When Dr. James Naismith sat on his YMCA bed one cold evening in December 1891 envisioning the very first “Basket Ball” game, he created a non-violent sport: “Rule 5. No shouldering, holding, pushing, tripping or striking in any way the person of an opponent shall be allowed.” Notice that Dr. Naismith didn’t admonish against choking another player–let alone a coach–let alone during a routine practice. Dr. Naismith could not have imagined a player choking his coach, then showering, changing, charging the coach again and hitting him twice while threatening his life.
Even more unimaginable would be the possibility of allowing such a player back onto a professional basketball court, to receive millions of dollars, no less. To the creator of basketball, this whole scenario would have been “absolutely inconceivable, ridiculous, and sickening,” according to his grandson, Ian Naismith, director of the Naismith International Basketball Foundation in Chicago.
The NBA could have won its case in the Latrell Sprewell arbitration hearings. For the first time, the NBA hired a sport psychologist (this writer) to provide a scientific basis to understand violence in sports. For decades sport psychologists have studied, researched and published numerous articles and books on this topic. Why wouldn’t the NBA players union want this information included in the hearings? Certainly the vast majority of basketball players at all levels want the game played as they play it–with integrity, intensity and joy.
For their own safety, they should also want a scientific analysis of the predictors of violence. Therefore, it should serve the NBA, the players union and Dr. Naismith’s game itself to put a scientific analysis front and center when deciding how to reduce violence in basketball.
A sport psychology perspective led this writer to several conclusions, all provided to the NBA via its law firm, Skadden & Arps, in late January. First, in accord with the 1997 position statement published by the International Society of Sport Psychology, “Management should make fundamental penalty revisions so that rule-violating behavior results in punishment of a greater punitive value than potential reinforcement.” In other words, if hostile aggression is to be reduced in basketball, players must learn to expect substantial punishments if they attack someone with obvious intent to injure.
Second, Sprewell’s acts, occurring as they did separated by 20 minutes and a radical change in situations, make his behavior particularly anomalous and probably quite predictive of future violent acts. “Game reasoning” differs dramatically from the kind of reasoning that goes on during practices and in everyday life. During the heat of battle, players are much more likely to think and behave more violently than they would in other situations.
Finally, the anomalous nature of Sprewell’s acts coupled with his lack of remorse are major sources of concern; his previous behavior and other problematic actions and reactions are good predictors of future violent acts. In fact, Sprewell’s behavior and distortions in thinking make it very likely that he will sustain a pattern of violence both on and off the court in the future.
People who qualify for a diagnosis of “antisocial personality disorder,” sometimes described as “psychopathy,” are especially prone to repeated acts of violence. Psychopaths lie repeatedly, show consistent irritability and aggressiveness (including repeated physical assaults), show reckless disregard for the safety of others and demonstrate lack of remorse through their indifference to or rationalizing having hurt others.
Sprewell seems to have demonstrated all the tendencies of those who qualify for the diagnosis “antisocial personality disorder” or “psychopathy.” How many people do you know who have young children and also own four pit bulls? How many people do you know who, after one of the pit bulls seriously injured one of the children, would destroy only one of the dogs and keep the other three?
Sprewell’s distortions of truth include a recent television interview on “60 Minutes” in which he refused to say he choked P.J. Carlesimo, despite admitting to putting his hands on the coach’s neck. During a taped interview conducted the night of the incident, Sprewell refused to acknowledge even grabbing the coach by the neck. He also claimed that during the second incident he didn’t actually attack Carlesimo.
Sprewell’s public comments rationalize and minimize the incident. He also has expressed some connection between acting in a violent fashion with self-esteem: “If I really went after P.J., he’d look a lot worse than he did on TV.” There will be other other people hurt both on and off the court, if Sprewell doesn’t find a way to change radically the way he thinks and behaves.
The lawyers from Skadden & Arps who advised the NBA decided it was too risky to include this type of testimony in the hearing. They argued, in good faith, that the union might use this writer’s previous publications to suggest that negativistic coaching may have mitigated this circumstance. Actually, research on athletes’ preferences shows that highly skilled and experienced athletes in team sports prefer, and play better for, coaches whose style is more autocratic than democratic, and more task-oriented than relationship-oriented. In any case, negativistic coaching has never predicted assault with expressed intent to kill. If negativistic coaching created such reactions in players, there would be literally hundreds of these incidents a year.
The legal advisers to the NBA hoped common sense would prevail, providing adequate support for the commissioner’s sanctions in this case. Why do we continue to rely on “common sense” in situations when science is readily available to provide very useful directions? This case is a great example of why it is important to try to begin changing that attitude. Now Sprewell gets to play for millions again, Carlesimo will probably lose his job this summer, the Golden State Warriors will become an even more dysfunctional basketball team, the commissioner’s authority is weakened, the morality clause in NBA contracts has become more meaningless and outrageous acts of violence and inane verbal tirades against officials, fans and others will continue. “Common sense” apparently put yet another nail in the coffin of Dr. James Naismith’s non-violent creation.
Perhaps the players union and the NBA might want to rethink the critical role that science should play in these matters. The integrity of basketball is at stake.
