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Joel Embiid’s postgame media gaggle went off without issue Tuesday night in New York, following the Philadelphia 76ers’ loss to the Knicks. There was no emotional confrontation between him and a reporter, unlike the previous week when he cursed and shoved a Philadelphia Inquirer columnist for writing a piece he viewed as crossing the line between professional and personal commentary.
Dustups between professional athletes and reporters are as old as the games themselves, with the earliest known high-profile incident dating back to 1907 and baseball great Ty Cobb. But something felt different about the incident between Embiid and columnist Marcus Hayes, who angered the 7-foot All-Star center by mentioning Embiid’s son and late brother in a piece that criticized Embiid’s conditioning and commitment.
I couldn’t put my finger on it until I stepped back to get a macro view. It was then I realized the altercation itself was not the thing gnawing at me. It was what the incident represented: another strong indicator that the deterioration of decorum and respect throughout society is bleeding ever deeper into the fabric of sport.
The thought first hit me in April. LSU was preparing to face UCLA in the NCAA women’s basketball tournament and the Los Angeles Times published a story that characterized LSU’s players, led by All-America frontcourt star Angel Reese, as “dirty debutantes” and UCLA’s players as “America’s sweethearts.” The only thing worse than the coded language was the fact that someone actually thought it was a good idea to publish it.
The same holds true for Hayes’ column, which initially began with the following passage: “Joel Embiid consistently points to the birth of his son, Arthur, as the major inflection point in his basketball career. He often says that he wants to be great to leave a legacy for the boy named after his little brother, who tragically died in an automobile accident when Embiid was in his first year as a 76er. Well, in order to be great at your job, you first have to show up for work.”
Hayes later apologized in a social media post and rewrote the passage to remove any mention of Embiid’s family, similar to how the Los Angeles Times and its writer apologized and removed the offensive language from their story. Still, it’s hard to read such commentary and wonder whether we’ve lost respect for each other.
Today, people seem more comfortable saying out loud what they used to say only in private. The quiet part is no longer meant to be quiet. And to the extent that sports are a microcosm of society, it was a matter of time before the temperature turned up in reporter-athlete relations.
“You’re reading it precisely correct,” said Dr. Harry Edwards, the respected sociologist, social activist and professor. “Sport inevitably, unavoidably, recapitulates the structure and dynamics of human and institutional relationships in society and the ideological definitions that define and rationalize those relationships. You go back and look at the history of athletes and the sports media, really the media in general, and there has always been a tension there that most people saw as healthy. They looked at the mainstream media and the powers that be, and the expectation was that the media was going to speak truth to power and report accurately to the people. But the tension we see today is different.”
Stephen A. Smith responds to Kevin Durant calling him a “clown”: “I will not disrespect him the same way he disrespects me. It’s unfortunate that no matter how old he gets, his sensitivity seems to heighten with it and his maturity it doesn’t. But that’s something he has to deal… pic.twitter.com/nzujKIJUyU
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) November 4, 2024
That is not to say that physical altercations between athletes and reporters are a new phenomenon. The timeline of the last five-plus decades includes Los Angeles Rams quarterback Jim Everett flipping a table on talk show host Jim Rome , Atlanta Braves outfielder Deion Sanders pouring a bucket of ice water over the head of baseball analyst Tim McCarver, Boston Red Sox slugger Jim Rice ripping the shirt of baseball writer Steve Fainaru, San Diego Chargers quarterback Jim McMahon intentionally blowing snot on beat writer TJ Simers, and Chargers cornerback Elvis Patterson, in a separate incident, sneaking up on Simers from behind and putting a garbage bag over his head before trying to throw him in the shower.
And let us not forget Buffalo Sabers goaltender Dominik Hasek shoving a columnist, Texas Rangers pitcher Kenny Rogers pushing two cameramen and throwing one of the cameras to the ground, Cleveland outfielder Albert Belle throwing a baseball and intentionally hitting a photographer, and New England Patriots cornerback Raymond Clayborn getting physical with Boston Globe columnist Will McDonough, only to regretfully learn that McDonough was as skilled with his fists as he was with his pen.
But, relatively speaking, these types of altercations are outliers. Whether they will remain so is up for debate. Star players are making so much money today, that the threat of a fine or suspension is not the deterrence it once was. And with advances in technology ostensibly making everyone with a working camera phone part of the “media,” the line between what is and isn’t fit for print is as faint as it has ever been.
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“There were things that you just didn’t write about in the past,” Edwards said. “The rationalization was, ‘What does that have to do with tomorrow night’s game? He’s not suspended, he’s playing, so we’re not going to write about that. We’re going to focus on the game.’ But today there’s so much media exposure and everyone who has a camera phone is a reporter, and so the boundaries are going to melt away. That tears down the historical relationship.”
We’re then left with a heightened adversarial culture that touches every level of sports coverage. In the last year alone, we’ve seen ESPN media personality Stephen A. Smith call Phoenix Suns star Kevin Durant a liar after Durant publicly called him a “clown.” We’ve seen Sanders, now the head football coach at Colorado, accuse reporters of going “on the attack” because some of them earn less than NIL-enriched players. We’ve seen LSU women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey threaten to sue a reporter as a preemptive strike to a planned profile. And we’ve seen the WNBA Players Association seek the revocation of Christine Brennan’s media credential after accusing the USA Today columnist of being “unprofessional” and “abusing” her “privileges” in an interview with Connecticut Sun player DiJonai Carrington.
“Once upon a time you guys never attacked college players, now they’re making more money than y’all and some of y’all are envious and jealous about that so you’re on the attack.”
Deion Sanders had some words for CFB reporters in today’s press conference 😳 pic.twitter.com/AYqsTAv7yl
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) September 17, 2024
Sadly, media guardrails have been missing at times, complicating an already complicated relationship. It’s no surprise that pro athletes are making louder calls to have safe spaces from reporters. The NFLPA already has floated the idea of closing the locker room on non-game days, and 76ers star Paul George has made it clear he would prefer a media-free postgame locker room.
But here’s where it comes full circle. Limiting access not only makes it more difficult for reporters to get to know athletes on a personal level, but it also makes it easier to be critical of them. And if it’s easier to be critical of them, it could result in more altercations, particularly when professionalism seems to be decaying at a rapid rate.
“It’s horrible, but this is where we are and, more than that, this is who we are,” Edwards said. “And that is going to be a terrible situation to deal with.”
(Top image: Meech Robinson and Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Photos, from left, via Getty Images; Barry Gossage / NBAE; Paras Griffin; Mitchell Leff; Patrick Mulligan; Alika Jenner)
