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The Michigan Socialist | News |
Opinion | Editorials/Commentary
Class struggle in the paint
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Martin
Schreader
Editor, the Michigan
Socialist |
OK, I ADMIT IT. I was one of those people who thought
the Detroit Pistons should have won, but did not think they could.
I fell for the propaganda.
As much as I wanted the fellas to go to work and
send the Lakers back to La-La Land on the redeye flight west, I
didn’t think it was going to happen.
I was glad to be proven wrong.
But, having had moments during the NBA Finals to
sit and think about what I was seeing — think about exactly how
thoroughly I was being proven wrong — I thought long and hard about
that word I used above: propaganda.
The propaganda machine had been in full force
throughout most of the 2003-04 NBA season.
For most sports commentators, this year’s finals
amounted to “the Lakers and them” — the “them” being whoever was to
be unlucky enough to face Los Angeles and get spanked in the series.
The Lakers were the darlings of the NBA — the
biggest superstar team since the days when Michael Jordan, Scottie
Pippen and Dennis Rodman made teams fear coming into the Windy City.
The Los Angeles lineup looked like some future NBA
Hall of Fame induction ceremony: Shaquille O’Neal; Kobe Bryant; Karl
Malone; Luke Walton (son of NBA Hall of Famer Bill Walton); Phil
Jackson (former coach of the NBA champion Chicago Bulls); etc.
The Lakers had punished their opponents throughout
the regular season and playoffs, and were expected to do the same to
whomever they faced in the Finals.
So, what happened?
It may sound funny, but I think it ended up being
a class question.
You read that right.
What we saw during the NBA Finals was, in my
opinion, the closest to class struggle on a basketball court that
many of us have ever seen.
Los Angeles was the embodiment of “middle class”
superstardom. Not only were the guys in the paint as famous off the
court as they were on it, but so were many of those who regularly
attended Lakers games.
It was Hollywood — fame, fortune and drama. It was
the media-contrived “American Dream” on hardwood.
And then there was Detroit.
The Pistons were everything the Lakers were not.
The Lakers were superstars in their own right; the Pistons were
relative unknowns.
The Lakers played that kind of “superstar”
basketball that Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson and, yes, Shaquille
O’Neal made the trend of the 1990s.
The Pistons, on the other hand, played like a team
— a close-knit, we-all-need-each-other kind of team.
This clash of styles reflected the outlooks that
each team had of themselves.
THE LAKERS WERE “Showtime” — individualist stars
seeking fame and glory for themselves first (even though, at times,
the fame was not exactly what they wanted, as in the current rape
trial of Bryant).
The Pistons, on the other hand, saw themselves in
the shadow of industrial Detroit.
“Let’s go to work,” was the slogan; the factory
steam whistle was their call to arms.
The Lakers identified with their entertainment
patrons and “middle class” fame-seekers. The Pistons were united
with their working brothers and sisters.
Could the differences have been any clearer?
If not, the media certainly did its best to point
them out ... and show how the Lakers’ individualism would wash over
the Pistons.
The Pistons were “uppity” in the eyes of the
media.
They were “brash;” they played “ugly” basketball;
they were “out of their league.”
But after the Pistons beat the Lakers in Game One
at L.A.’s Staples Center, you could already begin to see the media
get unnerved.
Game Two may have given them some heart, but that
was promptly cut out as the teams headed east.
By the fifth and final game of the series, the
media was already beginning to point fingers.
The L.A. Times sports writers blamed “Shaq
and Kobe” interchangeably, while the L.A. Daily News just
blamed Bryant.
The national media howled from one coast to the
other. They blamed the referees, the fans and the weather.
When Pistons fans rallied outside the hotel where
the Lakers were staying during the Finals, they really blamed the
fans.
But when the Lakers got stomped 100-87 in the
final game, there was no one left to blame.
The Detroit Free Press’ Helene St. James
probably said it best: “their facade of stars [was] exposed by an
assembly of workers.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
What I can say, though, is that the Pistons
brought to Detroit a small taste of what the working people of the
City have wanted for years: victory.
In spite of the propaganda blitz, the Hollywood
glitz and yuppie fits, the Pistons — the team of “ugly ... outcast
... workers” — out-ran, out-shot and out-organized their opponents
to win what they sought.
It was, to be blunt, class struggle on the
hardwood. It was class struggle in the paint, and the collective
action of the “assembly of workers” made mince meat out of the
united front of the individualist “stars.”
Kinda reminds me of something.... A foreshadowing,
perhaps, of what is to come.
Someday, the media will once again splash the
lead, “their facade [was] exposed by an assembly of workers.” But,
this time, it won’t be in the Sports section.
Let’s go to work. |
