Fighting Words
You may or may not be a basketball fan. If you’re not….what’s wrong with you? Basketball is amazing. Just kidding. I’m sure you’re great but just with a weird idea of what’s ‘fun’. Like you may like hiking or needlepoint or maybe you’re just really into figure skating or curling. Ioknow. But it’s cool. I bring this up because something happened this week that got me thinking and it started with a basketball situation. Don’t worry, I’ll give you the cliff notes right quickly.
The Golden State Competitive Balance Killers Warriors beat the Cleveland Cavaliers to win the NBA title a few days back. At one point during the series Cavs player Tristan Thompson got into a disagreement, a tizzy, a kerfuffle, if you will, with Golden State player Draymond Green. It was a nothing, boring, NBA ‘fight’ where two multi millionaires cursed at each other with everyone knowing full well they weren’t going to actually do anything. Whatever, happens all the time. But here’s the problem. Green is a Rick James level habitual line stepper. On Tuesday during the Warriors championship parade, Green got to flapping his donkey gums on tv. On camera, he told the world that he told Thompson that the tow of them were ‘cut from a different cloth’.
According to Draymond “A lot of guys in this league is soft…I told one of them dudes from the Cavs after the game, he tried to shake my hand, I said, ‘Tristan, we ain’t cut the same.” Yo! Those are some big words! The disrespect is all over the place. Shortly thereafter video emerged of the players shaking hands after the final buzzer of the last Finals game. That’s when all the players dap each other up and show some love and sportsmanship and all that nonsense. As Draymond walks by Thompson puts his hand out and Draymond is heard saying ‘I don’t f*** with you’ as he ignores Thompson’s hand. The disrespect was thick. My first thought? ‘Tristan Thompson gotta see him’.
I’m a grown, adult man. That means I have to make grown, adult choices. So the question is, what has to happen for a grown, adult man to throw hands. Draymond Green publicly besmirched Thompson’s name, called him soft, and even disrespected his attempt at sportsmanship. How do you just let all that slide? Each of those acts alone are fighting words/actions. Even in middle school any one of Draymond’s acts of aggression would create an expectation of an attempted molly whopping. If I’m playing pickup and after the game one guy ignores a dap and tells someone ‘I don’t f*** with you’, I’m stepping back and watching the fireworks. We men learn at an early age that you don’t purposefully disrespect another guy like that unless you are trying to provoke, or at at least fully ready to engage in, some fisticuffs. And from the other side, you ALSO learn that nothing gets you treated like a punk by all your peers and associates faster than folks watching someone disrespect you and receiving no punishment for their actions. If someone slaps you and calls you Susan and you don’t do anything, well then you’re fair game. And maybe that doesn’t mean everyone is about to start smacking you and calling you Susan, but they’re definitely not taking you seriously anymore. Next time you get mad at someone they’ll just laugh in your face and ask you where that fire was when so and so put his hands on you.
Now maybe none of that stuff matters. Its kids in the neighborhood or at school. That ain’t the adult world. But the point is it’s ingrained in us at a young age. So what do you do then, as a grown man, when someone besmirchers your name as Draymond besmirched Thompson’s (I really like using the word ‘besmirch’. I don’t know why)?
Now the obvious answer for many is to just ignore it. It’s not worth it. The big difference between grown man fights and kid fights is assault and battery. Adults like to press charges. And sue. So just keep it moving and let people talk all the noise they want. But on the other hand….Naw son. Can’t have you talking crazy like that. That’s really the extent of the other argument right? But it’s soooooo persuasive. I am, let’s just say, not a public figure. But if someone gets on Facebook and tells the thousand or so combined Facebook friends we have that I’m soft, my first reaction is gonna be to find the geotag, hop in my family vehicle and show up at their house with a broom handle. Immature? Probably. Not very smart? I agree! Instinctually correct and potentially extremely satisfying like getting your back rubbed while eating a Snickers after letting out the fart you’d been holding in for 3 hours? Most definitely. But after I finished shellacking the besmircher with a broom handle, everyone I know would tell me I was wrong. And I would be! I’d be putting my freedom and my family’s security at risk. But every bone in my body would vibrate furiously were I to just let the besmircher besmirch without consequence. And I don’t even know why. It’s like rage blue balls.
So what then, is worthy of a grown man fight? Uncle Phil stole on a guy when he broke out a ‘yo mama’. If Uncle Phil was wrong I don’t know what to do. What if someone disrespects your woman? Is that the move? If a man calls your lady out of her name or something like that are you justified in putting the hands on him? I’d say so. But justified or not the consequences for you can still be the same. It seems like the only time you can claim full justification is when someone hits you first so you can claim self defense. That’s the grown man move. You provoke someone to take a swing at you so you can then hit them with the fists of fury without catching a charge. So I guess, in conclusion, Thompson can’t see Draymond. Donkey Teeth is gonna keep talking and Thompson just has to chalk it up to the game. I suppose that’s what it means to be a real, grown man.
