Pride Goeth Before A $32 Million Fall

A man can’t ride your back unless it is bent. - Martin Luther King Jr.

We begin by returning to the scene of the crime.

Last month, Latrell Sprewell, a black man and professional basketball player, choked his coach, who is white. The reason? Coach yelled at him in practice. In response, the team tore up Sprewell’s $32 million contract and the NBA suspended him for a year.

I wrote a column about the incident, saying, in part, that for $32 million, Coach could yell at me till he popped an artery. Thirty-two mil buys a lot of earplugs.

Most of those who took the trouble to respond felt the same way - an opinion that cut a wide demographic swath across black, white, male and female. But a tiny minority saw it differently. While careful not to condone Sprewell’s actions, they felt he should not have to stand there as a black man and be yelled at - “disrespected” - even for $32 million. You can’t trade “dignity for dollars” is how one of them phrased it.

The dissenters had two things in common. All were male and all were black.

In their insistence on respect at all costs, I heard an echo of gunfire - saw all the young black men gut-shot and brain-shot by other young black men over petty affronts and minor offenses these last years. It struck me that brothers are literally dying for respect.

Which is not hard to understand. They seek only what history and society have conspired to deny them: a way to be somebody. So some young black men on some unforgiving streets have come to practice a studied macho harder than concrete. For them, there are no minor slights. It is, they’ll tell you, an issue of respect and they guard that respect to the point of extreme behavior and diminishing returns. Even, sometimes, to the point of violence.

When such a man perceives disrespect, when he has the barriers up and the warning lights flashing, a prudent person keeps his distance. Tellingly, the last civil thing Sprewell said to his coach was, “Don’t come up on me.”

Yet, even understanding all this, I can’t quite agree with my dissenters. They don’t get it. The cold fact is, the world does not operate according to the mores of hard streets. If one seeks to get ahead, one adapts to society, not the other way around. Latrell Sprewell failed in this, and to make excuses based on who he is and where he’s from is to insult both. Somebody should’ve pulled his coat. Somebody should’ve schooled him better.

He got upset because Coach yelled at him?!? So what? Yelling is what coaches do. They get in your face and push you through your limits. It’s not like the coach insulted Sprewell’s mother or something. What he said, according to Sports Illustrated, was, “Put a little mustard on those passes!”

Sprewell should have done just that and kept his hands to himself.

Is that “dignity for dollars”? To ask the question is to miss the point.

Sprewell satisfied a short-term impulse at the expense of his own long-term well-being. And how many times have we seen young men do that? Wreck their lives to gratify some petty need or retaliate for some imagined act of disrespect.

You want respect? Real respect? Bump the dumb stuff. Keep your eyes on the prize.

Latrell Sprewell should have done that, should have valued his career more than he ultimately did. And yes, he should have remembered the money. Do you think that’s crass? Well, the money is important here not because of the flashy things it can buy, but the substantive ones.

Thirty-two million dollars is higher education for everyone in the family, businesses and properties to be handed down to the next generation. It is advantages and options most people don’t have, blessed security of which they can only dream. Freedom.

Sprewell could have protected that. Instead, he choked.

Anyone who thinks that by doing so he kept his dignity intact needs to think again. If that’s dignity, give me dollars instead.

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