BASKETBALL

Amerikkka's Most Hated

The author of "Am I Black Enough for You?" explains the cultural origins and power of Latrell Sprewell's controversial new commercial.

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by Todd Boyd

The future for us / Young shooters and old killers
Who become rich as dope dealers
Nothin' left for us / But hoop dreams and 'hood tournaments
Thug coaches / With subs sittin' on the bench
Either that or rap / We want the fast way outta this trap.

-- Nas, "We Will Survive"

I, for one, am pulling for the Knicks to win it all. Not that I'm a Knicks fan – Spike Lee's constant presence as courtside sycophant assures that this will never be the case – but because if they win the public would have to further digest Amerikkka's most hated baller Latrell Sprewell and reconcile this hatred with Spree's championship ring.

Recently, Karl Malone went home with his second undeserved NBA Most Valuable Player Award. In selecting Malone, the sports writing establishment and the league ignored his petulance, his cheap shots, and the eighteen-wheeler he drives through the streets for no apparent reason to embrace the fact that he is a self-described "Black redneck."

The rap group Outkast says, "Some say we're country, but we're only southern." Karl Malone is country. In other words, he is a non-threatening Black male figure in a sport where race is always lurking beneath the surface. The fact that he plays in Utah, that citadel of conservatism, adds to his acceptance. He’s the American dream of what a black man should be.

So it stands to reason that the people who embrace Karl Malone could never understand, much less embrace, Latrell Sprewell.

The current Sprewell AND 1 commercial plays on this cultural dichotomy to the fullest. In the ad, as Spree is getting his hair braided into his signature corn rows and Jimi Hendrix's version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" blares in the background, he makes several statements about his place in the NBA world: "People say, I'm what's wrong with sports today.... I say, I'm the American Dream."

This is not the first time a company has used a controversial basketball player to sell its product. First we had Charles Barkley's famous "I am not a role model" Nike commercial, and later, a plethora of commercials that tried to capitalize on Dennis Rodman's eccentricities. Nothing, though, has been like this.

Barkley's ad presented a position that people could and did argue with, but there was no real cloud hanging over his head. Rodman, the Jar Jar Binks of basketball, manufactured his own see-through image and thus he was never really controversial as much as he was a clown. But Sprewell, in the view of many, has looked a gift horse in the grill, and for those people, he is another example of what they see as wrong in professional sports, as he acknowledges in the commercial.

America loves their Black entertainers when they behave "properly" and stay in their place. These entertainers are socialized at an early age, live under a microscope, and are constantly held to the expectations of a mainstream society that has no understanding for the fact that not everyone shares the same world view. When the players realize their value, their significance to the game, and try to capitalize on this, they are held guilty in the highest court of contempt.

From these circumstances, the AND 1 Sprewell commercial and the virulent reaction against it were born.

Next page: "I don't give a fuck!"

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