around 100 people. The final 1 one 1 battle was the cocky WR versus a very soft spoken but excellent cornerback named Wayne.
Wayne didn’t talk much. He had a pretty rough life up to that point. No one really knew what happened to his parents – just that he was moved from group homes to foster homes, before being taken in by a priest at the high school. The other thing was he was fast, really really fast. But, our cocky WR wasn’t concerned, he had beat Wayne before in practice and he could do it now.
They lined up face to face with the crowd cheering and all the pretty girls watching. The cocky WR liked this type of stuff. He was a spotlight guy, had no filter and loved the attention.
The QB says hike and BAM, quick jab step, swim move and our cocky WR has a step on Wayne. Just a step, but that is all he needed. The QB lofts a beautiful pass that is about to land perfectly in our cocky WR’s hands, but before it does……………
He starts talking.
“I told you, you can’t guard me, I don’t even know why you are embarrassing yourself like………….”
As he said the word “like”, the ball hits his hands and he bobbles it. Not a big bobble, not a long bobble, but enough of a bobble to give Wayne, who was focused all the way through the end of the play. a chance to grab our cocky WR’s arm as the pass dropped to the ground.
The girls laughed, the crowd chuckled, Wayne got hi-five and hugs from his teammates and our cocky WR was left to figure out what happened. He had made that catch 1000 times before. He was embarrassed, not because he dropped the pass, but because he had his guy beat. He had won the battle.
Our Cocky WR’s head coach was a Jewish man working at a catholic high school who was about 5 feet tall and looked exactly like J. Jonah Jamieson from The Daily Bugle. He liked the cocky WR, because he wasn’t just a player, he could break things down like a coach. (The cocky WR actually drew up plays for a new trips set that the team was using effectively that year.)
He walked over to his Cocky WR, who was still in shocked and asked him…..
“Do you know what happened?”
The reply he got seemed simple enough from his player.
“I bobbled a ball I should have caught.”
The old coach smiled at his Cocky WR and said….
“No son, you celebrated winning a battle before you finished winning the war.”
You celebrated winning a battle before you finished winning the war……..
You celebrated winning a battle before you finished winning the war……..
You celebrated winning a battle before you finished winning the war……..
As you can imagine that cocky wr grew up to be a halfway decent sports journalist named Robert Littal. Even in my youth, I wasn’t too proud to listen to what people were telling me and that phrase has stuck with me to this day.
When you win something your natural instinct is to celebrate. I beat Wayne cleanly that day off the line of scrimmage. That was the battle. But I forgot the goal was to score the TD. So, I won the battle, but in my exuberance I lost the war.
We won the battle against Donald Sterling and when I say we I mean YOU the people won the battle. Donald Sterling has been getting away with this for far too long and you made a stand. The fans, players, social media, TV networks, sports radio hosts, bloggers and everyone who said we aren’t going to stand up for this type of behavior got Donald Sterling up out of here.
But, Donald Sterling isn’t the end game. He, in the grand scheme of things, is just a pawn and frankly a sacrificial lamb for the NBA and their owners.. Pay close attention to what Sterling says in those tapes.
He speaks on being involved in a culture that looks down on minorities, women and even white people that he doesn’t deem to be on his level. This isn’t a singular individual who just happens to be a racist, he is telling you this is how people in his circle think. This is the world he lives in. This is how minorities and others are perceived by the upper crust of society. These people aren’t random, they are CEOs, owners, politicians and decision makers in our society.
Donald Sterling was a jealous old man who didn’t like his side chick flirting with black guys on Instagram, but because of that, we get an inside look on how Sterling on those like him think about minorities as a whole.
There are 30 NBA owners and 29 are white. The one owner who most people thought was the most progressive, Mark Cuban, was the one who said we have to watch out for a “slippery slope” when getting rid of owners who have a disgusting belief system.
That scares me, not just as a black man, but as a human being. Sterling talks about he can’t control the way society it is and he doesn’t want to change it. His view of society is slanted, but shouldn’t be discarded as something that many in his position feel. These owners and people in positions of power in athletics are born into a certain superiority complex and culture where they feel minorities are inferior to them. So, when a minority tries to step into their world, it is almost impossible for them to gain acceptance, because they weren’t born into that good old boy world.
Maybe a better way to explain it is to quote BANE.
“Oh, so you think darkness is your ally? But you merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn’t see the light until I was already a man, by then to me it was only blinding. The shadows betray you because they belong to me.”
I think if we hooked up a lie detector test to some of these owners, their views wouldn’t be that far removed from Sterling’s thoughts – because they were born into this culture of superiority, it is ok for black men to play the game, but not give the orders. There is still an underlying master/worker relationship that is embedded in many of the owners of these professional sports franchises.
I never equate these things to slavery, because slaves had no choice, no voice or no union to threaten to boycott. They weren’t getting paid and seen as celebrates. With that being said how many of these owners see players as property?
I give you Dan Gilbert speaking on FREE AGENT Lebron James.
As you now know, our former hero, who grew up in the very region that he deserted this evening, is no longer a Cleveland Cavalier.
You simply don’t deserve this kind of cowardly betrayal.
This shocking act of disloyalty from our home grown “chosen one” sends the exact opposite lesson of what we would want our children to learn. And “who” we would want them to grow-up to become.
But the good news is that this heartless and callous action can only serve as the antidote to the so-called “curse” on Cleveland, Ohio.
The self-declared former “King” will be taking the “curse” with him down south. And until he does “right” by Cleveland and Ohio, James (and the town where he plays) will unfortunately own this dreaded spell and bad karma.
Does that sound like someone who respects “FREEDOM” or someone who sees the athlete as nothing more than property and finds it disrespectful that his property had the audacity to explore a better situation for himself and his family? What is more likely, that Dan Gilbert is more like Sterling or someone who has never uttered any of those type of phrases we heard on the Sterling audio?
Donald Sterling didn’t need to be an owner of a NBA franchise and we should briefly celebrate the fact our collective voice got the ball rolling to getting him out of the league, but that was getting passed the line of scrimmage. Even that battle won’t be fully won until there is a vote and all 29 owners vote to take ownership away from Sterling. If even one owner votes to keep him in the league, we need their name and we need to ask, no DEMAND answers why.
Racism, prejudice, ignorance, sexism and bigotry in sports isn’t going away just because Donald Sterling has banished. It isn’t going away in media, fans or management. The majority of people in this world are awesome, but we can’t ignore that there is a culture that birth Donald Sterling and others like him. Are we just happy, making it passed the line of scrimmage or do we want to try to finish what we started? Can we eliminate it completely? Probably not, but does that mean we can’t try?
We have an opportunity to do something much greater if we don’t lose our focus patting ourselves on the back, because by celebrating too early, you only end up dropping the ball.