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Is the NBA a league of “thugs” who don’t respect the game?
The NBA has dealt with this image issue for many years. No surprises here, granted the league is made up mostly of Black players. Beyond sports, blacks are sometimes called lazy, violent, unintelligent, or a combination of the three.
If there’s one issue in regards to the latest incident with Arenas that bothers me most, it’s that it reinforces the idiotic stereotype that the NBA is a league of “thugs” who don’t value the game.
Still, what people need to realize is that the NBA is not a league made up of gangsters. Google “NBA Cares.” Going back to 2005, the foundation has raised close to $115 million for several causes. Players have logged one million hours of community work, and that number will only continue to increase.
Those numbers are undeniably extensive. For example, Shaquille O’Neal recently gave money for a North Carolina girl’s funeral. In 2007, Lebron James paid for Thanksgiving dinner for 800 people in Cleveland. Last year, Dwayne Wade helped buy a new house for a displaced family in South Florida. More NBA stars are just as active in the community.
The NBA is nearly the same as the rest of society. There are some bad apples. There is no doubt that Gilbert Arenas was wrong to bring weapons into a locker room. No one will ever forget about the image with Ron Artest charging into the stands. I am sure there are positive things about Arenas and Artest that the public does not hear about.
We can’t allow these types of isolated incidents to cloud the image of an amazing league.
The majority of these guys play hard each and every game. Many of them seem like fundamentally decent people, and that’s the reason it bothers me many people look down on the NBA as being a league of “thugs”.
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