the NBA: when sports is not just sports
Politics and sports do bleed into each other, especially in the current era, where very often, it is the billionaire owners trying to manipulate millionaire athletes to keep control of those working class folks who can barely afford the cheap seats.
This NBA season was an example of Billionaires trying to buy power and undermine working class culture. Take Brooklyn, a place that used to be proud of being working class. Now, it is trying to be more posh than Manhattan itself, and is more than willing to raise rents, to kick out the very same people that gave Brooklyn it's culture. What did Brooklyn Billionaires do?, they said "we will assemble an invincible super duper team made of people that we steal from other places, and make us invincible. " As if that made up for high rent, or the fact that the very culture many yuppies moved to NYC to "enjoy" wound up having to move. Never mind that new York had a franchise that may not have titles, but had all the loyalty that sports is supposed to be about.
Take the LA clippers, the literal TOY of a Microsoft co-founder, Steve Ballmer. Not that he could pay for the stadium he wanted, not that we would move them to Seattle, the city that made him the money. No, and of course, you had Kawhi Leonard, the so called "New king of LA." Mr. Leonard, I liked you when the narrative was not staying in Texas because you wanted to be with your family. I admired you for being willing to turn down Toronto's offer to make you a GOD if you stayed on the Raptors to be with your family. Fast Forward, and not only do you NOT live in LA, but you did not even play that much. Of course, like NYC, there is already a team in LA whose loyalty is so strong even Mr. James was treated like an outsider. Even though he got them their first gold in years last year, they will probably send him out the door.
Well, fast forward to today, and both these stables of show ponies are GONE. They got beat by teams from what LA and NYC call flyover country. Teams who act like TEAMS, not a bunch of dolls that some billionaire stole to stuff into his toy-box. Congrats clippers, congrats Nets, you showed that no much how much a billionaire buys to compensate for all those beatings gotten from jocks in school, no matter how much he spends to bamboozle a bunch of fools to ignore that they are being robbed, he, and his dolls, can be exposed for what they are. We need to carry this knowledge into the public arena: there are a lot of polticians who are every bit as much cheap toys as some NBA athletes are.
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