for its current problems?
A couple of weeks ago a columnist in the St Louis Post Dispatch said that the NBAs very close relationship with hip hop culture was causing it to lose fans. Incidentally this columnist is African American so before you flame away I thought you might like to know that. I cannot locate the original article but in googling the topic I came across this from MSNBC
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sports/columnists.nsf/bryanburwell/story/A15C3B6A4A5951B786256F55001BB26E?OpenDocument&Headline=The+NBA+is+hip-hopping+its+way+out+of+the+mainstream&tetl=1 >
Hip-hop culture is part of NBA's bad rap
Booting Artest won't solve big gap between players, fans
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6583353/
...Ticket holders and fans pay more than ever to see professional basketball, yet it seems they identify less than ever with the players. Some of that backlash was obvious this summer when a U.S. Olympic team of high-profile NBA players was ridiculed, at home and overseas, as pampered and spoiled before the competition had started.
snip
And not all the league's problems can be attributed to the players. League and club executives decided to marry the NBA to hip-hop, and clearly didn't know what they were getting into. As my friend Brian Burwell wrote in Tuesday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch, NBA marketing people "thought they were getting Will Smith and LL Cool J. But now they've discovered the dark side of hip-hop has also infiltrated their game, with its 'bling-bling' ostentation, its unrepentant I-gotta-get-paid ruthlessness, its unregulated culture of posses, and the constant underlying threat of violence."
snip
And all this is relevant because this is where NBA players live. It's not a lifestyle they've adopted, it's a life most of them -- black and white -- have lived their entire adult lives. It's a life that boasts incessantly about, "my drink," "my smoke," "my women," and "my rides." And it is a life based on getting "respect" at any cost, including going into the stands and administering a beat-down if somebody "disrespects you."
snip
What I hear now, increasingly, is tolerance for the game, particularly in black America where basketball is the most beloved industry going, but a wariness of many of the players. Just last week, the league told Vince Carter he couldn't wear headphones during warmups. The inference from fans is that Carter would like to, if allowed, block them out right up until the opening tip-off. The night after the brawl in Detroit, the Rockets' Maurice Taylor conducted an interview and wouldn't even take off his headphones. The message, intended or not, is that the moment he was done talking he didn't want to be bothered. This came two weeks after Latrell Sprewell indicated he would need more than $10 million a year to feed his family. And of course, Artest wanted time off during the season to promote his girl group's new CD.