Conspiracy Theory Fridays: "The NBA is racist!!"

When Dave Chappelle asked, "What is a black man without his paranoia?", he couldn't have uttered a simpler truth. That's probably the main reason that my mother is desperately trying to get me off of marijuana, not because of she's worried about my lungs in my "Golden Years", not because she doesn't want me to become a recluse of "Howard Hughes" proportions, but simply because she feels that I have enough of a persecution complex without the help of horticultural aids. It's true, I'm a pretty paranoid guy, more times than not I feel that I'm being tailed, not only do I feel that my blog has prompted Dick Cheney to have an F.B.I file that right wing fundamentalists masturbate to, I feel that every unmarked van that that I see in my neighborhood has me under police surveillance.(Which is difficult for my friends, since I refer to marijuana as random He-man characters that they've never heard of) You think I'm bullshitting, before I have a chick in my house I have her ass vetted as if she was applying for a government job, before I even think about sticking my dick in a chick I'm standing in front of her holding blue cards with her personal information on it, asking her question like I'm James Lipton and shit.

Besides that, I have your standard "black guy conspiracy theories" thing going on, feeling that the government had MLK and Malcolm X killed, there was a second shooter in the grass knoll and a third shooter somewhere else, AIDS and Crack were invented to wipe black folks off the planet, and Ronald Reagan was undoubtedly the anti-Christ, pretty standard thinking amongst most of the black people that I know. But sometimes, just sometimes, I have conspiracy theories that only I'm able to see. Here's one about how the NBA is a racist league.

The Dress Code: I'm certain that black folks for as far as the eye could see agreed with the league imposed dress code, many well intentioned people of my ilk welcomed young black men going from sloppy jeans and doo-rags, to three piece suits and some polished up Stacy Adams'. But that's the smoke-screen though, the proverbial dirt that they throw in your eyes before beating you silly with some unadulterated truth, you have to looked beyond the surface and see the conspiracy. Check this out, just ask some league official or some veteran sports writer why the NBA decided to impose the dress code in the first place, sometimes they'll say it was an image issue, but more times than not their response goes into the mass amounts of money being put into the league by the "corporate sponsors" and the need to make them happy. Anytime I hear that the NBA imposed the dress code for the "corporate sponsors", I just know that that's just a code word for "making rich white guys comfortable", fuck that I say. I mean, if some rich douche-bag feels uncomfortable by a black man with body art and an extremely nappy fro, what makes you think he'd all of a sudden learn the lyrics to "Self Destruction" if that same brother put on a three-thousand dollar suit on?

The "at least one year after high school graduation" rule: Even though I'm a fan of a dude who testicle-less douche-bags the world over diss mercilessly(Kobe Bryant), I'm actually for a High School player at least experiencing some college before making that leap into the NBA. But that's beside the point, I would never stop a grown man from achieving his American right to go out there and earn, that's why the NBA's rule that you can't enter the league until a complete year has gone by since High School graduation is a complete fucking travesty. Only in a league that features young black men prohibits them from making their own decisions, acting as if they know what's better for them than they do. Look at all the other sports where youngsters jump into the pro-leagues without this sort of bullshit, baseball, golf, hockey, sports like gymnastics and diving, only when it comes to young black kids that there has to be some sort of restriction from making that proverbial phat cash. I know, I know, the counter argument is all those High School students who entered the NBA who turned out to be busts, or the ones who weren't able to handle the pressure and burnt out, that's respectable. I'm saying though, they are adults, and should be allowed to make those type of mistakes if they want to.

David Stern: People act as if David Stern should be celebrated all throughout the month of February, as if he's the best thing to happen to black folks since the civil rights bill or something. The way he's praised for being such a strict disciplinarian in what Bud Selig probably imagines as his "dream job", commentators make it seem as if being an NBA Commissioner is akin to taming wild broncos. Not only that, but I've noticed something rather peculiar over the past five years or so, the way that David Stern expresses his contempt and superiority over an NBA player with the mildest of grievances. No other commissioner of any other sports league has the same level of contempt for their players than David Stern does. That's just my opinion, or my conspiracy theory.