Mike Vaccaro

Mike Vaccaro

NBA

Oklahoma St. star must follow Jackie Robinson’s example

All these years later, this is the part of the Jackie Robinson story that not only wrenches the heart but also applies to a modern world. This was inside the old Dodgers offices on Montague Street, 1945, in the critical moments before Branch Rickey would decide to formally ask Robinson to shatter baseball’s color barrier.

There was one deal-breaker:

Rickey knew what Robinson would be facing the next year as a Montreal Royal when the team played in southern cities or against southern ballplayers, and he certainly knew what Robinson would encounter when he reached Brooklyn, when the Dodgers took to the road for places like St. Louis, against people like Ben Chapman.

And it wouldn’t matter. Rickey couldn’t afford to have Robinson’s anger become physical. Couldn’t have him fight back, not to bench jockeys, not to racist fans, not to anybody. So Rickey mimicked the worst diatribe he could summon, all but spit it into Robinson’s face, and asked, “What do you do?”

“Mr. Rickey,” Robinson asked, “do you want a ballplayer who’s too afraid to fight back?”

“What I want,” Rickey replied, “is a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back.”

All these years later, this is the lesson athletes need to remember, regardless of their race, regardless of the emotions that swirl around an event, regardless of basic tenets of right and wrong that can get awfully confusing in the heat of the moment.

Good for Oklahoma State’s Marcus Smart: He was penitent Sunday night, he took responsibility, accepted the three-game suspension he received for shoving a Texas Tech fan. That he acted properly after the fact — as did the fan in question, who agreed to stay away from Tech’s remaining basketball games — should help further the notion of what’s right and wrong in these matters.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, the Tech fan used the most guttural, offensive words available in the lexicon of lousiness. We don’t know that he did; he says he didn’t, and neither Smart nor his coach, Travis Ford, would go there.

But, again, for argument’s sake: Assume it was every bit as bad as the imagination allows. Add in the fact Tech was about to upset State, and throw in the reality Smart — a likely lottery pick if he had come out in last year’s draft — has had a disappointing season that has seemingly sent his NBA stock plummeting.

Bad season, awful night, egregious moment.

All of that together. A tinderbox looking for a match.

Smart still has to be the bigger person. He still has to stay out of the stands. He still has to understand there are boundaries athletes are simply not permitted to cross, no matter how unfair that may seem in the moment — or even in retrospect.

“Emotion and fire should be directed to play on the court,” Metta World Peace said Sunday morning in Oklahoma City, before the Knicks lost to the Thunder, “Instead of directed other places.’’
World Peace is the foremost authority on this subject, of course, for it was 10 years ago that he was the focal point in the Malice at The Palace, the frightening brawl in which he, as an Indiana Pacer, entered the crowd to confront a heckling fan. It was an act of volition that cost him 73 regular-season and 13 postseason games, and has yielded permanent acts of contrition that will continue until he retires and beyond.

Now, World Peace understands the one-way, unwritten contract between player and fan: “They come pay to see us and I appreciate it. I don’t judge fans on what they say, good or bad.”
Then? Well, he was younger then.

And Marcus Smart is even younger, and has yet to earn his first professional dollar, and what he heard Saturday night was clearly enough for him to snap. Do you want to root for a ballplayer too afraid to fight back?

And it doesn’t matter. He has to keep his hands to himself. He has to be bigger than the fan, no matter how noxious, no matter how obnoxious, and if there’s good to come of this it would be this: He seems to know that.

Knows that, all these years later, he needed guts enough not to fight back.