Why NBA is Adrift in Middle America

The advent of hip-hop culture and its subsequent saturation of the NBA have put a sour taste in the mouths of Middle America. Where once the NBA was embraced across America's cultural divides, a phenomenon that bridged race and economic class, the league has devolved into style guide for disgruntled youth.

The league was once led by a corn-fed Midwesterner with a country slang named Larry Bird, and a charismatic magician from the cold flats of Michigan named Earvin Johnson. The two were opposites in some respects: one white, one black; one in blue-collar Boston, the other in slick, sunny L.A.

But they were similar in a deeper respect: they both wanted to win at any cost, and that meant a singular devotion to team basketball. Both men were superb passers, and always involved their teammates in the offense. They were great scorers because they were even greater threats to pass the ball. This attitude, a sense that nobody was bigger than the team, that collective greatness was greater than individual greatness, was infectious. With selfless leaders at the helm, the NBA became emblematic of the team concept.

When Magic and Bird faded as players, the league was transformed by the singular presence of Michael Jordan. Everyone knows the story. He was perhaps the most individually talent player of all time. And in his first seven years in the league, he dazzled fans with a kind of athleticism and a determination unlike anything they'd ever seen. It was of little consequence that the Bulls were less than a dominant team.

With the addition of Scottie Pippen, a deferential superstar, the Bulls began their ascendancy, but their success was always fashioned around the individual mastery of Jordan. He famously berated teammates for their lack of talent; scoring titles were of supreme importance to him.

In effect, despite his overwhelming star power, MJ reintroduced individualism to basketball. It was the first step toward the restoration of the NBA as an outsider's league. In the '50s and '70s, only those living on the fringe of the mainstream truly loved the league. The league was supported by a small following of fanatical fans. The '70s' NBA was the territory of eccentrics; players found fame through individual glory on the court, and an iconoclastic fashion sense off it; dunks and mink coats, afros and finger rolls were the symbols of NBA success. Even as the league reached the peak of its popularity during MJ's reign -- a mainstream marketing machine with few equals -- the seed of its decline was sown in the league's most marketable asset, Jordan himself.

With individualism restored as the league's primary virtue, it only remained for the cultural values of the league to revert to their individualistic roots, as well. I'm not sure when the shift occurred, but it happened as hip-hop made major inroads into the league, largely through the corn-rowed brilliance of Allen Iverson.

Hip-hop is seen by many as a culture of insolent self-promotion, of individual brilliance, social contempt, flash, sizzle, and spotlight. Iverson was the epitome of each, the most dazzling scorer in a league of superstar performers. His diminutive size reinforced his defiant attitude. He was a hip-hop David ready to slay the Goliath of league-wide authority. He won several scoring titles even while his shooting percentage hovered near 40 percent. He led Philadelphia to the Finals, almost single-handedly sending the Lakers to their only loss of that playoff season.

Even more importantly, Iverson transformed the off-court culture of the game. His post-game attire signaled a shift in the fashion sensibilities of the game. No longer would players wear the glamorous suits worn by Jordan and his peers. Then it was a matter of pride never to appear before a camera in anything less than an immaculate wardrobe, tie elegantly wind-sored into place.

Iverson, or AI, changed all that. He began to sport the attire of the urban streets: oversized sports jerseys from days gone by. It was, he said, his way of recognizing the heroes of his past. It was also a way of signaling to the urban world that he was one of them. With a rap album, a torso full of tattoos, and an endless series of brushes with the law, AI confirmed that he was a man at war -- with himself, with authority, projecting an unpleasantness toward a world that, in his mind, has treated him unjustly.

The attitude and the fashion that signaled it spread like wildfire across the league. Within just a few years the face of the NBA had been transformed from Jordan's smiling mug admonishing kids to eat their Wheaties to the sneering face of Iverson standing gold-clad in a club, basketball court nowhere to be seen. Young players imitated him by the thousands. A wave of teenagers swept into the NBA, too, kids already steeped in the hip-hop mentality Iverson had helped popularize. The shift from mainstream to minority was complete.

In the last few seasons, a kind of seething resentment has seeped through the veins of Middle America; for them, basketball had come to represent something alien and aggressive, the unhappy face of the discontent, always ready with a threat of violence and ill will. The faces on the floor and the faces in the stands grew farther apart, causing the tension between them to grow tighter.

And finally, inevitably, it bubbled over three weeks ago in Detroit. The face of America's disgust with the changing character of the NBA was unceremoniously revealed. In sucker punches and beers hurled in disgust. In curses and flung chairs. Ron Artest, the Dennis Rodman of today's game, was predictably the lightening rod. After committing an excessively hard foul on Ben Wallace and inciting a near melee on the court, he reclined on the scorer's table, oblivious as referees tried to restore order.

That image of Artest in repose, indifferent to the havoc he had just wrought, a millionaire disinterested in the fate of anything but himself, uniquely summed up the perception of the league. A man in stands was so disgusted by the sight of it that he hurled his beer at Artest, sparking the riot. Artest, who seems genuinely stupid, unhesitatingly leaped into the crowd and attacked a fan whom he mistakenly thought threw the cup. Everyone has seen the footage. Stephen Jackson firing fists like missiles at fans on the floor. Jermaine O'Neal coming from nowhere to deliver a crushing blow to the face of a fan that had come onto the court. Then the beer flooding down on the players as they exited the floor. It was an all-consuming expression of hatred. It is where the NBA has been headed for years.

There's a racial element at the root of it all. Hip-hop culture was born from black culture. It is infused with the defiance and social indifference that defines any economic underclass in moments of despair. Middle America, comfortable in their four-bedroom, two-car garage homes, doesn't understand why anyone would be so angry -- at everything. They cling to simple values and wave the American flag, sure that their country is an unalloyed force for good in the world. They feel their own freedoms are worthy of their bottomless gratitude. And they expect the same from everyone else.

But the black urban experience is a lot different from theirs. And that experience expresses itself, naturally, in postures of individualism, defiance, and disregard. Middle America can't relate. And so the game, so predominantly black in profile, has come to represent a culture alien to the bulk of Americans. The poorly-educated, filthy rich, utterly confused young stars of the league have become, through the incessant spotlight of round-the-clock media coverage, the target for society's spleen against the things it doesn't understand.

The advertising industry has only helped entrench the perceptions that rend the league from its fan base. For years now, commercials have been thinly-veiled vehicles of aggression -- advertisers have equated basketball with the AI ethic, players playing in order to vent their rage and dispel the doubts of those who disrespect them.

Now, LeBron James' commercials have turned to animation in an attempt to allow the young prodigy to outsize even his own burgeoning image. He violently slays cartoon defenders on his way to the basket, then stands, indifferent, gazing at the wreckage in his wake. The game, now more than ever, is synonymous with insolence -- and revenge. Take to the courts and take your revenge on a world that would deny you your manhood, that rejects your worth, that would thieve your freedoms.

Middle America looks on uncomprehendingly.