It’s time to apologize for Josh Howard — again
September 17th, 2008, 3:25 pm · Post a Comment · posted by jerrybrown
In Beijing, a basketball team of 12 African-Americans made their country swell with pride with a respectful gold-medal performance both on and off the floor.
A month later, in the latest in a series of stupid moves on his part, we now know what America means to Dallas Mavericks forward Josh Howard.
As the national anthem was being played before Allen Iverson’s recent charity football game, Howard had time to mug for a hand-held camera and, in his best gangsta prose, tell us “The Star-Spangled Banner” is going on. I don’t celebrate this [expletive]. I’m black.”
This happened in July, about the same time Howard was arrested for late-night street racing in North Carolina. About three months before he held a birthday party blowout after the Mavs lost Game 4 of their playoff series to New Orleans, against the expressed request of coach Avery Johnson. About four months after he went on talk radio and pronounced himself a proud and frequent consumer of marijuana.
Dallas owner Mark Cuban was a busy guy long before apologizing for Howard became his full-time job. Howard is a talented, albeit fragile, basketball player, but you have to wonder how much longer he’s worth Cuban’s time and the good outweighs the bad for the Mavs. Perhaps Dallas fans should think twice before they “celebrate” Josh again.
Of course, now that he’s trashed America on video, moving Howard for fair value in this country might be a little bit harder. Lucky for Josh, NBA players now defecting to Europe for greener paychecks. Perhaps he should look into taking the same path.
Who knows? Perhaps he’ll stumble across a country he likes better. One he can celebrate as a black man.
