Somewhere in 2006, in the midst of Steve Nash’s second MVP run, I found myself in one of those random assortments of people that college orientation events throw together. The conversation turned to a ranking of the best point guards in the league and the Nets fan in me mounted a fierce case for Jason Kidd.
“Wait, you know he beat his wife right?”
I awkwardly mumbled something about Kidd having made amends with his wife and having reformed and having maintained a stellar record since and…just continued on, not engaging with the girl from Phoenix who rolled her eyes and ignored our conversation from there on out.
Even in the moment I knew that I was wrong. Not because of any of the reasons that I mumbled; they may have been true and yet wholly irrelevant to the way in which Kidd’s history of domestic violence needed to be reckoned with then. In that moment. And in every moment since. It was just as germane to basketball matters as Kidd’s ability to lead the league’s most potent fast break. Try telling Joumana Kidd that her (basketball playing) husband’s broken jumper was within the circle of relevant discourse while his alleged repeated abuse was not.
I often think back to that moment with shame and regret. I’ve been thinking about it a lot more recently. After a Hall of Fame career that included an NBA championship with the Dallas Mavericks, head coaching stints with the Brooklyn Nets and the Milwaukee Bucks, and an assistant coaching gig with the Los Angeles Lakers that culminated in last season’s Bubble championship, Kidd is the newly minted head coach of the Mavericks. Yep, these Dallas Mavericks. No really, THESE Dallas Mavericks. Some might say that Kidd’s basketball credentials matter more. One could just as well argue that everything else matters less.
It shouldn’t, but it does.
Is our moral compass so broken that the bounds of what counts should be so circumscribed?
I’ve also been thinking back to the poster of Kidd that I had up on my closet door. To the #5 New Jersey Nets jersey (the classic white with the blue stripe and silver detailing, you know the one) that I would religiously pull on before Nets games. I wish I had been better.
The thing is, this isn’t about me and what I feel, or should feel. In the laughable press conference - the low point of a laughable process by the Portland Trailblazers - announcing his hiring as Portland’s coach, Chauncey Billups spoke about how the sexual assault incident that he is accused of, shaped his life.
There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about how every decision we make could have a profound impact on a person's life. I learned at a very young age as a player, but not only [as] a player but [as] a young man, a young adult, that every decision has consequences. And that's led to some really, really healthy but tough conversations that I've had to have with my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time in 1997, and my daughters about what actually happened and what they may have to read about me in the news and the media.
But this experience has shaped my life in so many different ways. My decision-making, obviously. Who I allow to be in my life, the friendships and relationships I have and how I go about them. It's impacted every decision that I make and it's shaped me in some unbelievable ways. I know how important it is to have the right support system around you, particularly in tough, difficult times.
The Blazers have rightly copped a ton of flak for shutting down follow-up questions and conducting the process in the least transparent manner possible. But Billups’ statement is worth dwelling on in and of itself, for it is truly representative of how broken our system is. We center the perpetrators. Missing in Billups’ statement is an ounce of reflection on what his decisions might have meant for his accuser. When he talks about the impact of a decision on a person’s life, it’s his life, what his supports are, how he speaks with his family about it all.
Reading about and watching that press conference gave me a feeling of exhaustion. It just felt like the same movie over and over and over. Cristiano Ronaldo. Kobe Bryant. Et al ad nauseam.
That’s not the right reaction either. I cannot be indulging that exhaustion. Maybe that’s the problem; those (read: men) with the ability to do more when they aren’t exhausted don’t.
True exhaustion is that feeling a woman must get when more decision-makers make a case for Chauncy Billups to get a second chance than for Becky Hammon to get a first one.
I don’t know what my central thesis is here, or how we fix this incredibly broken place we are in. Here are some ideas though:
Basketball literati, focusing on what happens on the court need not and should not come to the exclusion of what happens off it.
We often don’t have the answers. But let’s ask the questions. And bring on people who may bring a perspective that sheds some light on them. There are enough and more women writing and speaking about this here sport (some of my favorites: Caitlin Cooper, Mirin Fader, Jasmyn Wimbish, Haley O’Shaughnessy, Jordan Ligons, Katie Heindl, Malika Andrews, Renee Montgomery, Seerat Sohi, and so so many more.) If we can’t bring in more women’s voices, we just aren’t trying hard enough.
A note on perspective and representation: The burden of raising these questions shouldn’t fall on women. But we’re kidding ourselves if we think this crummy situation isn’t in many ways a product of whose voices are in the room. Read Katie Barnes’ tour de force profile of Layshia Clarendon. That story would not have been what it was had it been written by a writer other than Barnes (but don’t take my word for it.) It should go without saying, but representation matters.
I am a pimple in the online NBA space. But if I can purport to write about the NBA, I should damn well write about the NBA. We can’t not talk about this. And keep talking about it. A short while back, Chris Paul painted a masterpiece en route to his first NBA finals. This is a league and a sport capable of moments of transcendence. Let’s expand that.