Hardwood Paroxysm summer reading recommendations
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, Recommended for David West
By William Bohl (@BreakTheHuddle)
The Twitter feeds of NBA players are usually very interesting or very boring, and rarely fall somewhere in the middle. The dull variety feature retweets of fans saying positive (or sometimes negative) things, jokes between teammates, chronicles of workouts, random Bible verses, vague self-help platitudes from all around the internet, and vacation pictures. The more interesting type, of which there aren’t nearly enough, feature social commentary, candid evaluations of themselves and other players, and deeper interactions with fans and media. Some players use Twitter as a marketing tool or vanity pageant, while others grant their followers a tiny window into what they’re really thinking.
David West of the Indiana Pacers fits into the second category. A perusal of his timeline shows some content typical for NBA players: lauding teammates, lamenting losses, promoting his brother, who is the head basketball coach at North Carolina-Wilmington, and love for the local AAU teams around Garner, NC, where he spent his high school years. But what you also find on West’s Twitter feed is a mix of political commentary on current events, such as voter suppression, drone strikes, Trayvon Martin, Donald Sterling, the Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, and lately, the death of a black man at the hands of a New York City police officer.
Speaking out on potentially divisive issues has brought West his fair share of the usual social media backlash. Fans claim to be tired of athletes giving cliched answers to the same old questions, and pretend to want more candid analysis, but the reaction players like West receives whenever he does speak out tells another tale. He’s often that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and that he should stick to basketball, as if a man with a Bachelor’s Degree in communications should refrain from speaking his mind. “Sports talk doesn’t require much brain power,” he told one recent detractor.
The incident in New York, where an unarmed black man resisting arrest for selling loose cigarettes was put into a chokehold by an officer and died as a result of the altercation, elicited commentary from West, who was critical of police brutality and government reaction to it. The usual insipid responses came in, questioning West’s motivations, accusing him of hating all cops, and telling him to shut up and just play ball. None other than Martina Navratilova, herself an outspoken sports figure, offered words of encouragement. “Seems we both get grief for getting involved in social issues rather than just talking shop,” she wrote. “Can’t please everyone.” West responded by saying: “I’ve learned the hardest thing to do is stand alone and be something other than what folks expect you to be.”
For that reason, the book I’d recommend to David West, if he hasn’t already read it, is A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. Originally published in 1980, the book attempts to chronicle historical conflict from the perspective of marginalized peoples. If “history is written by the victors”, as Winston Churchill once said, Zinn flips that axiom on its head, devoting his entire work to the struggles of Native Americans, slaves, indentured servants, women, the poor, war protesters and civil rights advocates. Given West’s political consciousness and presence on social media, which often leads to (at some times nasty) backlash, learning the previously untold history of great leaders who withstood far greater personal attacks in the name of their causes may embolden and inspire him to speak out despite the occasional online troll.