Armour: NBA should move All-Star Game from North Carolina now
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the amount of time between the NBA's hiring of a female referee and the NFL's.
Inaction can be just as damaging as taking the wrong action.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver reiterated Thursday that the All-Star Game won’t be played in Charlotte next February if hatred, bigotry and discrimination continue to be the law of the land in North Carolina. He even went so far as to say the league has looked into alternate venues.
Silver: Law must change for 2017 All-Star Game to stay in Charlotte
But Silver also said he sees no reason to move the game now, believing it’s more effective to try and work with state officials than issue ultimatums or threats.
A noble thought. Except it’s accomplished nothing.
It’s been almost a month since the passage of HB2, legislation that eliminates non-discrimination protections for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people, and bars cities from passing anti-discrimination ordinances of their own, and North Carolina lawmakers have shown no signs of budging from their hateful stance.
Bruce Springsteen, Boston and Pearl Jam have all canceled concerts in North Carolina in protest of the law. PayPal dropped plans for a global operations center in Charlotte, costing the state 400 new jobs.
If those public shamings weren’t enough to prompt a change of heart, no amount of “pretty pleases” by Silver and the NBA will, either.
The best way to deal with bullies – there’s no other way to describe North Carolina’s small-minded lawmakers -- is to stand up to them. With as popular as basketball is in North Carolina, home to both Steph Curry and Michael Jordan, the NBA pulling the All-Star Game would be the strongest statement yet that intolerance has no place in today’s world.
“It is a very big deal. If they pull out, it will make a very loud noise with the Legislature on the scale of Bruce Springsteen or PayPal,” said Chris Sgro, executive director of Equality NC. “Or possibly even greater.”
It doesn’t matter what Silver says the NBA is prepared to do in the future. By biding its time now, the league is giving tacit approval to North Carolina’s legalized discrimination. That’s troubling for any of the major sports leagues but particularly so for the NBA, which has become the standard by which everyone else is measured when it comes to issues of equality and tolerance.
First with David Stern and now with Silver, the NBA has taken the lead time and again in striking down barriers and stereotypes involving race, gender and sexual orientation.
The NBA routinely gets top grades on The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport’s annual racial and gender report cards. It was the first major professional league to hire female referees, doing so almost two decades before the NFL. It was the first with a full-time female assistant coach, Becky Hammon joining the San Antonio Spurs’ staff a year before Jen Welter was hired as a training camp intern with the Arizona Cardinals.
The NBA was taking a hard line on homophobia long before it became standard practice, fining Kobe Bryant $100,000 five years ago after he directed an anti-gay slur at a referee. That same year, Rick Welts, then president and CEO of the Phoenix Suns, announced he was gay, becoming what is believed to be the first openly gay executive of a major U.S. sports franchise.
This would be the same Welts, mind you, who created All-Star weekend when he was a marketing executive at NBA headquarters.
And, of course, the NBA was the first with an openly gay player. After years of players saying they wouldn’t care if they had a gay teammate, Jason Collins proved that wasn’t just talk when he came out in the spring of 2013.
"It had been argued that no team would want to take on a player who was likely to attract a media circus from the outset and whose sexuality would be a distraction," Collins wrote when he retired a year later. "I'm happy to have helped put those canards to rest."
The NBA has done as much as anyone to show that black or white, gay or straight, male or female, we’re all just people. That our differences are something to celebrate rather than fear.
North Carolina’s discriminatory law is both hurtful and hateful. By refusing to take a stand in hopes lawmakers will see the light, or the courts will step in, the NBA is cheapening itself and all the good work it's done in the past.