The bust that barked back - Kwame Brown and the NBA
How one retired player is owning the headlines during the critical period of the pro basketball season, proving that the monster can rise against its creator and that sports thrives on conflict.
Much of sports writing and talk radio is dedicated to a very cyclical but almost timeless process where new players coming into the league are compared to the stars that fans grew up idolizing. When a major star leaves the stage, it is difficult to maintain interest by accepting decline, so the mission becomes clear: a new king must be crowned. Often the person selected for this purpose is a talented protégé who arrives with much fanfare and then disappoints expectations and fades into obscurity. By the end of their career, this “next big thing” is washed up, but they have already served their purpose. If expectations are met, the media has its new sensation. But if not, they can still use the narrative of wasted potential for a second purpose: the “Worst Draft Bust” list or other variants thereof. Rarely does a member of this group ever find a way to get even, but that was before Kwame Brown. The former Washington Wizard has torched his way through the NBA’s image and social agenda in response to the constant use of his name as a synonym for failure. The fact that this saga has caught fire as the NBA playoffs are just getting underway could be the greatest indicator that the league itself is in irreversible decline.
The people that drew Brown’s ire are other former NBA players like Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes as well as sports commentators like Stephen A. Smith. He made it clear that he was taking their years of ridicule toward him personally, and that all they were good at was “talking sh** about black men”, He also vented that it wasn’t his job to comment on whether he had lived up to the trust and legacy of Michael Jordan who had brought him in to play for the Charlotte Bobcats for two different stints. Brown also noted that it was the media that labeled him as being angry for his unfulfilled career, when in reality he had never spoken publicly about his feelings about it.
Why is Kwame Brown famous?
The draft bust narrative is a product of an era when the NBA and NFL draft are both televised and the run-up to the selection is filled with endless speculation, mock drafts, trade rumours, and leaked details about the lives and reputations of the prospects. Therefore most draft bust lists don’t even address NFL No. 1 overall picks that didn’t pan out before 1990 such as Ken Sims, Aundray Bruce, and Ricky Bell. It is critical to remember that the pick’s actual potential and performance do not make him a bust, but rather the degree to which he was hyped. It is the classic “if a tree falls in a forest” situation.
Draft busts are also heavily mocked because often the team picking them is desperate for a saviour. Teams with horrible seasons have the chance for an earlier pick in the NBA draft lottery, and in the NFL the picks are ordered inversely to performance. This leads to the common situation where the future of a fallen franchise is in the hands of an unproven athlete who is often still a teenager. Is it not surprisingly therefore that many of them do not work out? In the late 1990s as the superstar merchandising of players like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods showed how sports was becoming a global business, scouts and journalists of all sports started to look to major league drafts as a vehicle for the “next Jordan”. They built up many of the young prospects by believing that more media coverage would reveal who this successor would be. While some hyped picks like Peyton Manning and Kobe Bryant did eventually have Hall of Fame careers, there are many examples of the opposite:
Ryan Leaf was drafted by the San Diego Chargers in 1998 and had three tumultuous seasons on the team leading to the firing of two head coaches. Leaf played his last game in 2001 and dealt with addiction issues following retirement.
Michael Olowakandi was one of many players picked early by the Los Angeles Clippers that went nowhere in the NBA. He played eight years mostly riding the bench before retiring in 2007.
Anthony Bennett was selected in 2013 by the Cleveland Cavaliers, and had what was statistically the worst rookie season of a No. 1 overall pick in NBA history. He was subsequently dealt to Minnesota in the Kevin Love trade and ended his career in 2017 having started only four games.
Kwame Brown’s name has become synonymous with the word bust, because he was picked by Jordan in his capacity as part owner and team president of the Wizards and was selected straight out of high school. This tremendous gamble by the greatest player in league history was sure to attract a lot of buzz, but it would be the first of many poor personnel choices by “His Airness” as an executive. By 2003 Jordan retired for a second time as a player and was soon fired by Wizards ownership. Brown left Washington in 2005 for free agency and would be reunited as a player for Jordan in 2011 when the latter was a minority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats. Ironically it would be one of his better seasons as he started 50 games and was able to more than double his rebound average.
When he retired in 2013 Brown’s name was irredeemably associated with the label of draft bust in the same manner as Leaf’s is in the NFL. For years Stephen A. Smith, the loudest crowing rooster of sports talk TV, roasted Kwame (or “Kwaaamay” as he calls him) Brown as a scrub to anyone that would listen, including at a speaking engagement at Florida International University. Suffice it to say that his experience with the spotlight until now has been largely negative.
OK, but why is he famous NOW??
Various pro sports busts have attempted to rehabilitate their reputation by making a comeback or starting a new career. JaMarcus Russell in 2013 attempted to return to the NFL after an awful three year career ending in 2009 as the quarterback for the Oakland Raiders, and unsurprisingly failed to attract any takers. Ryan Leaf attempted instead to focus on his accomplishments by writing a memoir on his college football career. Kwame Brown never attempted either track, and his post-playing career has been largely focused on his private life with one drug possession offense. Nevertheless, he continues to be used as the butt of jokes by NBA commentators and media.
Brown had held his tongue, at least publicly, up until recently when he responded to Barnes and Jackson’s comments on a podcast about him. Both players had careers that were respectable but unremarkable including one championship each with the Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs as role players. It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, but the reason it has gone viral is because Brown decided it would be the first blow in a nuclear charged against all of the players and commentators that had badmouthed him for so many years and has spilled into racial and political matters.
Brown’s attacks have been just as personal if not more against his tormentors, from calling Jackson a “fake Black Lives Matter activist” and labelling Matt Barnes a “Becky” (as in that he is so light skinned that he could pass for a white woman). Such a statement, a “colorist” put-down against another black person’s skin tone, would certainly raise eyebrows in polite society and among the youth would be called a bullying tactic. He also has repeatedly made light of Stephen A. Smith’s receding hairline. Except . . . it is hard to make the case that Kwame Brown is a bully when he has been prodded and provoked for more than ten years by constant insults and jokes at his expense.
Give the people their drama
NBA watchers ate up the Kwame Brown drama for an additional reason that many have forgotten about: The NBA is currently devoid of any real dramatic grudge matches. The most historic NBA seasons are defined by bitter rivalries between teams (Celtics vs. Lakers, Pistons vs. Bulls) or players (Wilt Chamberlain vs. Bill Russell, Larry Bird vs. Magic Johnson, Jordan vs. Isiah Thomas). The NBA of late has not had such an adversarial dynamic on the court. Rivalries have existed such as between LeBron James’ Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors, but they lack the drama and tension of previous generations.
As the greatest player of his generation, James is in large part responsible for this change in the league. There are several excellent examples of James behaving toward rivals as if they are almost fraternity brothers:
In 2011 he left Cleveland for the first time for the Miami Heat in order to join erstwhile rival and personal friend Dwayne Wade and fellow free agent Chris Bosh in a “Big Three” super team.
James’ greatest rival on the court has been fellow small forward Kevin Durant, and they have faced off in three separate finals while they were both members of four different teams. But far from having a grudge match, Durant and James have a very chummy friendship, work out in the off-season together, and even costarred in a short film sponsored by Uber with former ESPN personality Cari Champion.
Rumours have percolated that James is attempting to lure Golden State point guard Stephen Curry to the Lakers.
The NBA’s other maladies concerning its political monoculture and excessive virtue signaling also contribute to a craving for players, coaches, and executives to go back to focusing on the game. During the Trump era there was almost a competition among league figures such as Gregg Popovich, Steve Kerr, and Mark Cuban to give the harshest condemnation of the former commander in chief. This is in addition to players that were already part time penthouse activists like James and Curry, as well as the entire Milwaukee Bucks team that walked off the court in protest in August 2020 over a police shooting of a black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin. It should be noted that the person wounded in the shooting, Jacob Blake, was later revealed to have been armed with a knife and had been attempting to sexually assault a black woman. But what is beyond the political and social controversy of the NBA is the fact that for even longer than that there hasn’t been a real hard core beef between one of its premier stars and another.
Much of the talk about the NBA nowadays has less to do with rebounds, pick and roll plays, and three pointers and more to do with China, gender pay gaps, and racial justice. But if fans want to talk about that, they can turn elsewhere. The absurd yet entertaining Kwame Brown saga offers something that almost no one can pass up: A person with a vendetta and the angst behind it to give them something real to appreciate. In a world where he grabs the headlines during the run-up to their playoffs, it could be a sign that the NBA is the real bust.