Why Stern Should Take a Stand in Arizona

When Arizona first passed its "show me the papers" law, I wondered on FreeDarko why Steve Nash wasn't being expected to speak out. After all, LeBron James caught flak for not riding into China and insisting it stop funding the genocide in Darfur. And wasn't Nash the standard-bearer in the NBA when it came to holding political positions?

But it wasn't that simple. Nash may be the most popular sportsman in Arizona, but he's not a voting American citizen. His past activism may have been grossly exaggerated by fans and the media. Finally, if the law does indeed have broad support among Arizonans, Nash would essentially be pitting himself against his constituency -- a challenge people resent when it comes from their elected representatives, to say nothing of their star athletes.

Ethically, maybe Nash should have said something. Realistically, though, I can see why he didn't. In 2003, he voiced his opposition to the Iraq War and had to spend months afterward explaining himself. Practically, it's the playoffs; Nash wouldn't be taking a visceral stance that everyone could identify with, but an intellectual one. The playoffs got no time for that. Nor did the Olympics.

Jump ahead to yesterday, when the Major League Baseball Players Association announced its (admittedly vague) opposition to the bill. If Nash's dilemma depended on how his voice would be received, the MLBPA had no such reservations. Theirs was a purely visceral attack, and a total no-brainer. Without specifying any demand, the players let Arizona, the commissioner and the fans know, in no uncertain terms, that they would not stand for this.

And with that, everything changed for the NBA.



Share Nothing concrete came into play. But with the MLB All-Star Game scheduled for Arizona in 2011, it's pretty clear where this is all headed. If nothing else, we could be in for a repeat of 1991, when the NFL used the Super Bowl as leverage to get Arizona to start celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr., again.

Of course baseball players would take a stand. Baseball is second only to football in Latin America. In the American majors, over a quarter of the players, including a large percentage of the league's best, are of Latin-American descent. This means, of course, that the fan base will have more Latinos to it than, say, the NBA. Yes, there's plenty of strategizing here. But this is not an abstract matter of human rights -- it's a position that the union had to take. Anything less would have been a massive sell-out.

This move, Dave Zirin's call for fans to swear off baseball and other broad-based threats against Arizona in the form of boycotts and general pariahdom, completely changes the terms for NBA engagement. It's no longer a question of Nash, lone voice for justice, and the complications that would arise if he followed his heart. With the MLB union following the way, all of a sudden sports has an institutional precedent for taking on the beast. The NBA could, if it wanted, send a similarly strong message. The irony is, it has even less reason to than Nash.

That's not meant to sound callous, or underestimate, the backbone of the NBA Players Association. It's not like we're talking about the NFL union, after all. But strictly speaking, the issue of Latin-American immigration simply doesn't resonate with the players, or most of its fans, like it does for baseball. There are a handful of Latino players in the NBA, but there's by no means a groundswell. International imports, like Nash or fellow Sun Goran Dragic, are seen as more distant from -- not closer to -- the situation.

The Suns do have Robin Lopez, but his last name comes from an estranged Cuban father he barely knew. He was raised by his white mother. To expect any words from him seems, at very least, invasive. Motivation and responsibility should be the same in a case like his. The same goes for half-Rican Carmelo Anthony, part-Cuban Gilbert Arenas, or Spanish-speaking Pau Gasol.

However, there is one organized body in basketball that has, over the last year or so, taken a strong interest in the league's Latino players and fans. The career of Eduardo Najera, whose endorsement dollars have always far outstripped what he's earned as a player, were an early signpost here, as was the rise of South and Central American countries as international basketball powerhouses.

Enter the NBA's éne-bé-a campaign, launched at the beginning of this season in attempt to capitalize on and expand all manner of "Hispanic" interest in the league. There were web pages in English and Spanish; promotion of players and just plain promotion of the sport in certain neighborhoods; and most controversially, "Latino Power Rankings" that made absolutely no sense.

What exactly "Hispanic" meant was up for grabs, since they brought in both English-speaking Melo and non-Latino Rudy Fernandez. The distinction between Afro-Latin players like Nene and the Italian-by-descent Manu Ginobili has always been sticky, and rarely so -- sorry for this one -- black and white. But as tone deaf as the éne-bé-a effort may have been, it showed the NBA -- not the Players Association -- had an undeniable interest in this demographic, just like the MLB union.

Here's the massive irony, one bigger than Nash the hostage do-gooder, or LeBron and burden of greatness. The Players Association just isn't going to touch this issue because of another racial element in this equation. The league doesn't have enough Latinos to make a union statement look like an act of solidarity. It's not truly diverse enough to appeal to notions of universal justice. This league is still seen as African-American, and from a public relations perspective, nothing's scarier than a bunch of black men who stake out a strong political position.

Even NBA players supporting Obama lent their help through means other than a direct endorsement. They attended fundraisers, helped get out the vote and hung around regional campaign headquarters. But too many black athletes rising up for a common cause ... that's almost as threatening as gun arrests and cornrows.

With a new collective bargaining agreement on the horizon, and teams leaking money, the players are looking to come to the table (together or individually) as squeaky-clean as possible. Anything else would be uncivilized and automatically tip the balance -- believe me, everyone involved knows what does and doesn't sell. The league itself thinks this way, too. Hence the dress code, the conservative consultants brought in to help make the game acceptable to Middle America, and the over-reactions to every raised fist on a court.

Yet at the same time, there's éne-bé-a. David Stern would like to see the NBA conquer China. But domestically, he'll take a shot at the so-called "red state" demographic, as well as Latinos. The two are not mutually exclusive. That was a well-known fact before the Arizona bill -- take a look at George W. Bush's numbers among Latino voters -- and with the "papers" law, we're seeing regression toward the mean from the other side. There are plenty of folks on the right, many of them either Latino or with some link to those communities, who have publicly taken issue with this law.

Courting Latinos and the right are not mutually exclusive. In this case, failing to reconcile the two effectively undermines both causes -- I mean, marketing efforts. Back to politics for a second: Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, who signed the bill into law, has attempted to revise it so it doesn't so obviously stink of racial profiling. At the same time, the emotion is already there. Stern's entire Latino outreach effort will suddenly appear disingenuous if MLB itself listens to its players. On the other hand, as long as éne-bé-a exists, any efforts to market the NBA as Real America will send mixed messages.

David Stern is notorious for being a ruthless capitalist who, on his own time, lends his support to Democratic causes to a degree that would put Steve Nash to shame. For once, the two seem to match up well. Strange as it is for the league to show more political gumption than its players, in this case, Stern's the one whose hand is being forced. And, you've got to figure, he'd be more than a little happy to take the bait.