(From David Aldredge at NBA.com)
The Meaning of Obama: NBA embraces new leader’s message
Warren Skalski/NBAE via Getty Images
… And I could play basketball, with a consuming passion that would always exceed my limited talent …
–Barack Obama, president-elect of the United States, from his autobiography Dreams from My Father
Did you cry, Michael?
“I was cryin’ like a damn baby,” Michael Jordan said in November, the night after the world changed, when a man of African and European ancestry was elected to the most powerful office in the world. In many lands the man is considered biracial, but in this country, he is viewed as African-American, and that gives the story a depth and resonance, an historical power, that makes men like Michael Jordan cry.
Jordan was not the only one weeping the night Barack Obama became the next president of the United States.
Jesse Jackson cried in Grant Park, in Chicago, where Obama held his victory celebration.
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NBA players and coaches express their feelings and emotions towards President-elect Barack Obama.
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Wanda Pratt cried on the telephone as her son, Kevin Durant, listened in Oklahoma City.
Listening to Obama tell the story of Ann Nixon Cooper, a 106-year old black woman who’d voted, Donyell Marshall cried in a swank hotel room in Miami.
Obama’s victory resonated throughout the world, and the NBA’s little slice of it was not immune. To be sure, just as millions of Americans voted for John McCain, people associated with the NBA voted for McCain — most publicly, the Sacramento Kings’ second-year center, Spencer Hawes. There is no way to determine a precise breakdown of the league’s electorate without detailed polling. But Obama — himself quite familiar and comfortable on a basketball court — seemed to move the needle in the NBA world in an unprecedented way, just as he did among the populace as a whole.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar endorsed Obama on the Huffington Post website, just as Greg Oden did on his own blog. LeBron James co-hosted a rally for Obama with Jay-Z at Quicken Loans Arena; Chauncey Billups introduced Obama at a rally in Michigan. Gilbert Arenas had Change We Believe In, a truncated version of Obama’s campaign slogan, tattooed on the sides of the fingers of his left hand.
Among Obama’s financial contributors: James, Magic Johnson, Baron Davis, Dwight Howard, Shane Battier, Jason Richardson, Joe Dumars, Chris Duhon, Grant Hill, Shawn Marion, Lakers coach Phil Jackson, Etan Thomas, Emeka Okafor, Marvin Williams, Corey Maggette, Jordan, Stephon Marbury, Luke Walton, Alonzo Mourning, Juwan Howard, Roger Mason, former players Isiah Thomas and Jalen Rose, Kings co-owner Joe Maloof (who also gave to Hillary Clinton) and Thunder minority owner Aubrey McClendon.
Just saying the words President Obama “defines the struggle,” said Cavaliers guard Mo Williams. “It defines the commitment. It defines the unity. It defines what Martin Luther King did. It defines what America is about, bringing everybody together and living as one.”
There is a symmetry to Obama’s inauguration on Tuesday in Washington, coming the day after Dr. King’s federal holiday is celebrated throughout the country. The NBA has made the King holiday one of its signature days of the season, with afternoon games throughout the league and special events held before the game in Memphis, where King was assassinated and where the National Civil Rights Museum was built. The connective tissue between the two, the distance African-Americans have traveled since King’s death, is measured in ways great and small.
“It’s the Jay-Z line,” Jazz center Jarron Collins said. “‘Rosa (Parks) sat, so Martin could walk, so Obama could run, so we all could fly.’”
During the past three months, players and coaches have shared their reflections on the Obama candidacy and upcoming presidency with TNT and NBA.com. Millionaire athletes who might be adversely impacted by Obama’s tax proposals said they were ready to sacrifice. Fathers tried to explain the meaning of what was happening to their children. And people who had never voted before cast a ballot for the first time.
Like Dikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean-Jacques Wamutombo, born in Congo during a tyrant’s reign in 1966, naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 2006, Obama voted in 2008.
“For the first time I voted, in a time that it was another son of Africa man that is becoming president of the United States of America,” said Mutombo, the Rockets’ center, referring to Obama’s Kenyan-born father. “The man who has the same roots and the same blood with me. I’m sharing the same values. This is incredible. (Obama) is a man who knows his village (where his father was raised). He can trace his roots. He knows his grandfather, grandmomma.”
Mutombo grew up in a country run by Mobutu Sese Seko, one of Africa’s most ruthless dictators. Freedom is not some abstract concept for him. He has spent millions of dollars of his own money to get a 300-bed hospital up and running in Kinshasa because tens of thousands of his countrymen are still dying from diseases like malaria. The Obama victory may have meant even more to him than many American-born players.
“I think I am sharing history with the African-American brothers and sisters,” Mutombo said. “…We are sharing history, that one of our child from the first generation is becoming president of the United States. That is telling me my son is totally convinced he can become whatever he wants to be in the United States of America … he is 7 years old and shares my name, Jean Jacques. J.J. was running around saying, ‘Daddy, I’m free.’”
Which caught Mutombo — now an American dad whose family lives comfortably in the suburbs — by surprise.
“I said, ‘You’re free from what?’”
—
… I had watched the players in warm-ups, still boys themselves but to me poised and confident warriors, chuckling to each other about some inside joke, glancing over the heads of fawning fans to wink at the girls on the sidelines, casually flipping layups or tossing high-arcing jumpers until the whistle blew and the centers jumped and the players joined in furious battle. I decided to become part of that world …
– from Dreams from My Father
Their family’s worlds have also changed.
“As a kid growing up, there were certain things people told me that I could accomplish, or I could achieve, that I believed in,” Wizards forward Antawn Jamison said. “Being president wasn’t one of them.”
It was actually more realistic, Jamison says, for him to dream about being a professional athlete. But now, Jamison has three kids, who will live their lives not finding it strange in the least that a person of color, or a woman, would be president.
“For them to see this happen, it’s not only special to myself, but for them,” Jamison said. “My 3 year old, she understands. She’s going around saying, ‘Barack Obama.’”
Nate McMillan’s son is much older — a sophomore in college. But for the Portland Trail Blazers’ head coach, Obama’s victory had similar impact. In the beginning of the campaign, McMillan was undecided between Hillary Clinton and Obama. But as the months wore on, McMillan became convinced that Obama could deliver on his promises, and at the end, he saw the energy that college students like his son were giving to the campaign.
“I’ve talked more with my son about what has happened, moreso than our team,” McMillan said. “Just (about) the opportunity. Life is about opportunities. He recognized that he had an opportunity. He had a dream. He followed that dream and he worked hard to accomplish this. He believed in it. And you — you guys, the younger generation — is the group that put him there. Your generation has changed what you believe in and how you vote.”
Billups heard stories about the bad old days from relatives, people who’d experienced something a little harsher than not being able to hail a cab at night.
“I felt their pain myself,” Billups said.
Some players had to ease their kid’s pain, too.
Marshall, now a reserve with the 76ers, had to quickly calm his 7-year-old daughter after one of her classmates made quite disturbing remarks about the new president.
“My wife and I didn’t think it was appropriate to hear the things she was hearing about in first grade,” Marshall recalled. “One of the kids was saying ‘we’re not worried about it. He’ll be dead soon,’ or something like that. Some … kid said that to my daughter. So we had to talk to her about that.”
Marshall had a better conversation with his grandmother.
“The most important thing I wanted to do was talk to my grandmother,” Marshall said. “And congratulate her. ‘Cause those are the people who really went through everything to get to this. We went through small things compared to them … my grandmother usually goes to bed early, but obviously it was election night, so she was up. I called her and congratulated her, and she was just happy, saying she never thought she would see this day. I could tell from her voice, though, that she was excited.”
Many were up late that night.
“My father called me,” Mutombo said. “It was still 5 o’clock in the morning there, and people didn’t go to sleep in the Congo. People were waiting for the election.”
Durant was at home watching the returns, not believing what he was seeing (” I never thought I’d see the day,” he said) when his mother called.
“And she started crying,” Durant said. “That put the whole thing in perspective for me, that we really have a black president.”
—
And something else, too, something nobody talked about: a way of being together when the game was tight and the sweat broke and the best players stopped worrying about their points and the worst players got swept up in the moment and the score only mattered because that’s how you sustained the trance …
– from Dreams from My Father
The interest in Obama’s victory was limited neither to America or to African-Americans.
“I think all of Europe was kind of looking forward to a change,” said the Mavericks’ German-born forward, Dirk Nowitzki. “The whole world has been looking forward to a change. We’re having some trouble right now with the economy and everything. So I think everybody was ready for a change. We’ll just see how he fits in, what he makes happen.”
Nowitzki was home in Germany last July when Obama came to Berlin as part of a European and Middle East tour. More than 200,000 people saw Obama speak in Tiergarten Park.
“I actually watched that speech,” Nowitzki said. “It was great. He talked about how the world is global and we’re all coming together. That’s really what the goal is. Everybody’s the same. They loved him over there … he was already being celebrated like he was the president. It was great.”
Bucks center Andrew Bogut, Australian-born, isn’t all that interested in politics. But he couldn’t help but notice that the Obama phenomenon dominated American television on a nightly basis.
“I didn’t realize how big it was,” Bogut said. “Obviously, America needs a change, with everything that’s happened in the past … no offense, but obviously a lot of people in Australia are pretty angry with the whole Iraq issue. Obviously, we’re allies with you guys, so we’re sending a lot of troops over there who are dying as well. Hopefully Obama can put a stop to that and start bringing home some troops.”
Suns guard Steve Nash spoke his mind before the Iraq war began, wearing a T-shirt during the 2002 All-Star weekend in Atlanta that read “No War. Shoot For Peace.” In case anyone was still confused on his position, the next year, his T-shirt at the 2003 All-Star festivities read “Shoot Baskets Not People.” Others have come around to Nash’s point of view, and hope that Obama can deliver on his campaign promise to begin a gradual draw down of U.S. troops.
“I’m glad that the best man won,” Rockets forward Ron Artest said. “And I’m hoping that America can get to where Toronto is, where everyone is kind of getting (taken) care of, you know? I just hope everyone can eat, because there are people out there starving … everyone has concerns. My concerns are war and hunger. I’m hoping people can get a chance to eat. I’m getting tired of war. I’m getting tired of people coming back with their legs shot off.”
Like many players, Celtics guard Ray Allen has lent his name to numerous charitable causes over the years. Obama’s victory, Allen said, is inspiring him to reach deeper.
“It made me want to figure out what I can do to be better, to make people around me better, to make the country better,” Allen said. “And that’s the direction we’re heading in with him in office. It just made a lot of people aware all over the world. It wasn’t just a black and white thing. We feel as though he’s the person who’s going to help change all over the world. It’s not just the United States of America. It’s a global event that’s occurred. I’m excited about him. Never have I seen so many people answer the bell … this is our livelihood, but we need to know what’s going on in government.”
Perhaps like: According to the President-elect’s website, he still plans to increase taxes on families making more than $250,000 a year back to their levels in the 1990s.
The average salary for an NBA player this season is $5.585 million.
Thus, supporting Obama would seem problematic for many NBA players. Who wants their taxes raised, after all?
And yet, Utah’s Carlos Boozer voted enthusiastically for the Democratic candidate.
“I’m doing very well financially,” Boozer said. “And at the same time, the biggest thing is, if my peoples that ain’t doing very good financially have a better life, then I’m happy. My mom and dad ain’t making what I’m making; my brothers and sisters ain’t making what I’m making; my cousins ain’t making what I’m making; my friends ain’t. But if they get better, then I’m happy. ‘Cause our country gets better. That’s how I feel about it.”
None of the two dozen or so players and coaches interviewed for this piece — each of whom is earning well into the seven figures this season — ever uttered a word about Obama’s tax plan. Maybe they didn’t know about his tax policy.
Or maybe they do know, and don’t care.
—
The President-Elect gets the last word:
What I needed was a community, I realized, a community that cut deeper than the common despair that black friends and I shared when reading the latest crime statistics, or the high fives I might exchange on a basketball court. A place where I could put down stakes and test my commitments.
– from Dreams from My Father
And so it came to pass that the skinny kid who played high school ball in Hawaii turned on a dime and changed his life, starting a journey that took him from Los Angeles to New York to Chicago to … well, you know the rest.
He now plays pickup ball the morning of an election. Good passer, decent shooter, team guy. Crossover needs work.
But leadership?
Well, a lot of the NBA world seems to pay attention when he speaks.
Ned Dishman/NBAE via Getty Images)
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