“NBA leadership’s call is cause for confusion”

About four decades ago I was a member of and instructor for the United States Power Squadron in Hampton, Virginia. The Power Squadron offered a course in Piloting, Seamanship and Small Boat Handling designed to give new boaters the general idea of how to get from point A to point B without taking on water, misplacing any of your passengers or crew, capsizing or blowing up your craft. I taught this introductory course for a half dozen years and took the responsibility quite seriously, particularly after I realized the incredibly stupid things new boaters could and would do.

There was also a social arm of the USPS organized into weekend boating excursions called Rendezvous. Most of us owned cruising style boats and we would travel together down the Inland Waterway, up the Chesapeake Bay, the James, York or Rappahannock Rivers to a yacht club or marina and spend the summer weekends socializing.

Now, even though this was a group of supposedly highly skilled boat operators, there were occasional mishaps, gaffes and miss-adventures perpetrated by the various Captains. These faux pas happened often enough over the course, no pun intended, of a typical boating season that the group decided that the worst offender each season should be recognized with a pennant that he or she must fly anytime his or her craft left the dock. The pennant had a green field with the white letters C.A.I.C. embroidered on it. C.A.I.C. stands for Christ Am I Confused. It was awarded to one Captain who gunned his craft out of the slip with all of his lines still attached to both the dock and his boat, another who failed to reattach the hose on a thru hull bilge pump fitting and sank his craft at the mouth of the marina, and yet another who ran his craft aground. Yes I know, eventually every boat owner is going to find an “uncharted” sand bar but one clear night this particular Captain ran in between a set of lights he took to be channel markers and found himself hard aground.. When the sun came up the next morning this highly skilled Captain discovered that his 30-foot cruiser was high and dry on the sea plane ramp at NAS Norfolk.

I never “won” the C.A.I.C. pennant and am not sure it still exists, but I’m going to assume that it does and take the liberty of awarding it to myself, at least for this week. There is no doubt about it: I couldn’t be more confused.

Dallas Mavericks forward Josh Howard went on a Dallas radio station’s sports talk show last week hosted by former Dallas Cowboy Michael Irvin (now there’s a character reference) and casually admitted that he is a marijuana user. It’s not a problem, he said. I only do it in the off season and, besides, most everyone in the League does it too.

What?

Of course the network sports shows picked up the lead, talked to the League front office and the Players Union. Conclusion? For Howard to be disciplined he would have had to fail three drug tests; these are only administered between October 1 and June 30 and wouldn’t detect off-season usage anyway.

“In an agreement with the players union the League office would have no response,” and, of course, the Player’s Union was saying nothing.

That evening the televised first round playoff game was Dallas and San Antonio. NBA Commissioner David Stern was in attendance. The sideline reporter did a one-on-one with Stern and never brought up the issue of Howard’s admitted usage or his assertion that it is a league wide epidemic.

I’m not totally naive. I know that, if asked, Stern would have deflected, dissembled and taken the party line of “no response” on the issue but, at the very least, it was the reporter’s responsibility to ask the question.

Still, the Commissioner was allowed to prattle on about the strength of the league and expansion! What am I missing here? In all states possession of marijuana for non-medical reasons is against the law; a felony in some states, a misdemeanor in most. The NBA and the Players’ Union say they can only discipline if there are three failed drug tests.

What?

The man has admitted to committing an illegal act, and on numerous occasions! Yet he is being protected by both his employer and his union. 

I couldn’t help but remember back to a Contract Law course I took in college. The professor pointed out that a contract which promotes or condones an illegal act is in itself illegal and thus unenforceable.

To his credit, the only journalist who was willing to confront the issue and its implication for the predominately black NBA rosters was black ESPN basketball analyst Stephen A. Smith.

Smith, whose forte is big words used to describe small issues, for once boiled it down. Howard had done a hatchet job on his predominately black NBA teammates and done considerable damage to the image of the League and its employees (his teammates) with white fans, the League’s biggest ticket buyers, as well as sending the wrong message to all young people, Smith said.

But then again, I admit, I am confused.

After all, I thought that being an illegal alien was against the law. And if you were an admitted polygamist, you would be prosecuted.

But for now I’ll just run my C.A.I.C. flag up the pole and hope that soon I can find someone even more confused than I to pass it along to.