The Chris Moeller Archives

The sanest man in professional basketball

I've referenced Royce White here before. He played basketball at my alma mater, Iowa State, a fact I'm proud to promote. He's famous now for refusing to play professional ball with the team that drafted him last summer, the Houston Rockets, until the team accommodates his request for a "mental health protocol," which essentially means employing for him a full-time personal psychiatrist.

I'm a layperson when it comes to understanding matters of mental health, but I am an observer of the modern American scene, and an almost-20-year dweller amidst the low rungs of the corporate world, and I recognize lucidity in a young man when I hear it.

In this Chuck Klosterman interview, Royce-- I'm going to call him Royce to further humanize him-- spits out several unmistakable truths about our life and times that even our academic class, as a collective group, doesn't seem to grasp.

For one, that hypercompetitiveness is a mental illness. Nobody questions Michael Jordan's mental health because the man knew how to "suck it up" better than almost anybody during the big game, but this is also a man who has become estranged over time from dozens of one-time friends, so much so that it prompted a recent satire on the Onion's website. On at least one occasion, Jordan has reportedly staked more than a million dollars on the outcome of a round of golf, or a hole of golf, whatever it was, and according to a recent profile in the ESPN magazine, he does not claim to see his competitiveness as anything other than a healthy commodity. Jordan has a deep psychic need to be perceived as great, and as Royce explains, the only reason this isn't viewed as a problem is that most people perceive him to be great. How are you keeping score?

Kurt Vonnegut once wrote that the problem with America was that it was led by what he called PP's, psychopathic personalities. They are smart and personable, and therefore drawn to and successful in political and corporate life, but they are also without conscience. Violating society's ethical codes of behavior causes them no stress. The rest of us use this healthy form of anxiety to moderate our more greedy impulses, but lacking it, they have the advantage of running roughshod over the landscape. (Their employment picture is excellent.) It's not a psychosis, like schizophrenia, so they appear outwardly normal. As Royce suggests, identifying a possible-majority of Americans as mentally ill raises frightening questions about our nation's future. Accepting that this group is a majority would make it more difficult to keep the more traditional cases among us resigned to the margins.

Royce is also correct about the reason the ranks of the mentally ill have become legion-- the diametrically-opposed agendas of business and health care advocacy. Says the former Cyclone point forward, "It's no secret that 2 percent of the human population controls all the wealth and the resources, and the other 98 percent struggle their whole life to try and attain it. Right? And what ends up happening is that the 2 percent leave the 98 percent to struggle and struggle and struggle, and they eventually build up these stresses and conditions."

Holy shit, this is revolutionary stuff. Even our "liberals" have ultimately chosen to bow down before the belief that free-market capitalism will save us. Morality has been replaced by what's perceived as politically-practical. Royce recognizes that the system is rigged, and he's not willing to sign over his mental and emotional health just for a big payday.

So that means he's going to give up the dream of sporting stardom that millions of boys and girls would give their right arm to make a reality? He very well might. It's no wonder that the average sports fan, a failed jock in some fashion, thinks he's the crazy one. And with the Rockets, Royce wouldn't be joining a roster that resembles the Beat Poets in their rejection of materialism. In the world of sports, you're considered an iconoclast if you grow unusual facial hair.

Royce White is concerned with toxic air, with toxic stress, with toxic surroundings. Klosterman's right that Royce is basically advocating that the power dynamic in sports between employers and employees be completely capsized. The author sees this as a confusing and contradictory stance by Royce because it puts the power of performance and the pocketbook in the hands of the athlete. And he might just be right that that's the goal. Royce's leverage as "the product" is just the most glaring reveal yet of the biggest lie in professional sports-- that is, that the team owner serves a purpose. Sure, they "sell" the sport in the sense that they prepare the branding and the advertising, but that's a little like taking credit for marketing sex-aid pharmaceuticals. The shit sells itself. It's semantics to argue who's selling the games, but it's undeniably the athletes that the fans are buying.

Royce hits my favorite notes when he talks about how sports owners see their business as something other than a business. This is an age-old maxim that it's a "sport" and not a financial enterprise, and now a multi-billion dollar one at that. Like any other employer, his bosses are going to try to get away with providing only the employee and consumer protections they're required by law to provide. His contention makes sense that it's a conflict of interest to have the Rockets assign a team doctor to his case. This would be like having your employer provide your health insurance. Oh shit, bad example.

Royce isn't getting special treatment when he asks for the mental health care of his choosing. My employer has a mental health policy. Why doesn't the NBA have one? Instead, he is that rare individual in modern America willing to stand up for his natural rights. I know we hear contradictory claims of this: the loud and frequent hooting of well-armed ninnies, but these are simply the recouping bellows of the happily-caged. They're afraid for their guns, but the guns have little left to protect. Undeniably, the vast majority of Americans prefer living in the zoo to living in their natural habitat.

We should all be more inspired by Royce White, and less perplexed. His win on this matter would be our win. His job is higher in profile than yours or mine, and he has unique leverage in that he has a rare and highly-marketable skill. The outcome of this standoff will have reverberations either way. Fortunately for the rest of us, Royce is, in addition to being a courageous man, a "big picture" thinker. He sees the full scope of what he's fighting for-- and what he's up against. As the man says, you're "always going to run into problems with people who think that business is more important than human welfare."

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Roger Ebert writes about his favorite bar.

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South African “Blade Runner” Oscar Pistorius shot and killed his girlfriend, and has been charged by police with her premeditated murder. But that’s not the worst of it. It seems police have also found a testosterone supplement in his house. That son of a bitch.

posted by CM @ 8:33 PM