For their playoff victory last night, the Phoenix Suns, long my second-favorite basketball team, wore jerseys with "Los Suns" stitched on the front. If there were any confusion as to why, Robert Sarver, the team's owner, quickly eliminated it by saying the jersey change was a direct rebuke to the Arizona government's approval last month of a bill that allows police officers to detain someone suspected of being in the U.S. illegally and arrest those who aren't carrying their immigration papers. "However intended, the result of passing the law is that our basic principles of equal rights and protection under the law are being called into question," Sarver said.
As ESPN.com columnist J.A. Andade astutely notes, professional sports teams typically exert political muscle only to convince voters to pass a ballot referendum to subsidize the construction of their new stadium -- typically at a significant, long-term loss to the taxpayers and the municipality or county. Here, Sarver and the Suns, who unanimously agreed with his suggestion about the jerseys, seized an opportune moment in the most perfect way possible: A subtle but obvious gesture that thumbs its nose at ill-conceived, reactionary political hysteria and stands in solidarity with multiculturalism, openness and respect.
Not only is Phoenix one of the more diverse metropolitan areas in the U.S. because of its Hispanic population, but the Suns' players and their families are a diverse bunch too, as are the rosters of nearly every team in every sport these days. Steve Nash, the Suns' star point guard, my all-time favorite basketball player for many reasons, and a Canadian, said of the law, "I think that this is a bill that really damages our civil liberties. I think it opens up the potential for racial profiling and racism." Damn straight. Here's the video; you need to go about three minutes in to hear the political part:
Sports unites people from all different backgrounds to root for their team, but, so it seems, this law does too to root against it. Of all the commentary I've read, the only people who seem to support it are cranky, anonymous writers at the bottom of news stories who always sound forever angry and old (if not in age, then in world outlook). Those who give some backing, such as the WSJ's editorial board, do so only on the grounds that Arizona's Legislature only burst because Congress has failed to address illegal immigration policy on a federal level. (Expect Congress to continue to fail.) But on the other side is essentially everyone, who realizes hysteria solves nothing and exacerbates things -- in this case to a discriminatory degree.
Hopefully in 20 years we'll look at this bill (and others) as the folly of a strange era of our lives, when recession and the panic it brings prompted some people to do some very strange, hurtful things, not as the start of new norm.
Update: The Suns have become the team du jour for all sportswriters' columns. Bill Simmons has this to say about the Suns' playoff run, which is notable not for his insight but the writing style. For the first time, Simmons drops the meandering, pop-culture-filled fandom that earned his fame for a legitimate, intimate tone that "profound" columnists adopt. Considering its Simmons' first attempt, it doesn't work well, but he's certainly proved himself to be talented enough to improve.
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