A violent society's violent sports; the NBA joins the other major sports in brawling

Sporting News, The, June 13, 1994 by Richard Lapchick

The NBA joins the other major sports in brawling

As I watch the NBA playoffs, all I seem to hear and read about is the escalation of violence among NBA players. The brawls have been stunning for the number of players involved.

I don't like watching it any more than the next observer, and I find myself walking away from the TV. But there is so much discussion about the game being ruined and how the league has lost control of its players. I go to my office, and staff people are wringing their hands in disgust and discomfort.

People seem to accept as a fact that we are witnessing a phenomenon. As if we don't expect fights on the ice in NHL games; as if we are surprised to read about dugouts emptying out after a batter takes a hard one to his body; as if it comes as news to us that football players are told to take out the opponent's quarterback. These happen at any time in the season in major league baseball, the NHL or NFL. In the NBA, the fights seem more concentrated in the playoffs. The tension is higher, everything is at stake in our winner-take-all, runners-up-are-losers society.

Why all the focus on the NBA? I can think of a few factors. First, during the playoffs, more people are watching games. Most have no perspective on whether the fights went on all season long. They didn't.

Second, the players' muscles are more apparent -- and, perhaps, more threatening -- in the NBA than in the other sports.

I have to wonder if a third reason is at play here: Does the intense fighting in the stretch fit the typical white stereotype of blacks being more prone to violence than whites? Everything is certainly (if not clearly) being viewed through a white prism.

A profile of writers indicates the potential for bias within the media. There are 1,600 daily newspapers in the United States. Only two have African American sports editors, none in the 38 cities with pro teams. There are seven columnists and only 38 of 780 beat writers who are African American. An incredible 90 percent of the 1,600 dailies had no African Americans i sports at all! Hitting closer to home, THE SPORTING NEWS has one African American columnist and no African American editors. In television, decisions about what goes on the air are made by producers and directors. Our most recent data, from 1992, showed that of 60 producers and directors at CBS, NBC and ABC, one was African American, There were four of 38 at ESPN.

I do not want to overemphasize the importance of a racial undertone. On the other hand, I cannot emphasize enough that we live in the most violent society in the developed world. On the streets, we use our bodies and, all to frequently, of weapons to resolve disputes.

Can we really expect that this behavior would not permeate the world of sports? When we read that an athlete was arrested for carrying a gun, how do we juxtapose this with the knowledge that 21 percent of high-school students carry a weapon to school each day? Or the 2,000 high-school students are assaulted on high-school grounds each hour of every day.

The bottom line of the 1994 Children's Defense Fund's annual report: A child is killed by a gun every two hours in American; more children have died from guns in the last decade than American soldiers died in Vietnam in a similar period.

Do athletes who act violently or bizarrely have a negative impact on our children's values? If not, they certainly don't give children a boost.

It will be interesting to see how the NBA's sanctions work out. Fines are useless for players making more than $1 million each year. I think game suspensions will have a positive effect. Dennis Rodman's one-game suspension arguably cost a better Spurs team a chance to move to the next round. Rodman seems to be in his own orbit. Derek Harper, on the other hand, is a solid workman. His two-game suspension almost launched the Bulls to a four-peat.

The frequency of sanctions for fighting under Brian Burke, in his first season as NHL vice president, had a positive effect. An NHL rule that the first player to leave the bench will get a 10-game suspension has resulted in a seven-years absence of bench-clearing brawls.

Does the immediacy and certainly of heavy penalties in sport have any application in society? I was never what was called a "law-and-order" person in the 1960s and '70s, but it does make me think.

Richard Lapchick is director of Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society and a regular columnist for THE SPORTING NEWS.