We Are Living in a Golden Age of NBA Heels
A decade ago, being likable, admirable, and even heroic was considered essential to a player’s brand. Long before that, Charles Barkley had tried to tell us that athletes shouldn’t be, and often don’t want to be, held up as moral exemplars for their behavior on or off the court. But the specters of Magic Johnson’s megawatt grin and Michael Jordan’s anodyne charisma continue to haunt the sport.
Today, being a good guy is sorely overrated. At least that’s the lesson you have to glean from the present-day NBA. A quick survey of the league’s best and brightest turns up the outwardly antagonistic Russell Westbrook and Draymond Green; sulky Kevin Durant; Kawhi Leonard, whose exit from San Antonio was the opposite of dignified and tidy; arch-troll Joel Embiid; the supercilious Ben Simmons; Jimmy Butler; contrarian Kyrie Irving; the increasingly sharp-tongued Klay Thompson; renowned dickhead Chris Paul; and loose cannon DeMarcus Cousins. Even Giannis Antetokounmpo, formerly the league’s chief source of sweetness and light, has taken to shouting down opponents.
We are living in a golden age of NBA heels.
It was once in players’ best interests to be seen as tireless professionals, relatively obedient employees, and upstanding citizens. That’s what the public expected of them, and if they wanted access to marketing dollars, or just to be spared a rash of public scorn and negative press, they had to hew to these standards. This season, we’re witnessing a major shift in the way players address this facet of their jobs. But it didn’t come out of nowhere.
The product wasn’t great when the sport’s popularity bottomed out in the early 2000s. But the backlash was as much about how players were perceived as it was the quality of play. “Thug” was common parlance. Selfish hero ball was ravaging the league. Haranguing refs was a key strategy, and Rasheed Wallace’s technical fouls marked the decline of civilization. The influence of hip-hop was a plague. Kobe Bryant was a sociopathic prima donna; his teammate Shaquille O’Neal, a nasty underminer. Cashing in with a guaranteed long-term deal was more important than winning, and otherwise scrubby players showed up for career years just in time for their next contract. Stars were coach killers and GM baiters; the memory of Latrell Sprewell literally trying to do so was still fresh. The Malice in the Palace happened. Guns were in locker rooms.
The NBA simply couldn’t shake its reputation as a haven for everything that was wrong with professional athletes. At the heart of it all was Allen Iverson, who embodied most of the NBA’s perceived flaws. He fell under constant scrutiny and was a lightning rod for controversy. The cringe-worthy coverage he received often smacked of outright racism. He never caved and was unapologetic in all aspects of his game, life, and persona. He weathered persecution without ever expecting the world to understand his situation, much less be sympathetic to it, wearing his emotions on his sleeve while giving few fucks about the response they would provoke.
Iverson was also unquestionably the league’s most popular player. It wasn’t in spite of these “flaws” that he captured the imagination of millions around the world—it was because of them. Iverson was a glowering anti-hero, a passionate and deeply misunderstood figure, and an antidote to all that was fake about the sport. You couldn’t pull for Allen Iverson without, to some degree, embracing the fact that you were embracing many people’s worst nightmare. For many, this was a large part of his appeal. He was an advocate for a generation ready to have its say; his transgressions said more about the attitudes of his detractors than it did Iverson’s actual aims. More underdog than insurgent, Iverson nevertheless struck a chord because he was cast as a rebel flying in the face of outmoded convention. He didn’t want to change the world, but he did. Iverson flipped the negative view of the NBA on its head and made it into a cause to be championed. And if he could come off as overwrought at times, this only made him more inspiring in the eyes of his fans.
Iverson remained a polarizing figure to the end. He never won over his critics, who felt largely vindicated by the way his career unraveled. And as Iverson declined, the sport gave way to a new generation headlined by LeBron James, who in his first seven seasons went to great lengths to preserve a squeaky clean image and bullet-proof reputation. It certainly helped that James was so unselfish on the court, maybe even to a fault. If Iverson was the Wrong Way, James was The Right Way’s final triumph. He was a palate cleanser who restored unity in the wake of Iverson’s grip on the league.
All that changed when James took his talents to South Beach. Overnight, public opinion shifted. James had abandoned his hometown. His desire to seize control of his career was uppity. Joining forces with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh was taking the easy way out. And on top of all this, he had announced his decision with a self-aggrandizing prime time special. Naively, James didn’t see any of this coming. But he soon attempted to embrace his new image. He tweeted that “Hate Me Now” was his new theme song and during the preseason, took the court with C-Murder’s defiant “Down for My N****s” blaring. James, then an inveterate nice guy who craved acceptance, was a poor fit for the role and seemed relieved when two titles stemmed the tide of acrimony. The return to Cleveland and the subsequent title were redemption. But the experience changed James, who since then has been more candid, outspoken, and unafraid to throw his weight around or make his displeasure known.
You could argue that James can get away with almost anything in the wake of the Cavs’ feel-good story of the century. The fact remains that he could have reverted back to the old, sanitized LeBron and chose instead to let it all hang out. James’s shock at how The Decision was received is proof that, before 2010, he had a fairly simplistic view of how to market himself. That was the moment when LeBron James became truly self-aware. From there on out, everything became a calculation. James seems to be a happier, freer, and more fully-realized human being these days. But he also intuited that this new direction could work to his advantage. The NBA’s popularity has pro-player sentiment at an all-time high; social media has created a demand for more convincingly authentic athletes; and the public is highly skeptical of anyone who comes across as too polished or uncomplicated.
While James may have recovered from his heel turn, he also laid the groundwork for his peers to push things even further in that direction. Players can now speak and act more freely, which makes their lives easier and allows them to express themselves and readily push their agendas. Stars, who are now more savvy than ever before, also understand that it pays to be unfiltered: Green and Westbrook are viable pitchmen because they are loose cannons. The Sixers are a heel super-team who could not be more on-brand for a city with a perpetual chip on its shoulder. Leonard’s bizarre falling out with the Spurs made him more an enigma, rather than just a blank slate. Durant may seem like a cautionary tale about how freedom and openness can backfire. And yet, he now has a personality, an inner life that the entire league will be trying to decipher heading into the offseason. There’s no telling what will happen with Durant this summer. But the harder it is to predict what players will say or do, the more alive the league becomes. This isn’t sports as a metaphor for life. It’s what happens when players are actually free to live theirs.
