The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Owners must listen to players
Mark Cuban, never afraid of a little conflict, locked arms with his players like no owner really has. He did it on Twitter, our modern back alley, engaging Monday in a wild keyboard brawl that began with him dismissing a conservative talk show host’s threat to ignore the NBA restart if a player kneels during the national anthem.
“Bye,” replied Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks owner.
Later, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, chimed in, and the argument turned really nasty and started to sprawl: insults about testicular fortitude and references to the NBA’s China hypocrisy, the Black Lives Matter movement and the nation’s pandemic failures.
If you just like a good fight, it was entertaining, I guess. But there was a greater significance. This random social-media scuffle was further anecdotal evidence that, amid all this unrest, sports owners are being confronted with social responsibility that many didn’t sign up for, but must now respect. Some, such as Cuban, will thrive in this environment because it matches their value system and the style in which they manage their teams. For others, the conflict will be a painful adjustment, and it might diminish their emotional return on investment.
After George Floyd died in Minneapolis police custody, the Los Angeles Lakers made a declaration that speaks for how most players in sports — especially those in predominantly Black leagues — feel: “If YOU ain’t wit US, WE ain’t wit Y’ALL!” As that sentiment spread, it created a mandate for owners to respect this moment and not simply stick to the business of sports.
There has been plenty of implied ownership support, so much so that players don’t fear retribution right now for taking strong social stances. But support as publicly, viscerally and unmistakably as Cuban offered in his Twitter arguments? Nah, most owners wouldn’t do that.
“I can say Black Lives Matter,” Cuban tweeted to Cruz. “I can say there is systemic racism in this country. I can say there is a Pandemic that you have done little to end. I can say I care about this country first and last.”
Two items not listed in the pro sports ownership manual: how to stomach losing major money during a pandemic, and how to defer to players, or truly partner with them, once they start wielding their power.
To the wealthy owners who wanted only magic, cash-printing toys, welcome to 2020, which is now their worst nightmare, too. There is no immunity to the destructive whims of this grating year, not even for people who think they answer to no one. But in sports, the bad is not all bad. The revision of norms has created a better, though more complicated, dynamic between owners and players.
We’ll see how long it lasts, but in this time of social unrest, owners have been forced to invest more than money into their teams. The overwhelming majority of people who actually play these games, regardless of their race and life experiences, want racial equality and demand their leagues join them. Athletes are trying to pool all of sports’ resources — the attention, the money, the sponsors, the civic importance, the political connections, every last ounce of influence — to make an impact.
It puts some owners in a cumbersome position. The awkwardness is on display now as many loquacious ones, such as Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, have avoided the spotlight like never before. You also see traces of it in Daniel Snyder’s capitulation on an offensive team name he vowed to never change. And then there is the controversy in the WNBA, where Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., a part-owner of the Atlanta Dream, criticized the players and entire league for supporting Black Lives Matter.
Like Loeffler, many sports owners long have supported President Donald Trump, whose racebaiting and outright racist statements place him adamantly on the other side of the movement to curb police brutality. But recent polling makes a strong claim that most of America is fed up with the status quo of injustice. Systemic oppression may have been a nebulous concept for most, but a white Minneapolis police officer’s deadly knee on Floyd’s neck pierced through all the nuance. At least for the compassionate, it then became an issue of human decency and suffering that transcended race.
For owners of American pro sports franchises, many of whom make immense profits off the talents of Black athletes who consider this as a life-defining issue, there are a new, non-negotiable terms from the workforce: Stand with us — or at least respect our stance — or you’re going to have a problem. And finally, there is enough public support for athletes to be so bold.
The attempt to use the sports platform to promote societal reform usually has been a lonely one, full of backlash and blacklisting. When individuals take a stand, the leagues they represent tend to distance themselves from them. Beliefs can be divisive. Diversion and entertainment are addictive. Dollars are undefeated.
Normally, sports owners are just being business owners: risk-averse and focused on the bottom line. As much as anything, that mentality led to the NFL stranding Colin Kaepernick after he knelt during the national anthem during the 2016 season to protest inequality. In their eyes, he was bad for business. The next season, when more players protested and Trump went Trump, the owners locked arms with their players for one week in a moment of egotistical outrage. But almost immediately, they regretted it and spent the rest of 2017 backtracking in spineless fashion.
This moment has the potential to mark a watershed in the owner-player dynamic. In this climate, the relationship can’t be purely transactional. The key difference is that there’s something to hold owners accountable to: the strength in numbers, from players as a more unified body and from fans who support their causes.
It gives athletes in team sports a kind of leverage they haven’t had. In the fight to make Black lives matter, it seems players have had an epiphany about how much they themselves matter. For now, there’s enough public agreement that it empowers athletes in team sports to speak or protest openly without fear of becoming the next Kaepernick or Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf.
If any sports investor considered unchallenged authority a perk of purchasing a team, well, ownership isn’t all that perky anymore.
For now, disposability is out. Understanding, or compromise at minimum, is in. Welcome to an age of owner accountability.