You Deserve Better

In 2018, I sat in my freshman dorm room, sobbing, as Derrick Rose hit a final free throw to reach fifty points.

Through everything he had been through, every injury, every trauma, every struggle, I had seen myself in him. From the numerous major injuries I went through – fought through and ignored at that – to the personal trauma he had to overcome, Derrick Rose was my hero. 

I would play like him, rushing at the rim with reckless abandon, even in rain, breaking my back even more when I slipped on the wet concrete just for the opportunity to try one of the drives I had dreamt of years earlier when I thought you were supposed to do reverse layups without looking back.

I would find solace in him. Just a few weeks before that Halloween night firestorm, I had sprained my ankle bad enough to keep me on crutches for eight to twelve weeks (I forced myself off of them after five because I was so sick of needing to ask other people for help), and I had found what was supposed to be the most fun of my life, my first term of college, slipping away without a sound.

But in that moment, to the tune of MVP chants, he felt complete again, and I, watching him, hoped that one day I could be complete as well. 

It’s a nice sentiment. We see athletes as reflections of ourselves. Sports are the greatest reality show on air and (with respect to Real Housewives of Orange County) the messiest. Things change, people change, and we are forced to change in response.

All that is to say, I don’t like Derrick Rose much anymore.

It has nothing to do with him eventually leaving the Timberwolves, or the fact that my Derrick Rose Wolves jersey melted from contact with a radiator. It is entirely to do with one quote.

“No, but we men. You can assume.”

In 2020, I was doing laundry one January morning, freshly turned 20, when a message flashed on my screen. Kobe Bryant was dead. I sat stunned, staring at the spinning pre-wash cycle wondering how real the world around me was. “He can’t be dead,” I thought. “He’s Kobe, he can’t be dead.”

Through days and hours of coverage and tributes, I just kept finding myself crying. I couldn’t even explain it. I didn’t care about basketball until 2011, when the Mavericks’ Finals run was enough to entice my German family to cheer on Dirk against the easily hateable LeBron James-led Heat. 

I had no ties to the Lakers, nor to Kobe as a player. Hell, I actively rooted against him more than I ever rooted for him. 

So why did I care so much?

Why was I crying so much?

Five, Four, Three, Two, One. I know it’s time to say goodbye, but I don’t want to let you go yet.

It’s a quote from Dear Basketball that now sits emblazoned on my forearm, a tattoo that I got only a few days after Bryant’s passing. Maybe that was why I was crying so much. The grief of losing a player I knew was smaller than the grief of losing a primary figure in one of my favorite short films ever. Maybe crying is harder to allow if it’s unexplainable. Maybe.

I don’t like Kobe much now either.

There’s a bit of a tipping point when you start granting athletes their humanity, an act so easy and yet so absent from general NBA fandom. 

At first, you learn about their likes outside of basketball, like Jordan Poole’s cats, Jimmy Butler’s love of country music, Serge Ibaka’s cooking, or any of the other trillions of innocuous details that I know and love about the players I write about.

Quickly, however, you take the next step. You acknowledge that your joy, and maybe even theirs, comes from a system built on their blood, sweat, and tears. You think of the teammates they left behind, the roles and stardom they once had, that now lie coated in dust as they spot up in the corner.

There is empathy in pity, but it comes with some condescension. The world of pro athletes offers so many privileges and yet turns them into scarecrows to be picked at by ravenous crows. They would do it all over again: the injuries, the life-long scars, and yet, who are we to pity them?

It’s a hard line to draw.

Then, we reach a summit. Our heroes become a part of us as we were once just a part of their roaring supporters. In that exchange, we build something new. We develop expectations, not just for their on-field or on-court performance, but for the strength of their character. 

And it crushes us more than ever when they let us down.

It’s why so many fans feign ignorance and refuse to take this leap. To abandon the safety of enjoyment and simple, blind, fun and forsake the dollhouse world of watching action figures perform feats for the more dangerous, returning only to the haunting world of loss and darkness, is a difficult proposition. 

It’s why heroes of my childhood are now just targets of my disdain. Disdain and disgust for stars I believed in blindly, before I knew who they were as people, disdain the likes of which I could only ever have for myself.

In 2018, I sat in my childhood bedroom, covered in blood, grime, and the polluted water of the East River in Manhattan. I had just found out that I had lost a soccer scholarship offer because my ex had falsely accused me of sexual assault.

I hadn’t slept in two days preparing for the first day of school. I had failed to meet my expectations as captain of the soccer team. I had cursed out my coach. And then, I had walked into the East River off Randall's Island and let the waters take me.

When I tell people this story, one of my life spiraling out of control so strongly that I nearly ended it, I am met with gasps or dead silence. It’s a silence that lasts a lifetime. More often than not, I wish it would continue, because more often than not, it is broken by asinine bullshit, so callous that it would have been better to say nothing.

“Damn, you got Me Too’d.”

I’ve heard it far too many times. This trivialization of my own story to fit a narrative, a hate-filled ignorance, or maybe an absence of thought put into words by a Fox News buzzword drills into me one thing and one thing only:

You will fit my story for you.

It’s why I feel so much more comfortable explaining the sexual assault I faced within that relationship rather than the falsified accusations that followed it. When I tell people about what was done to me, I am met with commiseration for what it means to feel out of control and abandoned by not just a person you trusted, but by your trust in yourself to act. You look at yourself and ask, why didn’t I do more? Why didn’t I push back more? Was it my fault it continued as long as it did?

Conversely, to talk about false accusations of assault is to walk a line during which you have to fight tooth and nail to ward off the worst people on the planet, who use stories like mine to ignore sexual assault and the trauma it brings, who would happily paint me a straight cis man being attacked by women, and wish to use my story to turn “innocent until proven guilty” into an apocalyptic, evil lack of empathy and a clean sheet for anyone with enough money or power to make a story disappear. 

During his trial, Derrick Rose said that they “did what men do” when his accuser let them in at night. According to him, accepting his group into the apartment building was enough of an invitation to engage in sexual acts. 

Despite all of this, Rose was found ‘not liable’.

Derrick Rose was not found innocent. Instead, his accuser was just found less credible than Rose. In fact, in a strategy that has been used constantly to discourage abused parties speaking out, Rose’s lawyers used her past sexual history to paint his accuser as promiscuous and, as such, willing.

Rose also said during the trial, under oath, that he didn’t know what consent was. Even worse, at no point did he seem to care.

After being afforded every legal privilege and the support of the entire league and plural fanbases, Rose’s verdict was framed as a cash grab and his win in court framed him as a prevailing martyr. He has walked through the flames of difficulty once again.

Instead, he provided another example of celebrity being used to erase aggrieved parties.

He is hardly the first, the last, or the only current example of this. Kobe Bryant settled in court to avoid a trial and is seen as innocent because of it. Kevin Porter Jr. hospitalized his girlfriend, signed a plea deal, and was suspended for a sum total of zero games. Miles Bridges was suspended for six games after breaking his girlfriend’s nose. 

This goes beyond the NBA as well. Sedona Prince has escaped pushback and will likely go first round in the draft. Trevor Bauer has an army of posters frothing at the mouth to commend him. Deshaun Watson and Jameis Winston have both had trials that ended by settlement and were able to push their cases into the world of confidentially filed documents. Even worse, their leagues helped them do it, continuing the trend of protecting abusers. 

Worst of all, there are now fans who root for players not because of how they play or their personal characteristics but specifically because they ARE abusers. These fans have embraced players because they do not believe the accusations they’ve faced even matter. In fact, they find joy in it. It goes beyond rage bait territory to a genuine loss of humanity.

See, the three-step plan I laid out before isn’t a chain with different rungs that people get stuck on. It is a branching set of paths. Just as you can choose to hold an athlete you love responsible, and to know when you need to move on and let go, you can also see them as an extension of your own power fantasy. These miserable people see a powerful person get away with abuse and align themselves with the abuser, in hopes that they can one day hold the same power, instead of with the abused.

It’s why Hornets players embraced Miles Bridges back, normalizing his actions, instead of Kai Jones, who was having a mental health emergency. They saw more of themselves in Bridges than they did in Jones. 

It’s hard to look at these “fans,” or at the larger community of wannabe abusers who idolize rapists because they wield power, as anything other than inhuman, lacking the empathy or compassion required to be a person. Some may push back on that. They might say that Bridges, Porter, and their contemporaries “deserve a second chance,” that their decisions should not “ruin their lives.” 

I would disagree.

I have no empathy for rapists. I have no empathy for those who overlook the abuse their negligence allows. I hate that disappearing for a year is enough for the NBA, the league I love, to allow them back in. 

The NBA and NFL have come to the conclusion that accusations and lawsuits only matter if the athlete is bad. Deshaun Watson gets slander from Browns fans not because he’s a rapist, but because he sucks. Miles Bridges’ career can continue because he’s a starter level player. Four franchises have decided that Kristaps Porzingis is worth a spot and a contract extension, even with his legal situation. 

Hell, look at the coaches as well. Jason Kidd, Chauncey Billups, and Joe Mazzula have all been able to leave their history of assault behind. When reporters – especially women – questioned that dead zone of information, they were called haters and were lambasted.

There are so many different angles, so many stomach-turning examples of how far in the wrong direction we’ve gone. When the Ray Rice footage came out, no one said “what about his career?”, we just looked around in disgust at what he had done. We didn’t have to talk it over. He deserved to have his career stripped from him.

When did that change?

It shouldn’t have.

After one too many of those conversations, I realized that I was sick of telling my story to those who had no interest in it. I concluded that I would rather not talk about my fight against false accusations than see those painful memories be used to attack and trivialize those who had faced the same things I had. 

On one side, I saw perverse trolls and sycophants, who celebrated rapists and abusers just because they wished they had gotten away with it. On the other side, I saw other victims. I saw people who had also had all control of their own actions stripped. I saw people who knew what it was like to look around and wonder when you would feel safe next, or when you would feel like you were making your own decisions. 

I did not see myself in those who had escaped punishment for their crimes. I saw myself in others who had suffered them.

We see ourselves in the athletes we choose to love. When they fail, we feel it deep in our souls. We cry with them. We win when they do. We watch them fight as if we were doing the same.

When those same athletes fail to uphold our own moral code, it feels wrong – preachy even – to be upset with them. And yet, it is more important than ever to do so. The company you keep reflects on you. The players you stan say something about your character. Either you are willing to say enough is enough, or you are doomed to justify the evils they may commit. 

The leagues have proven they don’t care anymore. Money is paramount. Adam Silver’s NBA is by far the most financially successful, and simultaneously the most morally detached and politically declawed it has ever been. A league that once featured stars protesting against racial inequality and unlawful wars now limits political messaging in fear of sponsors.

The question of whether athletes should be willing to sacrifice their money for their beliefs or even the beliefs of their fans is a conversation for another time, but as a consumer, the only control you have is your voice. 

You, as a fan, have nothing on the line, only your morality. It is your choice.

For me, I’m happy that I no longer idolize Kobe and DRose. I’m proud that the sobbing teenager watching that Halloween game can now find solidarity and heroes in better places. I’m thankful that he learned that counter-culture weirdos are not worth teaming up with. 

But, more than anything, I’m proud that I can write this. The NBA and its fandom simply suck in their lack of condemnation of sexual assault. They may try to use my story, or stories like mine to paint a picture of paranoia, of being hunted by people, but ultimately it’s as easy as this.

It’s not hard to be a good person. It’s not hard to not be a rapist. People who fail that baseline don’t deserve your adoration, they don’t deserve their careers, and they don’t deserve to continue to succeed at the expense of their victims.

That’s not hard to learn and it’s time everyone does.