By TERRY LYONS
BOSTON – Welcome to the Land of Confusion.
This week, we’re serving up the controversial happenings in sports, clearing the mayhem out before the Holiday Season, Peace on Earth, Goodwill Towards Men and Tidings of Comfort and Joy.
Instead, there’s a Land of Confusion, including:
- Diplomatic Boycotting of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games by USA (with similar support from the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and Lithuania).
- The Women’s Tennis Association suspending play in China in response to alleged sexual assault and disappearance of star tennis player Peng Shua
- Celtics’ reserve center Enes Kanter Freedom campaigning on human rights issues in Turkey and China
Most likely, the Diplomatic boycott will have little to zero effect on the athletes at the games. It’s not like an Austrian skier is going to be thinking about the USA Chef de Mission while awaiting the downhill slalom ride of a lifetime. But let’s pose a few questions to see where this might go in a few weeks (February 4, 2022)?
Might the youth of the world collectively question the USA’s recent past in terms of suppressing voter rights, limiting women’s healthcare and upending a 50-year Constitutional decision, never mind issues regarding “rising climate and environmental concerns, growing financial and economic coercion,” noted a recent missive from the Council of Foreign Relations examining the previous US administration’s tendency to “increasingly invoke national security as a justification for restricting trade, while its prolific use of quotas, sanctions, tariffs, and the like threatens to destroy the rules-based economic order.”
In other words, will the USA Olympians have to pay a price for a 2017-to-2021 undermining of U.S. allies across the globe, or the decision to withdraw from the Paris Accord? (President Joe Biden re-joined the Paris Accord at recent COP26 summit).
On the flip side, can the USA and other countries utilize the global spotlight of the Olympic Games to pressure China on the allegations of torture, forced detention, sterilization, religious persecution and atrocities committed against the Uyghur people – a Muslim ethnic group in northwest China?
Some (including 180 human rights groups) have called for a full boycott of the games, but White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki defended the decision to allow American athletes to compete by saying that it would be unfair to “penalize athletes who have been training, preparing for this moment,” and adding that the diplomatic boycott “sends a clear message.”
Meanwhile the relatively small WTA stood-up to fight a mighty battle against China, one the International Olympic Committee would never broach as the Celtics’ scrub Kanter stands on his own vs. human rights issues, calling-out his native Turkey and now China. Kanter has even singled-out NBA superstar LeBron James and Lin-sanity himself in Jeremy Lin, 33, a former NBA player of Taiwanese-American descent. Lin now cashes a check, playing for the Beijing Ducks of the Chinese Basketball Association.
All the while, the IOC claims to be non-political, and many sports fans claim they don’t want to mix politics and sports, but that ship sailed long, long ago.
The Sports vs. Political landscape is muddy. The answers will never come, unless you measure USA Nielsen TV ratings which is never a method that can be considered an exact science.
HERE NOW, THE NOTES: Hunt Auctions this week presented an amazing offering of game memorabilia and other artifacts from the personal collection of Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell. The auction items were owned and carefully collected by Russell throughout his life, chronicling his historic basketball career and seminal role as a leader in the Civil Rights movement in the United States, beginning in the 1950s.
Notable sales from the auction, held at TD Garden in Boston, included:
- $1,116,250 – 1969 Bill Russell Boston Celtics professional model jersey worn in Game #7 of the 1969 NBA Finals, the final game of his NBA career
- $1,313,500 – Cumulative total for Russell’s five MVP awards
- $705,000 – 1957 championship ring, Russell’s first ring
- $587,500 – 1956 Olympic gold medal
- $558,125 – 1969 championship ring, the last of Russell’s 11 championships
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