As the 2012-13 NBA season kicks off, there’s something not sitting right in the North Star State. While all 30 teams prepare for what promises to be an exciting campaign, the Minnesota Timberwolves are forced to stare scrutiny right in the face as the team is being accused of conspiracy.
Of all the players on the T-Wolves’ 15-man roster, five are black. While a certain race making up for one-third of a team’s lineup isn’t normally anything to cry wolf about, Tyrone Terrell thinks differently,.
Terrell is the chairman of the African American leadership council of St. Paul, Minnesota and asked Jerry Zgoda and Dennis Brackin of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, “How did we get a roster that resembles the 1955 Lakers?” Terrell went on to say, “I think everything is a strategy. Nothing happens by happenstance.”
This so-called strategy Terrell speaks of refers to selling tickets to the T-Wolves’ fan base, which is, by a vast majority, white. Terrell, though, was not the only one to smell something rotten. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune also spoke with Minnesota civil rights activist Ron Edwards who said, “It raises some real questions to me about what’s really intended. I think, personally, that it was calculated. Is this an attempt to get fans back in the stands? Minnesota, after all, is a pretty white state.” Like most irrational thoughts, the ones suggested by Edwards and Terrell don’t offer a lot of substance.
Tony Manfred of Business Insider actually came up with a few points that contradict what the two activists had to say.
First, the T-Wolves ranked 14th overall in league ticket sales last season with a convincing 90.4%, which is a substantial number for a non-playoff team. In fact, only two other non-playoffs clubs cracked the Top 15 in said category last year all while having a predominantly black roster (8 of 15).
Finally, consider how global the sport of basketball has become especially within the last decade. While African-Americans make up one-third of the Minnesota roster, players from outside North America make up another third of said roster. So, by the logic of Terrell, Edwards and any other conspiracy theorists, fans in Spain, Puerto Rico, Serbia or Russia can argue that the T-Wolves are prejudice of foreigners. In fact, those five players born outside North America double the league’s average (2.5 last season) of non-Americans on any roster.
Better yet, since two of the T-Wolves (Andrei Kirilenko, Alexey Shved) are Russian, I’d be very interested in hearing from those capitalist conspiracy theorists still fixated on the Cold War — then again, no, I wouldn’t be interested at all because, like the case Terrell and Edwards have made, it’s utterly preposterous.
If civil rights activist Ron Edwards is accurate in calling Minnesota a “pretty white state”, that doesn’t translate to those fans shunning the black players who call the Land of a Thousand Lakes their professional home.
Sticking with the T-Wolves, Kevin Garnett, an African-American, spent the first twelve years of his career leading a once-perennial bottom-feeder and turning it into a regular playoff contender. In the late 90s when the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings were one of the best teams in football, they were led on the field by the three-headed monster of quarterback Duante Culpepper and wide receivers Cris Carter and Randy Moss — all African-American. Off the field, the Vikings were led by head coach Dennis Green who had become only the second African-American head coach in the modern era after Art Shell of the Los Angeles Raiders. It’s also worth noting that the current head coach of the Vikings is Leslie Frazier, another African-American.
Of course, no race in sports discussion can be complete without talking about America’s pastime — a sport whose racial integration arguably rocked the foundation of the western world more than any other sport.
When the original Washington Senators moved out of D.C. following the 1960 season, it was Minnesota’s gain as they would now have a Major League Baseball franchise. The Twins, as they would be called, had little trouble welcoming integration despite the issue still being relatively new in the sport. Outfielder Tony Oliva would join the Twins in just their second season, Rod Carew would join the team a few years later and neither had any trouble becoming fan favourites not to mention putting together Hall of Fame resumes. But as great as the likes of Oliva and Carew were in Minnesota, the Twins would fall in love with another player who would become idolized not only by Twins fans but baseball fans overall: the late, great Kirby Puckett. While he had the same, strong impact on Minnesota baseball that Oliva and Carew had before him, Puckett would lead the Twins to two World Series titles first in 1987 then again in 1991. For a “pretty white state,” Minnesota sure has a hard time living up to such a ridiculous moniker.
What Tyrone Terrell and Ron Edwards suggested is nothing more than a case of starting a fire where there’s nothing in the vicinity that even resembles the conception of smoke. Despite most NBA rosters being predominantly black, you don’t hear anyone complaining about the Miami Heat or the Los Angeles Clippers being “too black.” If a roster is predominantly one race or one nationality, does it really matter? Go to any NBA arena and you’ll find handfuls of white fans sporting the jerseys of black players and vice-versa. Of every fan who owns a Pau Gasol jersey, how many of those fans, like Gasol, hail from Spain? Most fans I see wearing LeBron James or Dwyane Wade jerseys are white. Don’t those fans know that they’re black? With all due respect, I don’t believe they’d even bat an eyelash much less stop to care about it and rightfully so.
65 years ago, so many baseball fans, managers and players detested Jackie Robinson because his skin wasn’t a certain colour. Tyrone Terrell, Ron Edwards and any other conspiracy theorists, don’t hate Kevin Love or Ricky Rubio for the same reason. It is ironic that Terrell referenced the 1955 Lakers (who were then located in Minneapolis) in regards to this issue, if you can even call it that. While there is still more to done in terms of race relations, times have changed significantly. African-American athletes are no longer treated like prisoners for breaking records held by a white player. The same cannot be said for Hank Aaron who, in 1974, received thousands of unsigned hate letters all for finding himself on the verge of breaking Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record. My apologies to Terrell and Edwards but their observations have fallen upon deaf ears.
However the Minnesota Timberwolves fare this season, they’ll do so with a truly multicultural roster, even if only a third of them are African-American. It’s time to stop the foolishness and just play the game.
Despite being an American-dominated sport played predominantly by African-Americans, the game of basketball was invented by a white Canadian by the name of James Naismith. While we can sit around and analyze what happened along the way to change such a trend, we can all safely agree that it would be a heck of a lot more beneficial to focus on what really matters.
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Ryan Cowley is a writer at Toronto Standard. Follow him on Twitter @RyanACowley.
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