Trigger Fingers Turn To Twitter Fingers: Sports In The Digital Age

On June 30, 1962, Sandy Koufax threw the first of his four career no-hitters for the Los Angeles Dodgers against the New York Mets. Recorded baseball was so primitive at the time that only a single radio version of the game remains today for fans to relive the experience. More than 30 years later, when NBC cut away from game 5 of the Rockets-Knicks NBA Finals to follow the O.J. Simpson car chase in 1994, nobody outside of the arena knew what was happening on the court.

However, the technological revolution of the 21st century has created a more accessible viewing experience for fans at the game, and for those watching at home. The availability of sports data has allowed for more inclusive online sports fandom, and social media and massage boards have contributed to the continual reproduction of the sporting spectacle.

Despite individuals increasingly feeling associated with an online sporting community through social media, sports in the digital age remain reliant on the construction of heroic sporting narratives. While social media does not ostensibly exclude fans from the sporting sphere as much as it did in the past, it upholds a groupthink ideology that marginalizes opinions outside of the collective norm. Overall, social media and new sporting technology have allowed fans to establish a connection with each other and better understand the game, and for the players, new data has emphasized certain sporting techniques to perform at a higher level, but created ambiguity over who controls, and releases, technological data.

The data revolution has allowed sports teams to use wearable technologies to track player movement and apply health standards to regulate their physical activity. Teams have attempted to use data analysis to improve performance and keep players healthy, and biometrics have allowed players to use the data as a reference point for their physical activity. Player Position Tracking is penetrating all the professional sports, especially basketball and soccer, because the technology has given athletes a way to monitor themselves. 

The Seattle Sounders use wearable tracking devices to monitor their players during practice.

The proliferation of tracking technology has caused an ethical dilemma over the right of employers to have too much information about their employees. Teams blood testing their athletes, or tracking their sleeping patterns, can easily be construed as invasive labor practices. Moreover, the ownership and transparency of sports data could inhibit player’s earning power and freedom of mobility if teams use exclusive data gathering capabilities to limit their off-court activity or to manipulate their salaries in contract negotiations (agents are already deeply concerned about this potential).

Wolfram Klug contented in an article in The Guardian, "The wider stakeholders stand to benefit as much, if not more, from analytics than the players themselves.” Player’s privacy, and fairness concerns over how teams use the new sports technology, have been exacerbated by the fact that employers can sell their confidential data material for commercial benefits. Klug noted that teams should partner with “technology providers with a commitment to being transparent and acting ethically,” because of the moral ambiguities over data control. Teams may complicate the situation by distributing information to fans to ostensibly improve their experience, even though the data infringes on player’s rights.

In the pre-digital age, public engagement with sports through the radio or television medium constructed a circumscribed subjectivity of the individual viewer. Without social media to allow for fan expressionism or interaction beyond the sporting venue itself, sports fans were objectified through their subjugation to a narrowly contrived heteronormative, gendered identity of fandom. In Jeffrey Montez's Discipline and Indulgence, in a chapter of the book titled "The Best Seat in the Ballpark: Lifestyle and the Televisual Event," he said, “This [television] genre produced male sports fans as crucial objects of their technical narratives, but objects all the same.” Fans consumed sports through specifically delineated sporting spheres, restricting their access to athletes merely through a controlled and externally constructed media imagery that objectified their experience. 

However, fans over the last decade have directly interacted with athletes, and each other, through new digital technology. Maxwell Neely-Cohen referenced Durga Chew-Bose’s observation in The New Republic that, “Sports for so long were actually not inclusive… but [for] NBA Twitter fans, it’s almost, dare I say, it’s wholesome.” Social media has allowed for the creation of online fan groups that transcribe the traditional sporting spheres into online communities, especially subcultures like NBA twitter. Cohen added that through social media the NBA “promotes itself inevitably, a self-replicating monster.” Since most people have digital technology, Twitter allows the league to reproduce its sporting spectacle for a more democratized fan base. 

Amy Bass said in her book, Not The Triumph But The Struggle, track stars John Carlos and Tommie Smith “needed a space for people to see them represented in the public eye," which was only available to them during the 1968 Summer Olympics. Athletes today have a platform to speak directly to the public whenever they want. Overt political statements, like when the Miami Heat wore hoodies in solidarity with Trayvon Martin, have entered the public consciousness because of the mobility of images through Twitter. Since consumers derive their socially constructed identity from what they consume and follow, sports fans have refracted their sense of self through the accessibility they have to the actions of their favorite players or teams. As such revered figures, athletes can actively shape public discourse over political topics.

In 2012, players on the Miami Heat wore hoodies to show support for Trayvon Martin.

However, social media has allowed fans to interact with others that confirm their opinions, rather than challenge them. Cohen said, “On Twitter, each basketball fan gets to curate their own assemblage of voices.” The ability of an individual to tailor thoughts to a specific audience paradoxically allows them to interact with a specific subculture, and yet, still secludes them from experiencing dissenting opinions through a conscious social media filtering. 

Just as fans were once objectified by the television experience, as Montez said, “There is an objectified status of television sports fandom,” fans have lost their individuality by allowing groupthink on Twitter to formulate their subjectivity. As an argument solidifies itself on Twitter, and a mob mentality justifies the prescribed conventional wisdom, thoughts outside of the collective norm become ostracized. As sports media members tweeted their disdain over Cam Newton’s post-Super Bowl press conference, conformity to that opinion became the standard judgment, rather than an individual appraisal of the situation. Twitter facilitates an arena where the first opinion becomes sanctified as fact, regardless of how individuals conceive of that viewpoint. Sometimes first is not always best.

Moreover, due to the feeling of impunity online, social media has become a vacuum for societal negativity, such as when Michigan punter Blake O'Neill received death threats for his costly fumble against Michigan State.

The growth of sports documentaries in recent years has reflected a demand for stories that create a heroic imagery of the athlete in the digital age. ESPN staffer Connor Schell advised, “Sit people down and tell them a good story.” Documentaries like ESPN’s You Don’t Know Bo have consciously told a story that glorifies the sporting subject to compel the viewer towards classifying athletes as mythic paradigms. The conflation of reality and heroic narrative is not confined to modern day, as Michael Oriard said in his book Brand NFL, the original “NFL Films has sustained a sense of mythic grandeur in decidedly antimythic times." However, television networks today have even more incentive for documentaries that create a mythical athletic identity because they need a compelling story to fill their air time. These stories have reproduced the sporting spectacle to create an athletic pageantry infused with a dramatized, and often masculine, narrative of success.

Thinking Outside a Black/White Binary In Sports

American racial concretizations have constructed a racially polarized society, where self-identification has become classified based upon individual categorization into a black or white constitutive group. Sports act as a reflection of society, and the narrative surrounding athletes and sporting institutions has similarly been focused on conceptions of identity along a black-white paradigm to avoid pluralistic understandings of race. 

However, the sporting experiences of Latino athletes, a racially ambiguous ethnic group through the lens of the black-white identity binary, have shown the arbitrary nature of that very racial binary, and the fragility of racial boundaries. During the age of US Empire, non-white others delicately manipulated racial perceptions to move beyond black exclusionary sporting practices.

However, Latinos were never accepted as occupying the same sphere as white athletes, and racial standards forced the players to dissociate themselves from their ethnic backgrounds. The continued recognition of Latino “otherness” has proliferated throughout the sporting world today, and the sporting community has marginalized their self-identity and ethnic orientation. While sporting figures existing outside of the black-white paradigm have been able to transverse racial boundaries and slip into sporting leagues, their racial ambiguity has forced them to be identified as outsiders to the game, lacking any real agency beyond the playing field.

In the early 20^th century, Latino baseball players could negotiate the fluid understanding of race in America by defying the racial binary. Latino ballplayers transcended the black-white paradigm because American racial standards were based upon individualized racial consciousness. The very first Latino players in the major league, like Louis Castro and Frank Arellanes, began to blur the color line. Teams allowed for the presence of non-white others in the sport by implying that they did not directly challenge black exclusionary practices to take advantage of cheap Latino labor. Through the racialization of the Latin athlete, Latinos were prescribed a racial identity not based upon their ethnic background, but in comparison to American racial standards.

In his fantastic book Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line, Adrian Burgos said, “Latinos like Castro secured admittance in organized baseball, but this passage to acceptance did not necessarily translate into being accepted as a fellow white.” Latinos were only able to play in the big leagues because of their non-black status, but their foreignness was still pronounced because their identity was conceptualized merely as a differentiation from blackness. Burgos said Latinos “did not wholly reside in the same racial camp as fellow major leaguers,” and Latinos lack of holistic acceptance in baseball implied their lack of accepted whiteness. 

Thus, Latinos had to distance themselves from their ethnic backgrounds, and as Marcos Breton said in his article "Fields of Broken Dreams: Latinos and Baseball", lie about their African ancestry" to associate their racial identification separate from blacks. The only way Latinos could remove their inherent differentiation was through an Americanized process of racialization by distancing themselves from anything that would cause suspicion to the public’s racial perceptions. Latinos could play in the majors based upon their orientation along “Americanized” ethnic standards, but they were never truly accepted, and as Breton said, “they were treated like novelties.” 

While the slew of current Latino baseball players (Yasiel Puig, Jose Fernandez, Yoenis Cespedes, Miguel Cabrera, Robinson Cano, Felix Hernandez, Adrian Beltre, Jose Bautista, Yadier Molina, Carlos Gonzalez to name just a few) have been able to paradoxically transfix racial boundaries by starring in the major leagues, sporting discourse has constantly alienated their identity. Whereas Latinos in the past quietly slipped into the big leagues and failed to alter public sensibilities, Latino ballplayers today often play with a cultural flare while actively displaying their ethnic pride. Although so called "baseball traditionalists" like Goose Gossage ostensibly criticize foreign players for disregarding baseball’s unwritten rules, their underlying antagonism has been rooted in their lack of acceptance of Latinos, and their fear of foreigners taking over the American game. 

Since Dominican outfielder Jose Bautista’s now famous bat flip in game 5 of last year’s ALDS against the Texas Rangers in one of the craziest innings of baseball I have ever seen, Bautista has been defending himself against claims that he was showboating or disrespecting the game. (Russell Martin hitting Shin-Soo Choo's bat throwing the ball back to Aaron Sanchez in the top of the 7th, the game being played under protest, fans in Toronto throwing stuff onto the field, the Rangers making errors left and right in the bottom of the 7th, an interference review, and Bautista's home run all happened in one inning).

Jose Bautista's massive home run and bat-flip

Breton notes that back in the mid-20th century, Latinos faced the same stereotypical criticism because “labels were rooted in negative white perceptions of Latinos, labels that took hold and became a burden even the great players had to carry.” The expressionism of Latino baseball players, like Bautista throwing his bat (that was not just a normal Big Papi bat flip), symbolically threatens American racial and cultural control over foreign players, which has changed from the early 20^th century when Latinos were forced to adhere to the dominant white culture to stay in the league.

There have been many attempts within baseball to suppress Latinos, as evidenced by the fact that after studying "67 bench-clearing incidents in Major League Baseball over the past five seasons [it was] found that the main antagonists hailed from different ethnic backgrounds in 87% of the cases." The “playing the game the right way” argument implies that the correct way to play the game is based upon a white dictation of the sport in reaction to perceived Latino empowerment. Current Braves pitcher Bud Norris said, “If you’re going to come into our country and make our American dollars, you need to respect the game.” Norris's comment showed how the attempts of the baseball community to “normalize” the on-field actions of Latinos have marginalized their freedom.

Off the field, teams exploit players, and Latinos continue to be classified as outsiders. The institutional signing rules of baseball can be aligned with the long American history of imperialism, and reinforces the cultural inequality that baseball players are often trying to maintain on the field. Latin players have particularly been exploited by clubs as a source of cheap labor. 

Every MLB team today, including the San Diego Padres, have a baseball academy in the Dominican Republic. 

In an except from his book Raceball: How The Major Leagues Colonized The Black and Latino Game, Rob Ruck reflected,“Ballplayers today rarely take stands that resonate beyond the ballpark” since Latinos specifically fear any action that could subvert their chance at baseball survival. When Colin Cowherd said on ESPN Radio, “I’ve never bought into that baseball is too complex, a third of the sport is from the Dominican Republican,” he reflected a misunderstanding of the educational opportunities embedded in a racialized society for the non-white community, or the education present in foreign communities.

Furthermore, the presence of Latino players in Major League Soccer has similarly shown attempts to separate white and Latino athletic spheres, and efforts to systemically regulate the behavior of the racially non-white other. Chivas USA, which ceased operations in the league in 2014, was designed as an MLS team to attract Hispanic fans in Southern California, who comprise the largest single ethic group in Los Angeles County.

However, since the MLS consciously segregated its own league by having one team made up of Latino coaches and players, they alienated the Latinos from the rest of the league and symbolized that their presence could only arise in a specific sphere. Moreover, by constructing the team as the US version of a Mexican club team, the MLS did not allow the Latino players on the squad to define their own identity. Brandon Valeriano said on a broader scale in his article from The Washington Post, “We need to understand that the national sport should be a reflection of our views and values,” and the MLS underestimated Latinos wanting to value their American identification and not wanting their identity to be defined as “Mexican,” or as league outsiders.

Telling It All Podcast With Ben Goodman - NCAA Final Four, LeBron James, WGC Match Play, US Soccer

Topics Include: Teams Fulfilling Or Transcending Their Reputations (2:45). The Coach K-Dillion Brooks Incident (5:15). Great Sports Gamesmanship Moments (11:45). Quality Of Play Of The NCAA Tournament (18:00). LeBron James Unfollowing The Cavs On Twitter (26:40). Jason Day's Win At The WGC Match Play (29:30). The Adam LaRoche Controversy (32:00). The State Of United States Men's Soccer (34:40).

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Class Divided On The Baseball Mega-Stadium

Sports are often identified as a utopian medium for escapism and entertainment, and yet fans still widely recognize that the romantic “love of the game” can be infringed upon by the murky political and economic realities of the business. For nearly a century, baseball owners have meticulously constructed the composition of their audience by tinkering with the public’s accessibility to the ballpark, as well as the affordability of the tickets to the game. 

At the beginning of the 20^th century, baseball, a self-prescribed democratic sport that valued all social and economic groups, was directed towards the white-collar fans that could access the stadium (there is also a lot of hypocrisy in a so called democratic sport that excludes players based upon their race). However, in the 1920s, society glorified extravagance and social amusement, and sports spectatorship became a spectacle for mass consumption. Attempts were made to bring all-black baseball teams to the country’s major urban centers, although baseball still lacked its self-purported democratic basis because black teams remained reliant on renting white major league parks, and having games set up with white semi-pro clubs. More pronounced even today than in the past, baseball stadiums are no longer a place to merely watch a game, but are commercial enterprises that are divided based upon class, rather than being open to the democratic masses for communal gatherings.

In the consumer-driven economy of the 1920s, sports acted as the most prominent public sphere of leisure and entertainment for the masses. As national demographics shifted towards northern cities, baseball became an escape from the rigors of monotonous mechanized industrialization for an expanding middle class in the United States. Baseball acted as form of cheap amusement for a consumer culture. In his terrific piece for Outside The Lines on the evolution of the accessibility to the ballpark, Wright Thompson pointed out, “[owners] never raised prices during the boom of the 1920s" to keep sporting events within a manageable price range.

In response to urbanization, baseball acted as a source of communal identity, and stadiums were built in cities to function as a collective gathering of urban dwellers. A news clipping from the New York Amsterdam News recalled about a Negro League game at Yankee Stadium in the early 1930s: “Jersey will send over a vast army of rooters... Newark is a baseball town and Harlem is certain to be flooded with folks.” As entire cities like Newark began to congregate around the spectacle of a baseball game, individual identities became defined by their relationship to mass society and the social identification of an individual became connected to the larger community. Large crowds accumulated at baseball events as a form of social gathering, even as recently as the early 2000s, as Thompson said “ten years ago, it was cheaper to go to a baseball game than to a movie in half of the big league markets" because baseball stadiums accommodated the democratic masses. 

As black communities funneled into cities, the Negro Leagues were designed to function as a mechanism of collective unification. The games created a space for black enclaves within a segregated society. Gus Greenlee wanted to share the Randalls Island Stadium with the Yankees because as a news clipping from the New York Amsterdam News described, “reports of the move stimulated the keen interest of local diamonds fans... and [would] undoubtedly inject a tonic into the Harlem diamond scene.” He wanted to capitalize on the sporting interest of the growing black community in the city by using one of the largest local baseball stadiums.

However, despite the democratization of the baseball viewing experience, and its formation as the fulcrum of urban residential life, Negro League teams remained at the will of white stadium support and financial sponsorship due to their inability to solidify independent stadium deals. Neil Lanctot wrote in hapter one of his terrific book Negro League Baseball that Hamtramck Stadium in Detroit “was inconvenient for black fans because of its Hamtramck location [5 miles from central Detroit] and was controlled by John Roesink, an unpopular white promoter.” Black sports fans resented playing at white major league ballparks, and felt ostracized by the institutional white control of stadiums, which often alienated black teams from their most loyal city supporters.

While baseball still ostensibly acts as a symbol of American democratic values, baseball attendance today is highly restrictive to wealthy Americans, and caters to those that have the finances to access the luxurious stadiums. As teams have become increasingly preoccupied with short-term profit rather than with long-term fan loyalty and democratized consumption, the upper class has become the only group that can attend games on a regular basis. Season tickets for the New York Yankees Legends Suite in the eight row of Section 014A cost just under $50,000 for a single seat (not to mention the extra expenses that are inevitable with going to a ballgame like buying team merchandise). Fans need to have a sizeable disposable income to be a regular at sporting events in a major city.

Thompson noted during his experience within the Legends Suite at Yankee Stadium: “I can see the masses moving back and forth beyond the glass wall,” implying that even when “regular fans” can afford a ticket, stadiums have conspicuously been constructed to differentiate the luxury seats of the rich from the masses. Fans have always felt a connection to their team, even during difficult economic times, but the commodification of tickets, and the division of the supporters, has shattered the collective fan engagement.

The Dining Room inside the Legends Suite Club at Yankee Stadium

The business of sports has inhibited fan nostalgia, as Thompson said that an individual was not [paying] because he didn't have the money, but because a bond had been broken." Stadiums now act as a status symbol of power, as boxes and club seats have created an environment catering to the financially privileged. 

Thompson argued, “We see examples of the collapsing middle class," and cited an observation from pollster Rich Luker that, "The lower the income, the less they’re enjoying sports.” Baseball has been circumscribing its own fan base because the lower and middle class less frequently experience the thrills of the baseball stadium. Ballparks are no longer a place for communal identity formation because the democratic masses have been classified as surplus supporters to the teams.

Baseball stadiums today are representative of the commercialization of sports, as retro ballparks to watch games have been replaced by gaudy mega-stadiums that act as a shrine to the prosperity of the sport, the league, or to the specific owner (Jerry World comes to mind). The aquarium at Marlins Park and the swimming pool at Chase Field in Phoenix, which can be rented for $6,500 a game, shows how contemporary stadiums have become more opulent than ever before. 

The Party Pool at Chase Field, a site of controversy in 2013 when the Dodgers players jumped in the pool after clinching the NL West Title.

Marlins Park aquarium seats are too expensive for the ordinary fan, yet taxpayers publicly financed the stadium, which happens so often in sports unless the team is owned by Stan Kroenke, in which case he will just pay for the entire thing. In his piece on "The End of the Retro Ballpark" Barry Petchesky commented how, for ballparks, “excess is the new excess." Stadiums are no longer traditional sporting venues that produce nostalgia and communal formations, but are regarded as sporting exhibitions of ostentatious modernity for an upper-class audience.

Rembert Browne wrote in a piece for Grantland about the planned move of the Atlanta Braves to Cobb County in the Northern suburbs of Atlanta, “people will go to great lengths to not live among undesirables." As cities have become overpopulated with poorer minority groups, not only have wealthier residents moved into the suburbs, but baseball parks are now moving away from the urban people that others classify as “undesirables.”

The Atlanta Braves are moving their stadium closer to the majority of their season ticket holders in the Atlanta suburbs.

Browne said, “suburbs are where you may go to either self-segregate or distance yourself from others." The Braves move from Turner Field in downtown Atlanta to SunTrust Park symbolizes their attempt to distance the team from the downtrodden urban environment and embrace the glitzy suburban modernity. Browne commented on the hypocrisy of the Braves official team statement addressed to all their fans about the move, “The ‘you, our fans’ is not targeted at a person who lives in the city of Atlanta. It’s targeted at everyone… that lives in the city’s northern suburbs." Only fans in the suburbs have the wealth to value the team’s commercialism, and therefore the club is more concerned about providing their product to those specific consumers. While that may be sound business, it does not seem right to me.

Telling It All Podcast With Matt Cowen - Premier League, 2016 Presidential Primaries, NCAA March Madness First Round

Topics Include: Will Leicester City Win The Premier League (1:00)? Who Will Get Relegated (3:45)? Impressions of the Rumored European Super League (6:45). Champions League Quarterfinals Preview (8:00). The Rise of Donald Trump (10:00). Trump Moving Into The Center (12:40). March Madness First Round Overview (15:25).

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Looking At Cam Newton Through The Lens Of Jack Johnson

Throughout history, people have cultivated their own self-identity by orienting themselves against contrasting social groups. By outlining the different physical and social behavior of others, individuals defined their own existence and re-affirmed their self-perceptions. F. Scott Fitzgerald challenged the natural propensity to neatly classify the human experience when he said, “Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy."

Jack Johnson and Cam Newton are the most visible representations of external figures attempting to project their own self-conceptions and anxieties onto the actions of others. While the overt racist vitriol shouted at Johnson in the early 1900's was reflective of the gradual hardening of Jim Crow America and a reaction to his threat to racial norms, recent condemnation of Newton’s on-field behavior, mainly his post-touchdown celebrations and the dabbing, have similarly mirrored the social environment of this modern time. Just as there have been attempts in modern society to obscure the systematic mistreatment of African-Americans, the “it’s not race” argument surrounding Cam Newton from both the black and white media have been suggested to deflect attention away from the maintenance of racial boundaries more than a hundred years since Johnson. Horror over Johnson and Newton’s individualism have shown the urgency to precisely project onto others dichotomous categorizations of good versus evil, rather than recognizing that all people fit into a gray area somewhere between “heroism” and “tragedy.”

White anxiety towards Johnson was entrenched in his unwillingness to comply with the athletic and social standards of his race in the early 20th century. He drove fast, dated the woman he wanted, and was a symbolic precursor to Muhammad Ali. The duplicity of the term “unforgivable blackness” in Ken Burns’s 2005 Jack Johnson documentary not only reflected Johnson’s egoism to live “without the dictation of any man," but also how he “unforgivably” distorted white self-identity. In her fantastic piece on Cam Newton, Kate Aguilar pointed out, “Black culture cannot fully exist separate from White cultural practices as they each, in part, define themselves against and through the other.” Whiteness has always been filtered through its juxtaposition to blackness, and white superiority can only be defined through that very contrast. Johnson recalled about his Fight of the Century with James Jeffries in 1910 in Reno, “Hardly a blow been struck when I knew that I was Jeff’s master," showing how white masculinity could not be defined through the inferior and subservient “other" because of Johnson's boxing prowess.

Sports often function as a bodily performance of a particular identity and facilitate formations of masculinity, so Johnson’s conspicuous domination of the white male body arose widespread unease over the reversal of the power relationship between the two races. The fight between Johnson and Jeffries was halted prior to “the great white hope,” being knocked out because the image of a black men standing over a white man would symbolically assert Johnson’s agency. In a voiceover in the Ken Burns documentary, William Pickens said, “Better for Johnson to win and a few Negroes to be killed in body for it, than for Johnson to have lost and all Negroes to be killed in spirit by the preachment of inferiority from the combined white press." When blacks were treated as inferior non-entities under the boxing color line in the 1900s, they were a product of white manifestations, but by Johnson defining himself independent of external social agents, he became a menace to white self-perception. Unlike when heavyweight champion John Sullivan refused to fight any black boxers during his reign as title holder from 1885 to 1892, which allowed the white man to set himself against the non-being black man, Johnson’s victory called into question white self-perception. The idea that the masculine supremacy that Johnson showed in the ring would extend to all political and social spheres of life created a discernible and explicit animosity towards the impetus of that movement, even if Johnson did not see himself functionally acting as a symbol of blackness.

Whereas Johnson was overtly attacked because of his “unforgiveable blackness,” the portrayal of Cam Newton as disrespectful and arrogant have come out of a more implicitly defined uncertainty over how his blackness defines those around him. The psychological projections of white individuals have been exhibited through the media’s discourse around Newton. After the quarterback abruptly walked out of his post-game Super Bowl press conference, former NFL player Bill Romanowski tweeted, “You will never last in the NFL with that attitude. The world doesn’t revolve around you, boy!” 

While Romanowski’s tweet may ostensibly seem like a referendum on Newton’s lack of post-game sportsmanship, it was a not so well hidden code for the racial underpinnings that promote only specific types of normative behaviors. In his terrific examination of Peyton Manning as "The NFL's Great White Hope," aligning the external perceptions of Jeffries with the public's orientation towards Manning, Andrew McGregor referenced the idea of “produced whiteness that downplays racial difference." While Romanowski may not have as explicitly projected his racial angst towards Newton like people did in the past towards Johnson, he clearly implied it through his rhetoric. By referring to Newton as “boy,” his comments showed the continued evaluation of blacks as not having the capabilities to develop into socially accepted men. 

Even if Romanowski somehow did not intentionally direct his comments at Newton with racial malice, which is highly doubtful from someone who previously said he would "try to get him by the neck and choke him at the bottom of the pile," the linguistic connotations of the word “boy” speak to a prevailing subconscious desire to differentiate whiteness from blackness. McGregor acknowledged that, “behavioral critiques of non-white athletes rely on race,” even when race may supposedly be dissociated from the actual content of what an individual is saying. Romanowski continued a line of dehumanizing blacks for their behavior that is heavily steeped in a historically racial power structure.

For all the idiocy of The League, one of the most pointed scenes of the show was in season two when the guys discussed how code words are always used to intentionally or even unintentionally describe players based upon their race. Key and Peele similarly satirized how sportscasters are so prone to race based categorizations of athletes.

(The audio of the scene is from 3:25-4:15)

Key and Peele sketch

Everyone subconsciously partakes in this use of language, like how we all called Aaron Craft a terrific "coach on the floor" for Ohio State or how we always reference the terrific motor of J.J. Watt. Kenny Vacarro pointed this out when asked about Andrew Luck's "deceptive speed," saying, "Not deceptive. Just because he's white doesn't mean he's deceptive. He's actually a great athlete."

The divisive reactions to Johnson and Newton were similarly extended to their reflection on the black community itself, furthering proving that individuals function in society as reflections of other’s projections of them. The fears of upper and middle class blacks of Johnson were manifested in his strand of “blackness.” In the Ken Burns documentary, Booker T. Washington said of Johnson, “A man with muscle minus brains is a useless creature,” because his perception of black progress was rooted in individual educational growth rather than directly “fighting” social inequality. Washington was wary of Johnson’s open dissent of established rules of conformity, particularly his miscegenation with white women. By arousing fears amongst white men of removing the purity of what they perceived to be “their women,” Johnson was not the exemplar of black representation that Washington had hoped would promote black discipline.

While the criticism of Cam Newton has been less explicit, it has similarly been formulated based upon a lack of comfort with what he represents. In response to Ryan Clark’s comments that “it wasn’t racism at work, but culture,” Kate Aguilar pointed out that “his culture is a part of a racial framework.” Not only did Clark misconceive of the interdependency of race and culture, but he even more importantly attributed the criticism of Newton to his divergent culture, subconsciously implying that black culture, a manifestation of race, could not in itself be a form of culturally accepted expressionism.

Telling It All Podcast With Stacy Tell - Oscars Preview

Topics Include: Movie Review of 2015 (0:15). Expectations For Chris Rock As Host/Rory Confuses Chris Rock and Chris Tucker (3:00). Best Actor In A Supporting Role Discussion (5:20). Leonardo DiCaprio Finally Winning Best Actor (7:00). Memorable Scenes From The Best Picture Films (9:00). Best Picture Expectations (14:00). Best Actress Category Overview (18:00). Best Director Thoughts (20:30). Which Actor/Actress/Movie Do You Really Want To See Win (28:45)?

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NBA Mid-Season Quick Thoughts

We are a little more than a week away from the NBA All-Star Game, the unofficial mid-point of the season that is nowhere close to half-way through the year because teams will have already played nearly 65% of their games by that point. However, such irrationality has similarly extended over many areas of the association so far this year.

You want absurdity, how about Blake Griffin punching a Clippers equipment manager before following him outside and taking a few more swipes at him in the worst sports hand related injury since Jason Pierre Paul? You want unexpectedness, how about a team firing a coach after they went to the NBA Finals the year before and started the season with a conference best mark of 30-11 (all of Israel now hates the Cavs)? You want foolishness, how about Bryon Scott and Sam Mitchell currently holding two of the thirty NBA head coaching jobs, one of whom constantly criticizes his own young point guard in the media while Tom Thibodeau is eating hamburgers and watching basketball alone in his basement? You want preposterousness, how about Paul George averaging more than 23 points per game on 40 percent field goal shooting just a year and a half after his horrific right leg injury? You want nonsensicalness, how about Tim Duncan being 10th in Real Plus-Minus despite being the same age as Gary Oldman (all ages are estimates)?

Speaking of Tim Duncan, the greatness of the Warriors and Spurs has been just as awe-striking as anything else this year, but very understandable given their talent level, offensive fluidity, and defensive coordination.

The NBA has never seen a team like the Warriors. Steph Curry is a guy that not only kills you with his otherworldly shooting but also the fear he evokes from other teams whenever he is on the floor. Draymond Green is so versatile, as he can make plays off the screen and roll while also being physical enough to guard power forwards and centers defensively. The Warriors are 45-4 as of today, one game ahead of the pace the Chicago Bulls were on during their 72-win season in 1994-1995. I have no problem with Golden State going after the record as long as none of their players are risking their health for the playoffs. Since Steph has not even played in 14 fourth quarters so far this season and is not overburdened with minutes, the record is that much more attractive to go after because the team has not overstretched itself. Plus, it is a chance to be in NBA lure forever!

The machine that is the San Antonio Spurs is in full force once again. Not only did the addition of LaMarcus Aldridge give the Spurs a guy that can get his own shot in the post with his turnaround jumper, but Kawhi has extended his range and is behind only J.J. Redick in three point shooting at 48.7 percent this year (who would have thought the latter half of that sentence was possible two years ago). Golden State is currently 22-0 at home while the Spurs are sitting at a perfect 27-0 in games played in San Antonio, and only twice in the 82-game NBA season have two teams both finished with three losses or fewer on their home floor in the same season (in 1995-1996, the Bulls were 39-2 at home and the SuperSonics were 38-3 in Seattle [rest in temporary peace Seattle basketball] and the following season Chicago went 39-2 at home again while the Jazz went 38-3 in Utah).

And I did not even mention the Thunder, who on any given night can have Westbrook and/or Durant go off, and the Cavs, who will undoubtedly reach the NBA Finals in what would be LeBron's 6th straight trip (a remarkable feat regardless of his odd social media musings).

With that being said, here are some small NBA patterns I have seen emerge through the first half of the season:

The Matthew Dellavedova-Tristan Thompson Pick And Roll:

It may not be Steph and Draymond, Reggie Jackson and Andre Drummond, or Chris Paul and DeAndre Jordan running the screen and roll, but Dellavedova and Thompson seamlessly get the Cavs a couple buckets every night with their attacking action. What makes the Delly and Double T pick and roll so enjoyable is that you half-expect Delly to dribble the ball of his foot or Thompson to forget what hand he shoots with at any moment, and yet their screen and roll remarkably works time and time again. Delly slowly lunges down the court, dribbling low to the ground and not very smoothly, and eventually takes the Thompson screen to begin the Cavs offensive set. He eventually continues for a step down the line after the pick to give TT time to get to the rim, at which point he tosses up the lob for Tristan to finish at the bucket. And this happens on a nightly basis, something that Delly and Thompson worked several times against the Warriors in the first two games of the NBA Finals until Golden State snuffed it out, and went under Delly on screens and made sure that Thompson's defender stuck with him to prevent the lob.

In this play from earlier this year against the Pacers, Monta Ellis trailed Thompson's screen over the top, and as Myles Turner stepped up to prevent Dellavedova's floater, Delly threw up the lob for Thompson in what has become a nightly occurrence for the Cavs. Delly and Thompson have formed a nice connection on these types of plays dating back to last year, and Thompson often jumps up before Delly has even picked up his dribble because he knows the lob is coming. It is especially helpful that Tristan can finish at the rim with both hands to go along with his outstanding vertical leaping ability. Delly's funky hesitations make it difficult for defenders to read his decision-making. Thompson's scoring frequency in plays in which he is the roller in the screen and role has been 67.9% this season per NBA tracking statistics, putting him behind only DeAndre Jordan, Dewayne Dedmon, and Rudy Gobert for players who have been involved in the play type at least 20 times. Thompson's role to the rim has also opened up Delly's floater and the pass to the opposite corner when the help defender comes down to ward off the Thompson catch and finish at the hoop, opening up threes for J.R. Smith, Shumpert, and Richard Jefferson (he is still playing America, just like how Tom Conti is still out there acting somewhere).

Sure, dollar for dollar, Thompson is not worth the 5-year, 82 million dollars the Cavs spent on him in the off-season, a figure that certainly surprised DeMarcus Cousins (that contract will look like a bargain once the cap jumps up and Ryan Anderson is getting paid 18 to 20 million a year). However, Thompson is a player that can switch onto smaller ball handlers if needed on pick and rolls and a guy that doesn't need the ball to be effective, something the other Cavs core group of players cannot say at all. Thompson has 36 made fields goals this season on alley oops, which is behind only DeAndre, Dwight, Drummond, and Anthony Davis in the NBA. Many of those passes have been courtesy of growing cult legend Matthew Dellavedova, who is still nowhere near Boban status for NBA nerds. I think we may be seeing the point guard teaching his fellow Aussie Nick Kyrgios how to throw up some lobs in the near future (no guarantees because Kyrgios would definitely just yell at him incoherently, especially since he is a Celtics fan).

Goran Dragic's Struggles With The Miami Heat:

Once upon a time, Goran Dragic was unhappy as a member of a three point guard system in Phoenix with Eric Bledsoe and now NBA All-Star Isaiah Thomas. Dragic disliked having to play so much off the ball and not controlling the flow of the team's offense. In his defense, he was relegated to standing in the corner a little too much for a guy that made the All-NBA Third Team the year before.

Well, how much has really changed in Miami? Dragon's usage rate, which was 24.5% in his last full season in Phoenix on their surprise 48-win team, has dropped all the way down to just above 20% for the Heat. D-Wade still initiates a lot of Miami's offensive possessions, especially from the right side of the floor where he loves to back down his defender, shake one way, and then take a fadeaway jumper over the other shoulder. Meanwhile, Dragic is a guy that loves to get out into the open floor and run, but Miami is 29th in the league in John Hollinger's pace factor, only above the Jazz and their Trey Burke-Raul Neto point guard horror show (acquiring Jeff Teague is a move I would make if I were in the Jazz's position even if it meant giving up Alec Burks).

Dragic is not a natural fit in the slow it down Heat offense where he is not constantly working the pick and roll on every possession. Goran is a slashing point guard that likes to get into the lane, which is not to say that he is incapable of playing off the ball because he did at times with Bledsoe in Phoenix to devastating effects. However, he is not getting to the rim as often in Miami, partly because of his own reticence to assert himself into games. Kyrie, who is also much more effective creating plays on his own, shoots around 40 percent from three, helping the Cavs when LeBron takes over ball handling duties to stretch the floor. On the other hand, Dragic was just a 34.7 percent shooter last year from deep, making things a little more crowded inside for Miami. At times, defenses sink off Goran and the Heat do not swing the ball as quickly around the court as some other teams in the league to exploit over rotations and defensive creases.

It may be too early to fully give up on Goran, especially as Dwyane Wade plays into his 13th season at the age of 34 with his history of knee ailments. Wade will definitely be giving up more of the team's scoring responsibilities as the offensive fulcrum in the near future. Moreover, the Heat were just 3-5 over an 8-game stretch recently when Dragic was out with a strained left calf, including two straight games against the Thunder and Bucks when they were held under 80 points.

As the first play of this video montage shows, Dragic is so good at leaning into defenders and then stepping back to get his shot away in the paint, a reason why Miami needs him to be much more aggressive attacking downhill. Goran has a really nice spin move to get back to his favorite left hand, and he can still finish at the rim with his right hand when need be.

Overall, though, Dragic has looked as out of place in Miami as he did towards the end of his run with the Suns, and the Heat have been the anti-Hawks with individual pieces that have not added up to collective success over the last year plus.

Playing Elfrid Payton and Victor Oladipo Less Together:

Who are the Orlando Magic? Like so many other young teams in the NBA, the Magic have really struggled to find an identity so far this season, and Scott Skiles has tried out so many different lineup combinations that it may not be long before we see Shabazz Napier starting games at point guard (just kidding, unless LeBron says he wants to see Shabazz start and then it will probably happen).

I like the idea of starting the game with Elfrid Payton and then bringing Victor Oladipo off the bench to give the team more spacing offensively. Of all the Magic's 3-man playing combinations, Oladipo's four lowest net points per 100 possessions are times he has been on the court with Payton because of their combined inability to shoot the three (the Magic take 8 less threes than their opponents when Payton and Oladipo are out there together). Payton and Oladipo still play significant minutes together, but by not starting them with one another, it gives Oladipo the ability to be the team's primary ball handler in the second unit. With shooters all around him, like Evan Fournier and Mario Hezonja (Scott Skiles is finally starting to trust him more despite some of his on-ball defensive deficiencies), it opens up the lane for Oladipo's long strides to drive the ball. I would like to see Oladipo change the speed at which he goes to the rim to make him more unpredictable off the bounce. He also needs to finish a little better with contact at the hoop, but he is a terror with his speed in transition. Oladipo is very long and quick going from side-to-side, which allows him to guard opposing lead guards if he is playing at the point position without Payton.

In these highlights from last season, the play at the 1:15 mark is a great example of how the Magic's spacing with Luke Ridnour and tree point specialist Channing Frye freed the entire lane for Oladipo to drive down after the screen and pop from Frye. When Oladipo sees that the paint is open, he is so hard to get in front of because of the quickness of his first step. Elfrid Payton can continue to survey the floor, thread passes in traffic, and work the pick and roll with Nikola Vucevic, and Oladipo can have the floor spacing he needs to attack the rim if the two play separately.