For anyone who would like to Email NBA.com about Reggie and Kenny's disrespectful remarks.

what excatly did they say?

Even if I weren’t a Rudy fan, this kind of commentary is just flat out disrespectful and inappropriate, particularly on national television. I definitely lost a lot of respect for Kenny and the whole TNT crew.

I agree completely with what you and all other BEdgers that have commented on this post. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

done, way to go dario!

I was completely disrespected with their commentary and their ignorance only added to the dunk contests catasrophic display… It reminded me of a WWF match where anyone with half a brain could see through the script and pre-determined final before the contest even began.

But I’m not sure if they’re still doing that segment. It was the only address I could think of. I’ll copy it and send it to you suggested email address at NBA as well. Thanks.

What follows is the email I wrote. I stole stats on Martin from MB’s blog. Not nearly as nice as yours.

 Reggie,
Not very classy. The man gets voted in by popular vote and you guys proceed to wonder if anyone in the arena knows who he is. He wears a shirt honoring Fernando Martin, the first Spaniard to play in the NBA. Martin, a 6-10 power forward, signed as a free agent with the Portland Trail Blazers on May 6, 1986, playing 24 games for Portland in 1986-87, recording 22 points, 28 rebounds, nine assists and seven steals in 146 minutes. He died in a car crash at 27 years old, and you’re shouting “where’s Gina?” and “Ricky Martin”. Ricky Martin, Reggie? Wrong continent you putz. Drunken Chuck getting blowjobs and going on gambling sprees gets more fan love than your juvenile crap. That and your sister berating the envelope kid makes this a dunk contest one to forget. Oh and tell Kenny he was an idiot too. Actually Kenny was worse but I don’t have his address.

Keep up the self aggrandizement, and one day the fans might catch up with your ego.

I support the cause. and appreciate the notion you have placed. well put, the way they handled themselves was insulting, and most everyone i have spoken with agree rudy got jipped. oh well, there is always next year?

I added a PS: to it so as to let them know that I am actually meant it.

I am Portland Trail Blazer’s fan waiting with anticipation of this year’s Slam Dunk Contest because a player from the Blazers was going to be competing (Rudy Fernandez) Naturally I didn’t have really high hopes since while Rudy is an exciting new player and a good game dunker, he really more of a 3 pt specialist at this point in his career. That being said I was still looking forward to seeing him comepete.

Much to my shock, the commentators starting really bashing him and his country of origin. As you undoubtly know, Rudy is not American, but rather a native of Spain. I have transcribed a portion of the exchange to which I refer:

 Kenny re Rudy Fernandez:“He’s gotta do somthin’ cause no one in this building knows who he is except the Fernandez family”

Reggie re Rudy wearing a Fernando Martin jersey comermorating the first Spainiard to play in the NBA: “Who’s Martin? LaRue Martin?”
Kenny:"Ricky Martin?

(On screen graphic showing Bio of Fernando Martin)

Reggie or Kenny: “If we knew who Martin was….Martin from the show?” (Martin Lawrence)

Kenny: “I don’t know who Martin is…..where’s Gina? Where’s Gina?” (character from the Martin Lawrence show)

Kenny: “I thought I had skinny legs ’til I saw Rudy Fernandez”

Kenny: “we’re not here to see Pau Gasol make a great pass behind the back….why would you have……this is the amaturism of Spain”
(laughter)
Kenny: “The whole country…I’m callin out the whole county!”

(Unknown):" His hands aren’t even big enough to hold the ball" …..“He can’t make that dunk”
Kenny:“He couldn’t make that dunk on a Nerf hoop”

Reggie: “It’s possible but you gotta get up high….”
Kenny: “For him though?”
Reggie: “No”
(Rudy completes dunk)

You know….it is one thing to tell the viewers that the dunks weren’t good enough to compete …but really….personal comments? Denegrating 2 national hero’s (Martin and Fernandez) from a European country of avid NBA fans. In fact “calling out” the entire country…great work guys (sarcasm)!! Top notch

What got me was Reggie Miller calling Pau a division rival. Rival Yes! In the same division? Nut unless the NBA realigned two min ago. Shouldn’t an NBA national color man know what divisions teams are in. He just piled that terrible display of NBA knowledge on top of all his insensitive remarks. Piss poor Reggie.

Call me controversial, but one of my biggest problems with America these days is that everything is so politically correct, and if you say something someone else finds offensive it causes a lot of issues. I don’t feel that what Kenny and Reggie said was blatantly racist, so I’m not going to write in about it. It was definitely ignorant. The whole “amateurness of Spain” comment was just plain IGNORANT with a capital I. They were playing to the cocky lowest common denominator, the same demographic that fell for the fact that it was a “12 foot” rim DW dunked on, loved the Phone Booth BS, and thought it was ok for Nate Robinson to literally cheat (IMO) by jumping off a platform (human body) for one dunk, and launching off another (Howards shoulders) in another dunk.

Honestly, I still think the dunk Rudy did with Gasol was sick, it ranked up there with Vince Carters dunks in 2000. If he would have completed it in the first 2 tries it would have had to be a 50 going by the standards that weak contest was judged on.

Dont forget how they made comments about his legs being skinny and hands being too small. I was just insulted by all the comments they made while he was dunking. And then to hear it re-played by Canzano a half-dozen times today made it that much worse. He’s as bad as Kenny Smith. Talking about we should all be embarassed for Rudy. His dunks were the most gracefull of any of them.

I have been a basketball fan since I was a little boy largely because of the NBA. I would spend Sunday afternoons after games in my driveway pretending I was one team against another; shooting last second shots or defending against an imaginary superstar. As I grew older I continued to watch NBA basketball and would now practice the moves I saw against my friends. Today I still love to watch the best basketball players in the world play the best game in the world. It is a show that only the NBA delivers. Part of that fun is the All Star weekend.

Unfortunately, this brings me to the reason why I am writing you today. While I realize that there is good and bad in every organization, the broadcast team for the Sprite Slam Dunk Contest on February 16, Saturday night hit was especially bad. The particular incident I am referring to is the second dunk attempt by Rudy Fernandez. Derogatory remarks were made during the first dunk, but they were reasonable in the context of the teasing that goes on during the All-Star weekend (note: it was extremely poor taste to treat Rudy’s tribute to Fernando Martin with such flippancy). The matter got out of hand during the second dunk. After many tries to complete his second dunk the announcers grew more and more adventuresome in their criticism of Fernandez and his All Star countryman Pau Gasol. The nadir was voiced by one of the commentators shortly before Fernandez completed his dunk. "…the amateurism of Spain." While the remark alone might be ignored in a different setting, the environment the announcers had established gave this remark a different meaning. It was, sadly, a meaning charged with racism.

As I said before, there is good and bad in every organization. But an organization can be good or bad too. One way to tell if an organization is good is if it actively and transparently polices the problems that appear within it. There are many ways to do this: public discipline of the offending party, general public apology by the NBA/offending party, or implementing programs to improve NBA culture. Please show me you are still the NBA I grew up loving.

——————————————————————-
Thank you dario, for helping to organize us for postive action.

and never found time to to fix his tic tac teeth

with the conspiracy theory that mr stern hand picked rudy because he wanted to get an international player on board, kenny and reggie pretty much shot the nba’s globalization plan in the foot. disrespecting a past spanish basketball hero and a current popular player when the nba needs all the fanbase they can get right now? intelligent move by the announcers.

I think we should all also send emails about how the dunk contest was rigged for Howard and Robinson to be in the finals, cause to me the whole contest ended up being a big joke.

Miller didn’t strike me as as mean spirited/ignorant as Kenny Smith. I only watched it once (live), so maybe I missed his “A” material, but Kenny Smith became my least favorite TV personality this weekend.

The only thing that I heard at the very beginning was the reference to Ricky Martin. They actually showed some respect when they heard that Fernando Martin tragically died in a car accident…If there was some other things said, I’m implore you to let me know.

I was disgusted with their lack of class

I was quite proud of Rudy as a long time blazers fan for wearing Martins jersey . Very classy act . Shows the long standing desire of kids internationally wanting to make it to the NBA .

Even though Rudy is too young to have seen him play and knowing that most people outside of spain wouldn’t remember him he still chose to wear his jesery in rememberance.

He did not choose to wear a jersey of a superstar but of a fellow spaniard who like himself made it to the NBA . It’s actually quite moving.

I remember seeing a short documentary on Martin and his team playing after the accident. Perhaps TNT could find it in their hearts to show that during a halftime of a Blazers game and then add the Rudy tribute to it sans commentary. It would make a great story.

As for Kenny and Reggie I think they just had a sctick going on and realized they had just effed up by doing so during a nice tribute and they could either sit silently and look stupid or continue on as it didn’t happen and they chose the wrong one.

I don’t know what Rudy thinks about it all but if I were him i’d be most insulted by how little credit they gave him as a basketball player. I too thought that he was outmatched but i think he proved us all wrong.

Sure it’s just a dunk contest but it really looked like he took it serious and this was the thanks he got, not only as a professional basketball player but as a spaniard.

Welcome to the NBA.

Kind of surprising that they can insult the entire nation of Spain without anyone in the booth saying that it was inappropriate. Completely unprofessional and classless.

TNT did a terrible job of handling the Slam Dunk contest. The announcers were very disrespectful toward Portland Trailblazer Rudy Fernandez and his tribute to Fernando Martin. It was ugly and seemed to me a small taste of what was probably much more common in sports commentating during the civil rights movement. Disgusting.

I sent them a whole breakdown of their commentary and how incredibly stupid and insulting it was. I was totally unimpressed with Reggie Miller’s conduct throughout the entire weekend. It takes a lot to be more obnoxious than Craig Sager’s choice of wardrobe, but Miller might have just acheived that standard.

And Reggie’s trying way too hard constantly in the broadcast booth. Must be those marbles in his mouth.

wow ….good thing some white dude invented basketball

thanks for the legwork. here’s what I sent:

I am writing to express my extreme discontent with the comments made by Kenny Smith and Reggie Miller during Rudy Fernandez’ portion of the Slam Dunk contest on Saturday, Feb 14, 2009. Their comments were extremely disrespectful towards Spain and international players in general. Fernandez’ decision to pay tribute to Martin was a classy homage to a groundbreaking basketball player and assuredly meant a lot to Spaniards and international fans of basketball around the globe. Meanwhile, the TNT announcers mocked and derided his gesture and everything else about his participation in the contest. Their comments were sophomoric at best and xenophobic at worst, and if I were Fernandez, those comments might make me seriously reconsider my decision to forego a huge payday in the European league for the “opportunity” to come play for less money in the NBA. I hope that Spanish viewers turn off their televisions in droves in response to this, until the NBA can find some announcers who respect the game of basketball as an international sport.

I could write another page about how idiotic it was to bother to invite Fernandez and J.R. Smith to the dunk contest in the first place, given how obvious it was that the outcome had been scripted and pre-determined, but I am too disgusted to keep typing.

I wish there was some way that we could CC: Rudy on all of our mails to the NBA office so that he knows that not all Americans are ignorant tools like the TNT broadcasters are…

and it rubbed me the wrong way.

I think they’re babbling idiots and thus you have an idiotic statement. I don’t mean that as insult, but when you pay people to babble, a lot of times that babbling can be idiotic.

If the Spaniards had been black, and the announcers white, the statements would have been met with outrage.

Instead the players were “white” and the announcers black, so it’s “okay” to the general public.

The comments themselves were idiotic, but I believe they were meant to be harmless. Then again, so were the comments of whites against blacks back in the day. It was the racism of the time.

What rubs me MORE the wrong way was the blatant disrespect. Rudy did very well, and the announcers were ripping him apart from the get go and attempting to make him look less than what he was. He was “amateur” and attacked from the get go.

All-star weekend is just dumb. It’s rigged and I really don’t expect more than a WWF type format. It just disgusts me, and really I don’t pay it much attention anymore anyway. What’s sad is that the rigging is so blatant and because of that, for me, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth about the league in general.

Inside the NBA—-Premier program of NBA analysis where Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, and strait man Ernie Johnson good-naturedly trash everyone in sight and sedulously avoid any real technical talk.

thanks for the letter.

Any feedback from Spanish-site fans?

Apparently he got a lot of encouragement from other players and fans after the dunk contest, so he knows it was rigged and that he got jobbed… and he seems to have no hard feelings:

link (original – Spanish)

link (google translation to English)

Cheers for the link Dario!

This is out of hand, they didn’t know who martin was and just seemed suprised that Rudy changed his jersey without any real build-up or apperent reason. Sure, it was touching, but maybe he should have let the broadcasters know before hand and this could have been avoided?
Either way, complete over-reaction.

We knew from the get go Rudy was going to get hosed. Stern wants the Allstar game to be a marketing tool to get more people to watch the NBA. I can just picture him now on the phone telling the judges the scores to give out. Come on 50 on a dunk that took Howard multiple tries. Rudy’s dunk was absolutely sick I just wish Gasol didn’t try and make himself look cool with the pass, that was supposed to be your boy, get it right not tight.
     The thing I didn’t expect was the cast of TNTrashy to absolutely undermine the importance of what Rudy was trying to get across with his tribute. Even if people didn’t know who Martin was they certainly didn’t care after the broadcast turned into a your mommas joke contest each person trying to one up the next with Martin Lawrence and Ricky Martin jokes. At that moment the dunk had already happened and people were sidetracked with trashy commentary, pretty much alleviating what Rudy was trying to do. It was like the guy never had a chance to go anywhere in the contest, nor did he ever have a chance to put his Country in the spotlight or himself for that matter. If it was going to be up to a couple of American NBA vets they weren’t going to let some white foreigner come in here and steal the show, which I honestly thought he could have. Not after that drubbing though.
     Stern needs to be more concerned with corrupted officials rigging games to get a little scratch on the side, and not sweeping such prevalent issues under the rug without actually investigating claims of other officials participating. I can just hear Stern now “corrupted officials? No, not in the NBA, just the one and that is well behind us now. Now look over here and watch the Superman vs Lex Luther soap opera. That should hold em for a while. We have to start working on new material though this wont hold em long.”

If Howard dunked on a hoop set to 12 feet and got a 50. What score do you get if you dunk on a hoop set to 12 feet 1 inch?

BTW, if you look at the rim of the “12 foot” hoop, it looks level with the top of the square of the 10 foot hoop. That square is 18 inches above the rim. Wouldn’t that make it 11 and half feet? Some angles kind of skew the perspective but there are a couple that are spot on. I don’t really care if they want to call it 20 feet. He was getting a 50 anyway.

and placed it under the hoop and dunked on it, just like in the Olympics. That would have gotten him a 50!!!

BTW, emailed TNT, and they all suck!!!!

I finally got around to sending the league my two cents. What a shameful, embarrassing episode that was. I used to like Kenny Smith…

"All-Star weekend was really tainted for me. My mother is trapped by emphysema in a nursing home and follows the Blazers and especially Rudy very closely. She loves watching Rudy Fernandez and I can’t tell you how much it hurt her seeing Rudy being laughed out of the slam dunk competition by the announcers and the judges. It is obvious that the outcome was fixed. No respect was paid to the players not destined to win, and no consideration of the dunks themselves in the voting. Why pretend that it is even a competition?

"I am continuing to lose respect for the NBA as a product. I find it more difficult to follow my team when I find myself wondering to what degree calls are being made to benefit the league as entertainment reliant on all-stars versus presentation of great basketball competition on a level playing field.

“Help me, here. What do I tell my mother?”

OF COURSE it was staged! Did anyone pay the slightest attention to the endless promos the NBA was running. 97% Dwight and Nate… An accident? An oversight? HA!!!

There is no way to “objectively” score a pseudo-sport like a dunk contest in any event… OF COURSE the finalists were who they were. And the man in the kryptonite suit leaped over “Superman” to sensationally win the contest.

Big time wrestling all the way… If you thought it was gonna be anything else, now you are older and wiser… You want MMA, watch MMA. Just don’t go to a Globetrotters game and expect the Washington Generals to pull it out with a 40 foot buzzer-beater…

Here’s what I sent Reggie:

Reggie,

Good job falling asleep in the pre-show meeting. You must have missed the part where the producer talked about the premade graphic he had for when Rudy Fernandez was paying tribude to Fernando Martin.

Instead, because you didn’t pay attention, you chose to ignorantly make fun of Rudy’s tribute, before Kevin Harlan put you in your place by explaining what was happening.

Hearing the silence after you got shut up was hilarious. You really looked like an ass on national TV. You made fun of someone for paying tribute to someone who died. Good job.

I hope you know that basketball fans are pretty ticked off at the comments made by you and Kenny Smith at the dunk contest regarding Rudy’s tribute and nationality. Would you care to explain what the two of you meant by mocking Rudy’s tribute, or by referring to the “amaturism of spain?”