Durant dribbled to the right elbow, ready to hit his friend and former teammate Serge Ibaka with some of his patented shake-and-bake dribble moves. Earning himself some space, Durant would’ve likely popped vertical for an 18-foot jump shot, releasing the ball from ten feet up in the air – Durant’s release point is just one of the myriad reasons why he is an all-time great basketball player, and arguably the best in the game today. The ball would’ve swished through the net and Durant would’ve backpedaled to man the defensive end, the Warriors up 41-34, and the once-raucous Toronto crowd as quiet as Tim Tebow’s bedroom.
Except that didn’t happen. Durant pushed off his right foot and suddenly no longer cared about the basketball in his possession. He let it bounce into Ibaka’s clutches as he limped away from the action, collapsing to the ground as soon as the action had moved far enough away. Ibaka ran the floor, and was prevented from scoring only by a Shaun Livingston shooting foul.
With the action stopped, fans’ attention could return back to the sequence of events that started it all. Those who hadn’t noticed already saw that Kevin Durant was down, clutching his right Achilles – the same Achilles (or “calf,” as Golden State had publicly said) that had kept Durant out the previous 33 days. With a blank look on his face, Steve Kerr called timeout and Durant was helped to the sideline.
And then it happened. Raptors fans could already taste their first championship, and now the only man who could foreseeably take it away from them could barely walk, let alone play basketball. The crowd could no longer contain themselves, and excited cheers filled Scotiabank Arena. The good-natured reputation that Canadian sports fans had fostered for decades evaporated in the blink of an eye.
The Raptors players tried to quell the fervor, and eventually got the crowd to reverse course and begin a “KD! KD!” chant. But there was no fooling anyone.
“It was bullshit. That was freaking ridiculous. I can’t even put into words how mad I was about that,” Klay Thompson said after the game
“That’s crazy. That’s classless,” seethed Draymond Green.
“Fuck them. Fuck ‘em. Trash, so trash. But like I said, we’re idolized as superstar athletes. Not human beings. It’s always about what we can do between those lines. That’s it. That’s all that ever matters. And then once we lash out and do human-type things, then we’re considered bad guys,” said DeMarcus Cousins, as only he can.
And there it was again, the refrain from the most popular athlete song. Woe is me. I’m not treated like a human. Nobody knows what it is like to be out here, to be disrespected, to have my emotional and physical setbacks cheered like a reality show finale. In the aftermath of KD’s injury, the sporting world talking heads came to the athletes’ defense and echoed these tired points, presumably to ensure that their networks can still land sit-down interviews with the top players.
As a sports fan, I am so tired of this stupid debate. If athletes don’t like to be in the public eye, that’s fine. Don’t accept the millions of dollars, the endorsements, the luxury travel, the throngs of beautiful people waiting to sleep with you with the wave of a hand. To a certain extent, when you sign on the dotted line for hundreds of millions of dollars, you are also signing away your ability to have your feelings always put first.
The common folk out here, the ones toiling away in directionless office jobs all day? We’re the ones going to games and drinking the $15 beers, buying the jerseys, putting our eyeballs on the screens that boost the Nielsen ratings and get the NBA record-breaking television deals. We’re the ones growing the league, and allowing for everyone even tangentially connected to the game to afford their third and fourth homes. If I want to go to games, and see my team finally have a perhaps-once-in-a-lifetime chance at winning a championship, then I’m not sorry if I momentarily get caught up in the moment and delight in the opposition’s best player going down. He didn’t lose his leg. His family is still taken care of. He’ll dominate the game again one day.
Of course there are lines that cannot be crossed. Bigotry such as sexism and homophobia has no place in sports, let alone society. Those evils should never be tolerated, and should always be swiftly reprimanded. And racism, such as the words thrown at Russell Westbrook in Utah earlier this year, is a plague that the NBA has done an admirable job of combating in recent years, though there is always more work to be done. But this was not an example of hatred. Rather, it was an example of fans seeing sports like war. The generals command their armies against one another, and there can only be one victor. As tough as it is, one team’s “casualty” is typically the other team’s gain.
Don’t forget – the treatment that athletes get is no different from anyone else in the public eye. Billionaires, politicians, movie stars, – most have sacrificed a great deal of their personal life and anonymity for the sake of the general public. But before you get too weepy, remember that this isn’t exactly philanthropy at its highest form. These guys have the world delivered to them on a sliver platter. And most of them are far from saints.
Why don’t you tell some of the NFL players from the 70’s and 80’s that NBA zillionaires are upset with people cheering their injuries? The same NFL players who can’t even move today from all their injuries sustained while playing? The ones who would play their hearts out in the Pro Bowl because the winning players got $5,000 bonuses? The ones dealing with dementia and CTE? Go ahead, tell them.
I understand that technology, especially social media, has forever transformed the vitriol that these athletes receive. It’s worse than ever, and that’s something we as a society should work to remedy. And again, it’s something that plagues everyone in the public eye, not just athletes. But there needs to be a line drawn between bigotry and hatred, and common douchebaggery. The Raptors fans cheering when KD went down Monday night? That was common douchebaggery.
Comments
Like that take.