Link!

How is he “being stupid”? How would his comments have anything to do with his gameplay? If you were an intelligent NBA player – and don’t even tell me he’s not intelligent; he got into an excellent university, and his interviews with Henry Abbott are among the most articulate NBA interviews I’ve ever read – if you were an intelligent baller valued only for your athletic talents, heck, you’d probably feel disrespected by this country as well.

“That said, we will be going through some advanced communication-skill sessions together this training camp,” Cuban told the Dallas Morning News. “I have explained to him that cellphone cameras are not your friend and that what you think you said on camera is never what people will hear when it shows up on YouTube or TV.”

The most critical aspect of this is that it is absolutely his right to hate the nation, and as much as I disagree with him I strongly believe there is nothing the league or his team could or should do in response to his hateful, pathetic, thoughtless comment.

The rest of us equally have a right to express our opinion of Josh Howard and our opinion of his opinions. That’s what makes this nation great. My guess is that he’s in for a rough welcome during his introductions this year. As he should.

But perhaps age has softened my views. (or just softened my brain, not sure which)

I remember 1968 and John Carlos and Tommie Smith. At the time I thought it was an insult and a disgrace. To some extent, I still see it as an insult. But I also recognize the courage it took for those two men. I no longer see it as a disgrace.

I am a person who believes that the issue of race is often overblown and used as either a tool by some to achieve their own aims (can you say Jessie Jackson) or as an excuse. But at the basic level, all you have to do is ask yourself this question – Would you trade your ethnicity? For me the answer is probably not. As long as that is the answer, I recognize that there are still issues of race that need to be addressed. Unfortunately, in my opinion, we don’t focus on the right ones.

So, while I may be dissappointed in hearing Howard say that, I’m going to withhold judgement. I haven’t experienced life in the same way he has. I don’t know whether his beliefs are the result of his experiences or of him buying into the “angry black man” set of values based on exposure to a narrow set of ideas and opinions (much like Michelle Obama). I still believe that Josh Howard is a fine young man, regardless of his ability as a basketball player.

But fans go to see the teams they like, and the less they like a player, the less they want to pay for a ticket. That’s the truth, and we all know it here in Blazerland.
If Howard were “smart” or “intelligent” he’d realize that and start kissing babies and shaking hands a little more. Yeah, we all like a bad-ass tough guy who speaks his mind … to a point.