Barkley Bavetta Hardaway the Man Kiss and the NBA: no snickers here.

So as we all know, last week Tim Hardaway announced that he hates them gays and would prefer if they all just died or disappeared. It was a rather shocking pronouncement, shocking mostly for the utter stupidity displayed by Hardaway, certainly and most unfortunately not shocking for its actual content - homophobic hatred is commonplace in our society.

The Hardaway affair was precipitated by the publication of a confessional book by the gay former NBA player John Amaechi. NBA commissioner David Stern reacted promptly to Hardaway by removing him from the NBA all-stars celebrations, noting that

"We removed him from representing us because we didn't think his comments were consistent with having anything to do with us"

which is pretty damn unambiguous and should rightly be applauded. No apology needed Tim, you're out.

Which brings me to the NBA all-stars celebration itself. Generally I find these events tedious and boring and fake. However, what I say yesterday on TNT was actually a lot of fun for many reasons, mostly for the inclusion, good feelings, and camaraderie displayed by everyone involved.

The team shoot-around competition included women players from the WNBA, and it turns out that they were pretty damn good at long range shooting.

In the slam dunk competition one of the competitors, last year's winner Nate Robinson, got out on the floor to help this years winner, Gerald Green make his winning dunk. It seems they all just wanted to have fun and do the best that they could do.

Which brings me to Charles Barkley and his Big Race with referee Dick Bavetta. This was all in fun to begin with, and was a vehicle for donating 50,000 to charity. At the end of the race, Barkley despite his now huge girth having put down 67 year old Bavetta, hugged Bavetta and planted a full face man kiss on Bavetta's startled head.

I don't think that Barkley did that accidentally. He had already spoken out against Hardaway's idiocy a few days ago, and I think he knew exactly what he was doing here. There it was on national TV: the man kiss. Again. Only this time there was no moment of red neck horror, no nascar-dad meltdown, no chest hair self-depilitation. It was a hug and a kiss and it was quite all right.

Charles Barkley, David Stern, and the NBA have stood up and demonstrated that there are indeed at least two americas, and one of those americas is welcoming, accepting, and inclusive. Good for them. There really still is hope.

Ok, it's Charles Barkley-showbiz-type real life, but still!

"We'd better have ANOTHER million-man march!" And of course there's his now-legendary "I was a Republican before they lost their minds."

And I wonder how Hardaway would have felt about a white player saying he that hated blacks.

:headbang:
rocknation

It will be an outrage if Stern allows Sacramento to move to Las Vegas, however.

The Kings have the longest sell-out streak in the NBA, and they could move because taxpayers don't want to build the billionaire Maloof Brothers a $600-million arena.

These guys own the Palms Casino and they want taxpayers to build the arena, yet the city would not control any of the revenue for non basketball events such as concerts, etc. :spray:

Sorry, a little off subject.

But yea, I'm happy with how Stern has handled the Hardaway situation.

on CNN and was very impressed. He was preaching tolerance and compared sexual preference prejudice with racial prejudice. He ran Tim Hardaway zero slack.

and it wasn't on Bavetta's head. It was full on the lips: