Bigotry is Bad. Sport is Good.

As of this writing, an NBA investigation has not conclusively proven that a voice message from Clippers owner Donald Sterling revealed a blatantly racist outlook. Whether fabricated by a vengeful acquaintance or coming straight from Sterling’s heart, someone uttered the reprehensible, irredeemable remarks.

The preponderance of the evidence indicates at this point that a prominent owner in one of the world’s most prominent sports leagues did, in fact, utter the statements in question. That anyone would hold such attitudes is horrific. The fact we consider it as such speaks to the nature of sport.

Sportsmen and women tend to have a passion for winning. It often trumps every other consideration related to gameplay, including fitness, business, and appreciation of athleticism. Sometimes an unswerving quest to win can have negative consequences. In the case of racism, however, it becomes a positive.

The need to win requires one to evaluate people based on their individual abilities to help achieve that goal. It has little tolerance for bunching individuals into arbitrary groups based on criteria other than helping you win. In a competitive environment, you get to indulge your irrational biases or you get to win. Whether you’re football-playing southern colleges in the 1960s and 1970s or a modern-day pro team owner, you don’t get to do both.

Teams tend to care more about winning a ring than about what color finger it goes on.

 If Sterling is an inveterate racist (which he has denied in a statement), sport has forced him not to implement policies based on his outlook, at least not openly and to the extent he might have preferred. He has had to hire African-Americans into the most prominent and highly-paid positions in his organization, including management (q.v. Elgin Baylor, Doc Rivers). He has had to pay them the market rate of millions of dollars a year because they give him the best chance to win.

In turn, when competitive pressures force franchise management to evaluate players as individuals, others connected to the arena must do the same. Sterling apparently managed to ignore how color-blind hiring helped his team. Most in the business prove more perceptive. When Jackie Robinson first joined the Dodgers, some of his teammates felt racial animosity toward him. Once they recognized how his skin color indicated nothing about his character or ability to help them to their goals, they changed their thinking.⁽¹⁾  While sport will always reflect society’s prejudices to a certain extent, it moves them in a more tolerant direction by its essential essence.

If Jack Johnson boxed today, 99.9% of the discussion about him would revolve around his punching prowess. The mainstream media certainly wouldn’t tout the desperate possibility of a “Great White Hope” to defeat him.⁽²⁾ Indeed, we expect no pundits to rush to defend the Clippers owner’s alleged remarks. We also anticipate every official governing body connected with the incident will roundly condemn the bigotry they expressed.

We see such condemnation because a competitive spirit doesn’t just suppress racism on the court. It is unimaginable that NBA Commissioner Adam Silver would share Sterling’s presumed views on race. But even if he and his senior staff did, they could not rationally indulge their biases. They would risk losing enormous market share in the short and long terms to leagues that instead chose hiring and marketing methodologies that maximized their potential talent and customer pools. In fact, while there is still progress needed in minority business-side opportunities, the sports world’s necessary on-court race neutrality has often given athletes the exposure necessary to demonstrate that they possessed traits that could also help sporting businesses succeed off the court.

Racism, like all irrational worldviews, may never disappear completely. A competitive environment, however, forces it to its deserved fringes. How far to the fringes? Alleged racist Donald Sterling apparently had to hide his hate sufficiently thoroughly that the NAACP had planned to give him an award, and not for the first time. ⁽³⁾  

As Charles Barkley said, the NBA is a “Black League.” ⁽⁴⁾ He’s right. It’s also an international league, a tattooed league, an inner-city league, a Midwest farm boy league, and, most importantly, a merit-based league. Its very nature prevents it from being anything else.

UPDATE : The league apparently has conclusively determined that the statements attributed to Sterling did, in fact, come from him. They decided the remarks and their speaker have no place in the sport.

Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns and related creative projects for sports entities through his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports.

RushOlson.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports

Footnotes

⁽¹⁾ “Bobby Bragan and Jackie Robinson,” Bobby Bragan Youth Foundation. http://www.bobbybragan.org/component/content/article/1-latest-news/141-bobby-bragan-and-jackie-robinson (accessed April 27, 2014)

⁽²⁾ Christopher Lisee, “Black Boxers in the American Media,” Christopher Lisee. http://eportfolios.ithaca.edu/clisee1/essays/boxing/ (accessed April 27, 2014)

⁽³⁾ “Donald Sterling To Receive NAACP Lifetime Achievement Award” Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/26/donald-sterling-naacp_n_5219708.html (accessed April 27, 2014)

⁽⁴⁾ Richard Deitsch, “Barkley and the TNT halftime crew react to Sterling's comments,” Sports Illustrated. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/nba/news/20140426/donald-sterling-shaquille-o-neal/ (accessed April 27, 2014)