When Blood, Sweat, and Tears Aren’t Enough
While players try harder and harder to ease the load on their bodies, NBA fans are empowering NBA organizations and owners to damage their favorite players – and their futures – even more.
When Julius Randle stepped on the court for his first career NBA game, the first of many summits the future All-Star would reach, it was supposed to be the first of many, many games.
Instead, he shattered his leg and missed his full rookie year.
After playing three or four days a week every week from ages 10-19, the crowning achievement of Randle’s arrival was instead a reminder that the overspecialization of sports training has led to more damage to an athlete’s body than ever.
As we’ve moved forward throughout time and further away from the ‘80s and early ‘90s, during which weight lifting and offseason training were rare in the pros, to a world where preteens have personal trainers before they learn what mitosis is, we’ve also exposed those kids to the worst thing we could’ve shown them.
We’ve forced kids to turn their hobbies into jobs, before they even knew whether they liked them.
This trial by fire approach can be used to examine players like Ben Simmons, who never truly liked the sport he was incredibly good at, but it’s more important in a discussion of expectations for people at their jobs.
And folks, we need to talk about the price some fans and pundits want athletes to pay for their careers. Beyond the scrutiny and public pressure they may face, beyond the celebrity lifestyle they are forced into, beyond the destruction of dreams in pursuit of being really good at something, we are making them pay in blood. I don’t mean that in a literal sense. Athletes are paying for their careers with the price of their future lives.
The need for empathy in coverage is more present than ever. Case in point: Kawhi Leonard’s former trainer’s lawsuit against the Clippers organization.
https://x.com/ChrisBHaynes/status/1849557616827228501
The lawsuit alleges many things, notably that the Clippers have been an awful organization from a player needs standpoint for years, which should surprise absolutely nobody with knowledge of the NBA. According to recently-fired trainer Randy Shelton, the Clippers frequently broke CBA rules and regulations while recruiting Kawhi, then lorded this above him while forcing him to return early from reconstructive ACL surgery because the team needed to drum up support for their future move.
It’s here that I need to take a quick detour to really put that last sentence fragment into place. When Kawhi tore his ACL in the 2021 playoffs, Shelton submitted a 730-day recovery timeline. Obviously, this does not mean that Kawhi would not play basketball for two years, but it meant that Leonard would likely miss the entirety of the 2022 season before returning in 2023. The Clippers balked at this, forced him back 430 days later, and watched as Kawhi’s 2022 season was constantly interrupted by lower body injuries.
It’s amazing, then, that Kawhi’s relationship with the Clippers isn’t fractured beyond belief at this point. According to Shelton’s suit, the lesser brother of LA basketball has taken advantage of the superstar at every turn.
Randy Shelton, himself, is also important here because it was his relationship with Leonard that brought him to LA. Their relationship goes way back, all the way to when Shelton was a part of the staff at San Diego State University when an 18-year-old true freshman Kawhi showed up.
That is to say, this is not a star player clashing with an organization employee, which is a frequent and unfortunate part of working in the sports world. No, this is an organization that fired their star player’s close advisor and trainer because he attempted to protect his client and friend.
Do you want to know why the Clippers organization would go so far to obfuscate their actions? Why would they fire the guy that Kawhi trusts more with his body – a body that has known so much destruction over the past few years, largely overlapping with his arrival in the 213 – in July of 2023 with only one season on Leonard’s contract?
Well, it’s because they’re awful, money-hungry billionaires taking advantage of the comparably powerless millionaires. I know. Spare me the eye rolls for a second. So regularly in sports fandom do we hear the argument that “well, if I got paid millions of dollars, I’d play through injury,” in an attempt to demonize players sitting out when dealing with the pains their body knows, pains that random people on the internet make a living from analyzing.
But look back at the paragraph for a second. Billionaires are awful. That is not new information. But that dehumanization and singular reputational condescension comes from regular people. Owners want your money, and use your clamoring to tear away at the middle man. You go on Twitter and clamor for your cube of flesh, insisting that you are owed a player’s blood and gristle, owed his future life that you demand is filled with pain from injuries past.
I’m using whatever the opposite of the “royal we” is here. A proverbial royal you, an othering of behavior so endemic to sports fans that I am above it. Except I’m not. I’ve done this before as well.
What changed that was one conversation I had with Pau Gasol, one where he walked around as if he was the Iron Giant, lovable, happy, but creaking and groaning, abandoned by the world he had lived in for years.
I wore number 16 across every team I played on, from young child to high school prospect seeking offers, because of Pau. He was my hero.
So it was baffling to me when my hero was just, you know, a guy.
He had grace in expression with a grin and a suit with sparkling pinstripes. He was giant, as is to be expected, but in a way that I hadn’t experienced as a 6 feet, 3 inches guy who’s rarely dwarfed that extremely. But, despite my slack jawed expression and sheer shock, he was no superhuman.
Something clicked at that moment, it was a real experience of taking someone off a pedestal while still understanding them as great. I wish all sports fans could have that experience because it surpasses playing coy. You are giving up your idolatry, you’re giving up some amount of childlike wonder, and replacing it with a real appreciation for another person who does great things.
I’ll leave it in the hands of another great BTK writer, whose thread certainly added to this piece, because I think they put it in great terms.
What ever happened to empathy in sports? Whatever happened to that?
