The story of Jonathan Martin, Richie Incognito and the excessive hazing culture inside the Miami Dolphins locker room has become the dominant story in the sports world in recent days.
The episode has prompted athletes in other sports, such as Nets backup point guard Shaun Livingston, to reflect on the complex subject of hazing, which can quickly veer from time-honored fun to ugly bullying.
“It just all depends,” Livingston said in a quiet moment after Monday’s practice. “I think it really depends on the rookie. I don’t necessarily condone hazing, [especially] to the point where it affects a player’s performance, because we all get paid to do a job.
“But, at the same time, I think it just depends on the environment. There’s always a line, but a rookie is going to get some hazing. That’s just part of professional sports.”
The Nets, like virtually every team at all levels of sports, have their rookies go through a hazing process. This season, the team’s lone rookie, Mason Plumlee, has a relatively simple list of chores to accomplish. For instance, when the Nets were in Boston two weeks ago for a preseason game during the World Seires, Plumlee was sent out to get some new Red Sox gear for Paul Pierce. He could be asked to carry a bag or get some drinks for the bus, as Andray Blatche suggested was a possible chore.
Clearly, though, tasks like that would just be the tip of the iceberg inside the Dolphins locker room, where Martin allegedly was hit with all kinds of abuse by at least Incognito. Dolphins rookies reportedly have been saddled with five-figure dinner bills that could take out sizable chunks of their annual salaries in one night.
And the money issue, as much as anything, is where Livingston sees hazing becoming a problem for players.
“[Picking up a big dinner] once? OK,” Livingston said. “You start getting multiple times, multiple bills … it’s like, ‘Come on.’ You have to be mindful. You always have to be mindful of the personnel. You know a guy who is on a non-guaranteed contract, making X amount of dollars and you’re ordering all types of bottles … I haven’t run across that situation, but I know I wouldn’t be feeling that.
“I think you have to put yourself in their shoes, depending on the situation. Something like that? A $30,000 tab, a $20,000 tab when a guy is making maybe a couple hundred [thousand] or a hundred after taxes … you’ve got to be mindful.
“Once it happens, and you say, ‘Part of the process.’ Two, three times, I think it’s like, ‘All right, I’m getting carried away.’ That can affect a guy’s living … But I think you’ve just got to be mindful, and that’s where good vets come in.”
Livingston said he was lucky as a 19-year-old rookie with the Clippers in 2004-05, when all he had to do was grab donuts and newspapers for the veterans on the team each morning. But he also said there’s a different culture in football, due to a variety of factors, that makes it more difficult.
“Guys I don’t want to say are more united [in the NBA] … but when you have a smaller, more boutique infrastructure, as far as a team goes, I think that has something to do with it,” he said. “Guys can feel more [like] outcasts on a 60-man roster, 50-man roster. … [They’re] all different ages.
“A lot of the guys, they’re on edge a lot. You never know what they’re going through, whether it’s at home, on the field, his contract, his playing career, his situation … there’s a lot that factors in. If you’ve gone through the experience, if you’ve been in the league for six, seven, eight years, whatever, you should be mindful of what a young fella is going through or what he’s doing.
“Not that you have to be soft or taking it easy on him or whatever. Hazing is still a part of it, he still has to go through it, but I think that’s where your intuition has to come in. Human nature, intuition has to come in to where you have a feel [for him].”
It’s clear that, at least in Miami, that wasn’t the case.