It's all relative

Everything is relative to something else. A toothache is bad, but it is not as bad as having one of those 24-hour bugs that feels like a meat-grinder in your stomach, and you wish you were dead. The Seattle Seahawk’s quarterback Tarvaris Jackson had his highest ever QB rating ever with 20 pass attempts or more—96.4—against the pathetic St. Louis Rams on Monday Night Football. On the other hand, Aaron Rodgers had his "worst" game of the year against Oakland this past weekend: a 96.7 rating. Rodgers, in trying to surpass Brett Favre's single season team TD pass record that day, completed only 3 of his last 10 passes--including four straight misfires near the goal line; I still say his Achilles Heel is when there is pressure on him to perform. Oh, and by the way Packer fans, Rodgers needs 334 yards passing to finally break Lynn Dickey’s 28-year-old team season record; Dickey still holds the single game regular season mark of 418 yards.

Meanwhile, it appears that former NBA star Charles Barkley is going to have to stomach Tim Tebow Mania for at least another week, because the Chicago Bears failed to put an end to the “madness”—blowing a 10-0 lead in the final minutes and losing in overtime to the Denver Broncos. A measure of how extraordinarily lucky the Broncos have been is that they have only outscored their opponents 164-162 during their 7-1 run. If you want to know how easily luck can bounce in the other direction, take the Packers’ first eight games of the 2005 season, when they outscored their opponents 166-159; their record? 1-7, in their only losing season in the Favre era. If the Broncos somehow pull a miracle out of their fundaments against Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots, their opponents might consider another strategy: Clean living and praying to God to help them mend their sinful ways. I’m only being half-facetious here; maybe what Barkley doesn’t like about the Tebow story is how (in relative terms) it is the complete opposite of what we see happening on some basketball courts in a most embarrassing fashion.

It is not precisely truthful to say that the incident that occurred during the recent Cincinnati-Xavier contest was mere anecdote; it is what naturally occurs when people interact with each other in an uncivilized manner. After pre-game taunts over the radio and social media outlets, and a couple more in-game taunts and shoves, events came to a head with 9 seconds left in the game, when the inevitable all-out brawl broke out. Cincinnati’s Yancy Gates bounced a basketball off the head of one Xavier player before sucker-clocking Kenny Frease for no apparent reason, save pure malice. Amongst the ensuing mayhem, a coach could be seen chasing after another Cincinnati player as if he was trying to catch a feral dog. By the time “order” was restored, the game had been called.

Now, it is true that the two teams are cross-town “rivals,” but that does not mean players from each team should be exchanging messages intended to be demeaning and inspire bitter feelings; it is simply not sportsmanship—which is apparently something that high school coaches don’t teach their players anymore. We all know how inner-city youth cherish “respect,” even if they don’t know what it means beyond the physical threat posturing, or accord it to other people themselves. “We got disrespected a little bit before the game,” said Xavier’s Tu Holloway. “Guys calling us out. We’re a tougher team. We’re grown men over here.” Men in what sense? Because they are “big?” And: "We’ve got a whole bunch of gangsters in the locker room—not thugs, but tough guys on the court.” I doubt many people outside the inner-city environment will “get” the “subtlety” of difference between the two terms; the “action” on the court appeared both gangsterish and thuggish.

Of course, real “men” are not below this sort of thing. We remember last year’s NBA Western Conference finals, when the Lakers’ Ron Artest was being himself, not the “Meta World Peace” pretension, or the winner of the J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award. Anyone aware of Artest’s past can’t help but notice how it drips with irony. I suppose there is a difference between personality on and off the court, and with Artest it must be as wide as the day is long. I won’t forget Artest literally shoving one of his own teammates out of the way in order to land a forearm smash into Dallas Maverick guard J.J. Barea’s face out of plain malice—leading to yet another one of his many suspensions. Andrew Bynum, apparently acting out of the same impulse, performed what a broadcast announcer called “One of the biggest bush league things I’ve ever seen” after knocking Barea to the ground in the final game of the series. Bynum was thrown out of the game, and it was ironic watching not just the police but Artest give him a “protective” escort from the court.

Artest has had such problems before. He was suspended for sticking an elbow in Manu Ginobili’s face in the 2006 playoffs, but he will be forever remembered not for his new name or a head-scratching “citizenship” award, but for the infamous 2004 brawl in Detroit against Indiana when Artest was playing for the Pacers. It has to be admitted that this “incident” would never have extended as far as it did without the “help” of Pistons fans. But it also has to be admitted that Artest was the instigator, and his laying on the scorer’s table was bound to excite some reaction from an incensed fan, in this case throwing a cup of Pepsi. Artest then went into the stands and started pummeling an innocent man, and several other players joined in, one or two taking shots themselves from irate fans. When Artest finally returned to the court, he encountered what appeared to be some idiot Latino fan, acting puffed-up as if he wanted to “throw-down.” He probably wasn’t expecting Artest to step forward and clock him without otherwise legitimate provocation; he probably wasn’t expecting an Indiana coach dressed-up in a suit to start pummeling him while he was on the ground either, or while getting up being sucker punched by the Pacers’ Jermaine O’Neal.

How does Artest (I’m sorry—“Meta Peace”) explain himself? When he was traded to the Houston Rockets in 2008, Yao Ming expressed half-jokingly that he hoped “he's not fighting anymore and going after a guy in the stands." Artest responded by saying “I'm not going to take it personal. I understand what Yao said, but I'm still ghetto. That's not going to change. I'm never going to change my culture. Yao has played with a lot of black players, but I don't think he's ever played with a black player that really represents his culture as much as I represent my culture." A scary indictment of today's culture and its arbiters? But give Artest his due: He’s being entirely truthful here, and it certainly gives insight into a world that most people have only seen from the outside, but played out on occasion on the basketball court.

Not that any of this is a solely American phenomenon; we’ve seen it played out on European soccer fields and in places where the people have been stereotyped as “inscrutable.” Last year, a “friendship” tour in China by a Brazilian basketball team ended after a wild melee on the court; in an effort to out-do themselves, the Chinese managed to instigate another “international incident” when the Georgetown Hoyas stopped by for another “friendship tour” last August. During a game against one of China’s professional men’s teams, the officials called almost all the fouls against the Hoyas in an effort to keep the game close, mostly ignoring the thuggish play of the Chinese. When a cheap-shot foul was finally called against one of Chinese players, words were exchanged between the Hoya and the offending Chinese player; after mutual shoves, all heck broke out. The Chinese players and half the “fans” gang-rushed the court; one Chinese player was seen holding up a chair looking for a head to crack before he was restrained, and a maddened “fan” was seen trying to stomp on a Georgetown player lying on the ground.

A Washington Post reporter covering the game noted that the Chinese players, who were older professional players, were being embarrassed by the college kids; since they couldn’t win fair and square, they tried to “muck it up” by playing unduly physical—“crossing the bounds of good sportsmanship.” He accused the Chinese officiating crew of being incompetent and allowing the situation to escalate by being so one-sided in their calls. When Georgetown coach John Thompson III asked the police to restore order, they refused, and so with 9 minutes left in the game he took his players off the court, under a shower of water bottles thrown by Chinese “fans.” Later, the police refused to provide an escort for the team back to their hotel.

Where does it all start? In China, it’s likely because the Chinese are told that they are superior to the “colored” players and it is a disgrace for them to lose; instead of accepting defeat, they try to even the “score” by kicking people while they’re on the ground. In this country, we have to point the finger in the home, the media, and in the schools. Who is teaching kids sportsmanship? And we don’t even need to confine ourselves to inner city schools. There was an incident earlier this month involving the girls basketball team at Kenmore East High Scholl, outside of Buffalo, NY. After the coaches were done lecturing, the girls got together to conduct their secret pregame locker room chant: “One, Two, Three N----R.” Tyra Batts, the only black player on the team, says she expressed shock and indignation. She says that she told her white teammates that she was offended by the racial slur and they shouldn’t use it; she claimed that the other players told her it was no big deal, that it was just a word, not a label. School district officials claimed that no adult—not even the coach—was aware of the “psych-up tradition.” Doubtless a “tradition” passed down from a time when racial insensitivity was considered “normal.” Batts also claimed that her white teammates “routinely made racial references and jokes” during practice. References about slavery were common, and Batt’s said the coach, Kristy Bondgren, was aware of these comments, but did nothing to stop them. The slurs only came to light after Batts brawled with a teammate who called her a “black shit,” and then everyone acted so shocked. "The minute an adult knew, we started our inquiry and investigation," said the school superintendent Mark Mondanaro.

The funny thing is that these kids had to learn this behavior from someone, like an “adult.”