Blackstyle in Championship Form

2008-06-25
By DeAngelo Starnes

Limitations, when they don’t break you, force you to dig deep.  They take you to places in your mind you didn’t think you could go.  They awaken your inner genius.  With the racism Black people have had to endure in this country, Blackstyle was born. 

Blackstyle is an African American tradition of overcoming societal limitations with pizazz.  Blackstyle has taken African Americans to the top of anything they tried and conquered.  Blackstyle doesn’t just climb fences; it busts through brick walls.  Blackstyle is about to produce a President of the United States.

In large revenue sports, Blackstyle has been demonstrated not just in the style of play but the mental toughness displayed to silence the doubters.  The chief complaint about today’s African American athlete is that he (yes, this a problem only the fellas seem to have) doesn’t respect that tradition.  He doesn’t know about the trials and tribulations of a Jack Johnson, Larry Doby, Joe Louis, Chuck Cooper, Marion Motley, or Charlie Sifford.  Trials and tribulations that allow today’s athlete to reap the multi-millions their talents rightly deserve. 

Last week we witnessed two truly great instances of Blackstyle in championship form. 

First, was Tiger Woods’ brilliant performance at the U.S. Open. Tiger is universally recognized as the best golfer in the world, and maybe as one of the greatest of all time.  But he had to exhibit extreme mental toughness to get there.  He has not only been the sole Black face on the golf course many times over the past twelve years, but the youngest.  As collegial as his competitors seem to be towards him, I don’t doubt he’s faced deep resentment during this incredible run. 
 
Playing professional golf requires a lot of walking not to mention the torque associated with swinging the club.  To do that for five straight days, walking miles over that period, in the sun, on a bum leg, is equivalent to Muhammad Ali fighting Ken Norton with a broken jaw for twelve rounds.  That’s guile, guts, focus, endurance, and intelligence.  To simply finish well with those kinds of medical problems would have made a great story.  To win a championship puts you in a category by yourself.

The second instance of Blackstyle occurred when the Boston Celtics won the NBA championship.  I noted to a friend of mine that if you were a 21st century Rip Van Winkle and saw that the NBA championship was being played between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers, you wouldn’t be surprised that one team featured a majority of white players versus the other with mostly Black players.  You would be surprised that the Celtics were the team with all the brothas though.

During its championship runs in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, Boston was thought of as a “white” team because most of its star players were white.  In the 80s especially, it seemed that the Celtics hoarded the best white players in the league with a quota of Black players, even though they had a Black head coach. 

Watching the series, I don’t remember seeing a white player take the floor for the Celtics.   Certainly not during critical times of the games.  But the Celtics’ collective intelligence, guile, guts, and focus were just as high as any of the teams from the 80s.  Their scrambling, smothering team defense arguably was better than any of their predecessors as they shut down the single best talent in the NBA, Kobe Bryant, as well as the Lakers’ other star players.  In fact when people think of Blackstyle expressed in basketball, they think of slam dunks, circus shots, and bounce passes.  But the way the Celtics’ defense obliterated the Lakers’ vaunted triangle offense was just as beautiful as Ray Allen’s rainbow jumpshots.  The primary exhibition of Blackstyle was the toughness the Celtics played with.  Their comeback from twenty-four points down in Game 4 was the highlight of the series.  Plus Blackstyle proved that three superstars could submerge their egos to come together for the singular goal any team should strive for -- winning a championship, and also proved that a Black coach, Doc Rivers, could out coach his more esteemed counter-part, Phil Jackson. 

By no means am I suggesting that the Celtics’ or Tigers’ accomplishments are an example of Black athletes’ natural superiority over white opponents.  To accept that proposition would give in to the notion that whites have superior intellect because they run the world.  I am saying that Blackstyle can be a difficult opponent to defeat.  Because to level the playing field, Blackstyle has to gain momentum from the effort exerted to surmount limitations.  And as Black people in America understand all too well, it’s hard to overcome momentum when your opponent has a head start.

DeAngelo Starnes is a writer and attorney who lives with his wife and son in Denver, CO.