OT: Shaq not such a nice guy after all.....
So I have come across an article on UK's The Daily Mail, of all the news sources, showing some pretty egregious (recent) behavior by Shaq (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2615765/Shaquille-ONeal-accused…).
To say it is egregious is pretty much an understatement. This is a professional athlete, someone to whom (in all likelihood) millions of kids/people look up to (including the individual Shaq mocked), mocking an individual with a serious disability. It really is pretty low. Shaq erased the image and later called the individual and apologized (after all the strong criticism he got from his followers...not sure if his apology was actually genuine and if he truly understands how hurtful and ignorant this was) but I have not seen much media backlash about this. I certainly have not seen ESPN covering this.
It just got me thinking about how players and ex-players tend to get passes here and there and whether the hammer should fall just as hard on them. Not that I don't think Sterling's comments were egregious and that he should get all that he deserves, but I feel like players tend to get passes when the slap on the wrist should really sting. I personally feel like Shaq should issue a public apology and the networks that he works as an analyzt for should net out some sort of punishment.
Just some other examples of players, ex-players, getting a pass that come to mind are: Tim Hardaway and his vile anti-gay monologue (Tim was banned from attending an All-Star weekend, but then he apologized and all was hunky dory); John Rocker (the guy got a short suspension but continued to play in MLB in subsequent seasons, even after making comments on par with Sterling, if not worse); Stephen Jackson punching out a fan (he later admitted to enjoying hitting fans); Bonzi Wells taunted white players with racial epithets during numerous games. He was suspended for a day for spitting in the face of San Antonio's Danny Ferry during a game, calling Ferry a "[blanking] honkie" during another game. Golden State's Troy Murphy said Wells called him a "cracker" once; Riley Cooper got a $30,000 fine (a slap on the wrist) after he was video taped saying "I will fight every n***** here." at a country music concert (I sincerely doubt this guy is not racist).
Incidentally, back in 2003 Shaq said "Tell Yao Ming, 'Ching chong yang, wah, ah soh". He said he was just joking. None of my Asian friends were laughing, I'll tell you that much. Shaw apologized and all was well.
and what has a real impact is a lot weaker than what will get people talking.
And by the "What will get people talking" metric, the latest Donald Sterling episode is a slam dunk news story.
Which was still a huge improvement over his 1994 single "Biological Didn't Bother"
Which was still a huge improvement over his adventures in film
Wow, I never even heard of the movie steel. I'm assuming the plot and acting are hilarious, in a non-intended way.
She's not in the public eye as often, but she's awful in her own right.
got over 14,000 likes?
Would you suspend him indefinitely? Would you give a permanent ban to John Rocker if you were the MLB commissioner? Would you have booted Tim Hardaway for saying that he "hates gay people"? Would you ban Sterling for the comments he made?
Are you advocating for banning Trey Burke from the NBA indefinintely? Would that stop the Joe Dumars stuff?
Look what happend to Rocker. He got a 15 game suspension and continued to play in MLB. I know that allegedly Shaq was joking when he said "Tell Yao Minfg, Ching chong yang, wah, ah soh', but most of my Asian friends did not find it funny and, actually, found it very offensive. The matter was brushed off and all was well. Riley Cooper used the "n" word in a very offensive way and nothing really happens to him.
I'm still not sure you understand the difference between players and owners.
Also, I'm guessing if John Rocker was going to cost Major League Baseball millions of dollars, they would have probably suspended him for longer.
too much PC BS. Shaq can be more sensitive, but just wanted to be funny.
There is a reason that i hate all social network/social media as people don't know what act should've kept private and anything that you post on the internet can be used to against you.
Shaquille O'Neal might be a jerk, but this is hardly evidence of much. If making fun of a disabled person makes you a bad person, then probably 95% of the public is guilty. Honestly, there are many, many people who have talked like they're mentally handicapped, pretended to try to bite their own ear, etc.
Sure, a grown adult shouldn't be posting it on Instagram or Twitter or whatever. It's definitely a bad P.R. move on his part. This is the type of thing that wouldn't have happened 10 or 15 years ago, but now with so many cameras, social media, TMZ-like sites, etc., it's inevitable that this type of "joke" that nobody ever used to see is now going to get worldwide air time.
Shaq cheated on his wife. When it comes to "being a good guy," I think that means a whole lot more than making fun of a disabled person. If cameras followed all of us around or if we had millions of Twitter followers, I'm sure we would all find ourselves in a P.R. mess at some point, too.
Would you suspend him indefinitely? Would you throw the same book at him that Silver threw at Sterling (Personally, I find mocking someone with a serious disability just as bad and hurtful as racism). Would you give a permanent ban to John Rocker if you were the MLB commissioner? Would you have booted Tim Hardaway for saying that he "hates gay people"? Would you ban Sterling for the comments he made?
I guess my point was (perhaps I did write it correctly) that with athletes, we tend to laught it off, when it is more serious we shake our fingers, but in the end we tend to give a pass. I can't believe that Rocker was allowed to play in the MLB after what he said and that all Riley Cooper got was a team fine of $30,000.
Do you realize that there is difference between an employee making a shitty comment and an owner making a shitty comment?
Do you realize that there is a difference between an action and a belief system?
Do you realize there is a difference between Tim Hardaway making one shitty remark, walking it back, apologizing and legitimately changing his views, and 4 decades of racist nonsense that has led to legal action, the largest fine ever for housing discrimination, a complete organized effort on the part of Donald Sterling and his businesses to discriminate against black people, repeated comments, racial slurs, player and employee harrassment, and then on top of all that, the tape insulting league ambassador Magic Johnson and telling his girlfriend not to bring black people to the games?
Why are you apparently defending Sterling here?
What does shit that happened in the MLB and NFL have to do with the NBA?
You realize the owners have the power to not employ any of those players, right? They have that recourse, but there is virtually no recourse against a shitty, racist owner, unless you're willing to drop nukes on his head.
That was basically my entire point in stating there is a difference between an owner and an employee.
If a manager at Walmart says something racist, he is fired to little or no fanfare and everyone moves on.
If C. Douglas Mcmillon says something racist is opens up a tidal wave of outrage and anger because their spheres of influence are different by orders of magnitude. An owner or CEO of a company essentially sets the tone for that company, and so them being racist calls into question everything about that company, it's hiring practices, pay practices, all of it.
Both should be fired, but if a player says something racist and isn't fired, whose fault is that? The players, or the owner who employs him?
Do you want the league making personnel decisions for the owners? I'm pretty sure there is a reason they don't do that. It's because the owners control the league.
Never thought of the "who is the employee? The league or the owner?" argument. Perhaps the league should have some more power in the more egregious cases, i.e. Rocker. Then again, what is egregious....it can become a slippery slope.
The owners control the league. The commissioner is an elected representative of the owners. Adam Silver coming out and banning Sterling for life could not be done without the tacit or outright endorsement of the majority of the owners. He cannot force Sterling to sell the team without three quarters of the owners voting to give him that authority.
The owners control the NBA.
The slippery slope argument presumes that people are too stupid to use their own judgement in making these sorts of decisions. There isn't going to come a day where Mark Cuban says, "That dunk was insane!" and the league takes the team from him for colloquially trivializing the plight of mentally ill people.
It took nearly 4 decades for anyone to do anything about this. If that's the slope, if anything it needs to be steeper.
Man, the Rocker case got blown way out of proportion. I can't believe we're talking about that crap 15 years later. Essentially, what he said was "I don't know how all these foreigners got in this country" (which, by the way, is probably how about 50% of the United States population feels) and "I don't want to sit next to a queer with AIDS" (which is clearly homophobic but doesn't encourage violence, hate speech, etc.).
I don't understand why any of us should give a s*** about whether he thinks there are too many foreigners in this country or whether he wants to sit near a gay person or not. I'm guessing a large number of our grandparents (if not parents or friends) would be uncomfortable sitting next to a gay person. Should your grandpa have been fired from his job at the mill? Is your grandpa a bad person because he doesn't approve of homosexuality?
"Do you realize that there is difference between....."
Nope. He doesn't.
I am NOT defending Sterling. Perhaps you have not read my comments carefully and I did not make it abundantly clear. I think Sterling deserves to go....period.
However, personally I do not think there is a difference between a racist bigot like Sterling and vile homophobe like Tim Hardaway. The only reason why Tim "walked it back" as you say is because he realized he let the cat out of the bag and the criticism came shortly thereafter. You don't say stuff like Tim Hardaway said without being a life long bigot. Perhaps Tim truly changed his way, but when he made those statements, you really are naive to think that it was a spur of the moment thing? Do I need to remind you of what he said? Tim Hardaway: "You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known," Hardaway said. "I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States. And second of all, if he was on my team, I would, you know, really distance myself from him because, uh, I don't think that's right. And you know I don't think he should be in the locker room while we're in the locker room. I wouldn't even be a part of that."
Also, the reason why I mentioned other sports is because I said athletes, in general, get a pass. If an MLB owner made comments like Rocker did, he would, in all likelihood, be gone. If Magic used words like Cracker and Honkie, as Wells did, he would be gone. My point, again, is that athletes seem to get a pass when, perhaps, they should not. Although they are not owners, they still wield influence and serve as role models for kids/youth.
You really didn't answer any of my questions.
What Tim said was despicable and he was punished based upon the comments and his influence within the league (virtually none). Was he even under employment by the NBA when he made those comments?
How do the athletes get a pass when you've continuously listed numerous punishments for their transgressions?
If anyone has gotten a pass it has been Donald Sterling. He was able to own the team for 30+ years making heaps and heaps of money until finally the 34465734 racist thing he said/did brought him down.
No player in any sports organization would ever get as much rope as Donald Sterling.
This is the equivalent of Ron Artest running into the stands and beating the shit out of fans every year of his career and never getting punished for it. Then one time he pushes a ball boy and he's finally outsted for life.
gone much earlier. Why that did not happen, who knows. I heard some BS excuses that since he was never actually found guilty (he settled most cases) the league (commish) felt it should not pry. This is a BS excuse as there is evidence of him making some pretty blatantly racists/offensive statements on the record (in depositions, etc.).
I think the reason why it came to a head now is that what he was saying on tape is (a) fresh (as in pretty current), and (b) it touched very close to home with the NBA itself, making disparaging remarks about Magic, etc.
Before, he was likely perceived as some old dude that had some housing discrimination cases, sexual harrassment cases, but I don't think many people really knew the extent to which he was a racist/asshole. You know, people don't get into the nitty gritty until the proverbial poop really hits the fan (hindsight is always 20 20). I think he was perceived, to a certain extent, like Al Davis, some old white unpleasant crochety guy and the public, in general, did not pay him much attention, as is the case with most owners.
As to why the commissioner never did anything before, well it was not in the spotlight and he likely felt he should leave sleeping dogs lie. Also as to Sterling being this AMAZING person, his coat is not as clean as people think. He has been around the NBA long enough (I think since the early 90s) in an executive-type capacity, he certainly must have been aware of Sterling's skeletons.
No, I would not suspend him indefinitely. For taking an ill-advised picture? Come on. That's ridiculous.
I don't get where the outrage comes from. I honestly find it hard to believe that you've never called a friend a "retard" at the gym or watching a football game. You've never made a joke about an Asian or a Jew? Because this guy's an athlete (or a former athlete), we're all supposed to shake our finger at him and say "You're not being very nice! I don't want to watch you play basketball anymore because you're a big meanie!"
If you don't want to buy his jersey anymore, fine. If the Lakers come on and you don't want to watch him, change the channel. But if you're looking to watch basketball played by angels, stop watching college or pro sports. If this is what it takes to get booted out of the NBA, you could probably start handing out pink slips to 80% of the league or more.
And the rest of us will be watching you and a bunch of nuns brick shot after shot.
between this situation and donal sterling's remarks--one was a joke, the other was serious.
the problem is that preventable stupidity should be severely punishment. you have to be extremely stupid to post this publicly. he should be punished accordingly.
People are acting like it's just the comments. The comments are what kicked off the firestorm. They led the media into digging up all of the dirt on Sterling. Yes, it was already publicly available, but people simply didn't know about it. Thanks to social media, his entire history of shitty behavior became public knowledge, permeating the pop culture bubble, and when that happens, shit gets done and quickly.
You could ignore all of the racist stuff Sterling has said and done and still make a strong case he should have been booted out of the league.
In the 1980s players told stories about how when they would get their checks, they'd have to race to the bank on Friday afternoons after practice to attempt to cash them, because often times the checks would bounce, and only a handful of the players would get paid that week. Sterling would purposely push practices late, ending them right when the banks would close so the players would have a hard time cashing their checks. That is directly breaking one of the major bylaws of the NBA constitution.
He also refused to pay certain executives or coaches the money he owed them in their contracts to the point where they would have to bring lawsuits against him just to get paid what they were rightfully owed.
For years he cheaped out on everything, harrassed players and executives, and severely underpaid employees in an effort to maximize profits.
Even without all of the racism he deserved to get booted. That merely puts it way over the top.
And I would expect you to appreciate the difference between this, and casually making an Asian or Jew joke among friends. This is mean spirited, poking fun at a disability. They both should have had enough class to not go there, end of story.
"They both should have had enough class to not go there, end of story. "
I agree 100%.
And...? What comes next? Are we supposed to fire or suspend everyone who "should have had enough class not to do something"?
athletes--people who get paid in full and are more connected with youth and regular joes than anybody else--is pretty acceptable and could be benificial.
There are no need for punitive measures here. This should be hailed as example 1-A of how to handle this sort of situation.
An internet meme spreads of a guy taking an awkward selfie.
Shaq and Burke join in on the meme.
It is revealed that the person who took the original photo was disabled, sparking outrage.
Shaq and Burke get most of the heat for the meme because they're famous.
They immediately publicly apologize, expressing their horror, personally call the young man to apologize directly to him and have a conversation.
The issue is settled.
I'm just expressing my disappointment, in Burke particularly. Also was pointing out the difference between what they did, and the race joke analogy.
where one would draw the line for athletes versus owners/managerial types, across all professional leagues. I realize that it presents a number of issues: (a) What is egregious enough to warrant a boot ou the door, repeated use of racial slurs, attacking fans, sexual assault?; (b) Who makes the decision, the individual team or the league?
I think that most active professional athletes would not make disparaging remarks openly but what if they were caught making egregious comments, evidencing clear/ingrained racism/anti-semitism, etc.? I return to Rocker again, because he is as close to a Sterling example as you will get with a player. Just as a refresher, the guy's quotes include: "I'd retire first. It's the most hectic, nerve-racking city. Imagine having to take the 7 Train to the ballpark. . .next to some kid with purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS. .. right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It's depressing... The biggest thing I don't like about NY are the foreigners. . . How the hell did they get in this country?" and called his teammate a "fat monkey".
Should players of Rocker's racist/homophobic (repetitive) calliber get the boot?
but you have to be an idiot to post that publicly. if you want to share that with your friends, that is fine. if you post that publicly, people will believe you actually think disabled people should be mocked.
At last we arrive at the center of the shrubbery maze.
I agree. It was dumb. Is there a rule against being dumb? And even if you just post it for your friends to see (text it to them, e-mail it to them, etc.), there's a good chance that it's going to get out. You can't legislate against being dumb.
There are so many more important things to be concerned about if we're looking for role models. Should NBA players who cheat be banned from the NBA? Should NBA players who have kids out of wedlock and abandon them be banned from the NBA? Should NBA players who run stop signs or get tickets for going 5 mph over the speed limit be banned from the NBA? Running a stop sign is more dangerous than posting a picture pretending to be disabled. Abandoning your kid is more hurtful than pretending to be disabled.
I'm finished with this conversation because it's dumb and I've already spent too much time on it. But jeez, how we overreact to minutiae sometimes...
by punishing trey burke for publicly posting a pic on instagram. you can say it is for being insensitive, but really it's for being dumb.
This is a total bullshit non-story. Trey Burke did the exact same thing too, FYI. No one knew the kid was disabled, they just thought he was kind of weird looking and making a weird face. Shaq has since personally contacted the young man and apologized.
Everyone considers The Daily Mail tabloid garbage for a reason.
We're all assholes, at least a little bit. Gotta have some sort of filter though. Some are better than others as to what passes through that filter.
As far as shaq goes he has always been a standup guy who seems to be looking for the instant laugh. Just assuming, but maybe being 7'1" 340+ pounds himself, maybe comedy and social acknowledgement have been his way of dealing with his own awkward insecurities. Toe shaq and others could easily turn this into a positive situation by not only issuing a sincere apology (not a halfhearted one on twitter) and then donating to Binion's cause hug don't judge. They could really make his day as well as come off as socially responsible individuals who are helping in the fight for a cause.
Other than a simple donation of a few Gs I really do not see a reason to fine shaq in articulate any further. He made a mistake. It was only highly publicized because it's shaq and Mr. Binion was informed about it. Think of all the negative images of people you see on the internet that are never properly reprimanded.
I still haven't heard whether Shaq or those other guys knew the person they were making fun of had a disability. I mean, there's a difference between posing like a picture they saw online not knowing about the guy personally, and intentionally making fun of a guy's handicap. The latter is mean-spirited, but the former is at worst just kind of ignorant.
I'm sure some people will say there's no difference based on the end result, ie they're mocking someone with a health condition whether they realized it or not. But to me, intent counts for something. If you ask your buddy how his wife is doing, you're only mocking him if you knew they had divorced before you asked the question. He may be hurt either way, but if you didn't know about the divorce then you weren't intentionally doing harm.
Anyone who has a functioning brain can tell that that guy has some type of disorder. You just don't make fun of people for things like that.
You. Just. Don't.
Just my two cents:
I don't think he was talking about this specifically, but generally speaking with everything that's going on. As soon as someone in the public spotlight makes any kind of non P.C. statement, the media is all over it. Thus, in turn, makes everyone commenting on it look like a huge hypocrite. Regardless if he's disabled or not, everyone has made fun of someone in their lifetime. Unless you were a nun out of the womb, everyone has done this. So making fun of someone not disabled is ok, but making fun of somone that is disabled is not ok? Do you see where this doesn't make any sense at all?
The thing is, it was an honest mistake. They thought it was a joke. When they found out it wasn't, they owned up to their mistake like real men do. That should be the end of the story right there. The whole Donald Sterling thing, I don't think anything less would've happened if he would've made a public apology, but he's been quiet ever since the story broke. Bad move on his part. Do you really believe all these NBA players lauding him, or threatening to boycott have never used a racial slur behind closed doors? Let's be honest... This is what I have a problem with.