John Massaro - Deflated Dreams: Basketball and Politics

Copyright 2015 by John Massaro

All rights reserved.

John Massaro

25 Winding Brook Lane North

Wells, Maine 04090

ISBN: 9781483557267

Table of Contents

OTHER BOOKS AND ARTICLES ON SPORTS AND POLITICS

BY JOHN MASSARO

Shaking the Citys Walls: Teaching Politics with the Boss, Bruce Springsteen, Cultural Studies, and the Runaway American Dream, (Ashgate, 2012).

Press Box Propaganda? The Cold War and Sports Illustrated, 1956, The Journal of American Culture, September 2003, Vol. 26, No. 3.

Replay, Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine, Fall, 2002, No. 56.

Pyrrhic Politics? President Bush and the Nomination of Clarence Thomas, Honor and Loyalty: Inside the Politics of the George H. W. Bush White House, (Greenwood Press, 2002).

Whatever Happened to Sportsmanship? The Executive Educator [of the National School Boards Association], January, 1994.

Supremely Political: The Role of Ideology and Presidential Management in Unsuccessful Supreme Court Nominations (New York: SUNY Press, 1990).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to thank the members of the Politics Department, SUNY Potsdam, for always supporting my academic work even when it seemingly strayed beyond the traditional. Likewise, I must recognize the teaching, administrative and support staffs of SUNY Potsdam for doing the same. My deepest thanks go to the hundreds of SUNY Potsdam students who over recent years took my course, The Politics of Basketball World. They made better both the content of that course and its creator.

I am most grateful to my reader/editors, Norma Johnsen, George McNally and Summer Massaro Roy for saving me from many errors. These three walked that most delicate line between professionalism and friendship in critiquing an earlier version of this book. In Summers case, she also had to balance being a sensitive authors daughter. Thank you all for your friendship and support but most importantly in this instance, thank you for your professionalism. Of course, I remain completely responsible for this book.

Basketball has been a Massaro family affair across four generations. Its most fitting to dedicate this book to representatives of those generations: my father, Palmo Massaro; brother, Frank Massaro; son, Aries Massaro; and grandson, Eli Massaro Roy. They are all players.

And, as always, there is my spouse, companion, inspiration and comfort, M Kimberlin Massaro.

PREFACE

During a long teaching career, Ive taught many courses including The Politics of Basketball. Despite hostile responses at times from some administrators, many students took this course. Students who knew well the game of basketball believed, not so surprisingly, the course was more than a worthwhile learning experience and fun to boot. Even students who knew little or nothing about basketball, however, shared the same positive feelings about the course.

The reactions of my students encouraged me to keep developing the course and eventually complete this short book on politics and bias in the fundamental rules of basketball. My hope is that this volume will not only open readers eyes to the political dimensions of basketballs rules but will also convey some of the joy my supportive students and I experienced in exploring these connections.

I have prepared this book for the general reader. Accordingly, I do not employ the detailed endnotes that accompany most writing by academics. I include within and at the end of the book notes on sources that present the major works I relied on in reaching conclusions for which I alone am responsible.

INTRODUCTION

Be like Mike? Not so fast. Just about every basketball player and billions of people across the globe want to be like Mike. The Mike referenced here is, of course, Michael Jordan, widely acclaimed as the greatest basketball player of all time. Despite the desires of so many, none of us, with the possible exceptions of Lebron James and my precociously athletic grandson, Eli Massaro Roy, will ever be like Mike. Our basketball dreams have already been or will eventually be deflated. This is in part because the fundamental rules of the game of basketball are biased, favoring some such as Jordan, James, and, hopefully, Eli, and disadvantaging others such as most of us mortals. In an even deeper sense, the fundamental rules of basketball are political. This book will explain how and why this is so.

Deflated Dreams: Basketball and Politics originated from two events in my life separated by more than fifty years.

One of my earliest memories is of a cold night in the winter of 1948 when I was seven years old. I am standing and freezing with my nine-year old brother Frank outside Robert Waters Elementary School in Union City, New Jersey. We are waiting for the custodian to open the door of the schools gymnasium. Frank and I are there early to see both the junior varsity and varsity basketball games featuring our local public high school team, the Emerson Bulldogs, and their rivals from nearby West New York, New Jersey, the Memorial Tigers.

I do not remember who won the games but the atmosphere in the gym that night had a profound impact on me that has remained ingrained in my memory more than sixty-five years later. I remember being both deeply disturbed if not outright frightened and yet curiously intrigued at the same time. The noise of the crowd, tolerable at first, grew more incessant as the games progressed. By the time the junior varsity game ended and the varsity game began, my stomach was nervously churning, my head throbbing, and my heart pounding in what I know now was fear. I didnt understand then how a simple basketball game, one I had come to enjoy in the local playground, could induce such passion and frenzy in a large group of ordinarily normal people. And despite my fear, I could not look away. I remained intent on watching and absorbing every move, every gesture, of the players on the court and the fans. It was a strange mixture, not unlike the dual sensations of watching a huge constrictor snake devouring a live rat. Theres that gripping fear and a desire to avert ones eyes from the snakes frightful and deadly power and yet theres also the inability to look away. The fear is even greater in identifying with the rat as small children often do.

What was going on that night was not only powerful but also political in a sense I could not comprehend at that time. As we will see, politics involves a quest and a struggle for limited and often precious resources. Such conflict can ignite and inflame the passions of people in a way that would be jolting to anyone, especially to an overly sensitive youngster who had never before experienced this phenomenon. I know now that the outcome of a basketball game, indeed any sporting contest, can mean a great deal to people. Thats something I had never before realized but will never forget. Politics and basketball? Could these two be connected in some way?

More than fifty years later, I grew bored teaching a college course, The Legislative Process, trying vainly to explain enthusiastically and yet again the machinations of the United States Congress. I sought an alternative, perhaps even an escape. I began thinking about the possibility of preparing a course in which the analytical skills I had developed as a political scientist could be utilized to examine the role of politics in a setting not generally viewed as political. About this time, I read an article in The Sporting News