On Untold - Jail Blazers

So I just finished this documentary by Untold. I think I love Untold because they cover various industries and across various sports so it helps me get used to different spheres. 

Yesterday I watched the one about chess, but today I decided, “Okay, let me try the basketball one again.” This time it was about the Trail Blazers, and coincidentally this same team was owned by Paul Allen. 

Paul Allen is Bill Gates’ co-founder for Microsoft. He even coined the name from Microcomputers and Software. When I was reading about monopoly and financial markets and about Dr. Ola Brown's lecture on traditional and pure software companies valuations, I did further reading on Microsoft and I discovered that Bill Gates, in his very selfish behavior, wanted to oust his friend Paul Allen when Paul Allen was suffering from Hodgkin’s illness. 

But that’s a bit of a digression; coming back to this post… 

We have the scenario of, you know, the man Bob Whitsitt hiring all of these Black folks because I noticed a lot of Black players on the roster. But these Black players are not conforming like the likes of Michael Jordan, coming to the hall with suits and all. And they went to a predominantly white community - that is, Portland and they were a bit rowdy, so the name they eventually got was “Jail Blazers” because of a lot of strife within the team. 

So I think what I got from all of this is: White people don’t like something out of order; they don’t want these people coming to their house and then coming in with their culture, so to speak. So they dealt with a lot of shit. 

 But one thing I love about it is that the Rasheed Wallace character did not care, the passive-aggressiveness he gave to the press after they kept on publishing negative news about him. I love that. 'Both played well, man.' 

I guffawed uncontrollably. I love that. Absolutely, absolutely love that. And then the other part I loved was when they came for the reunion and he didn’t come with them. Love his attitude “Don’t come back here telling me to come back and be for me when you treated me like I was nothing in the organization. Don’t come back - no. Get out of here.” 

You know, people want the pacifist, and I loved that he mentioned he’s more of a Medgar Evers, which, by the way, I did not know about. A lot of times we just know about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King; I did not know about this person. 

He was also very vocal in his plans against the Ku Klux Klan, who unfortunately killed him. And, funny enough (though I’m not even surprised), in the first two trials (with an all-white jury), they did not convict the murderer. 

This is so crazy - the effect of race. 

You could trace it from the slave trade to the World War, and then trying to get them back into the system, to the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War, and the drug epidemic, and prison, and how it just continues - it trickles down to this day.

Would also want to delve a bit into how Bob was allowed free rein to keep making strange hiring decisions while still presiding over a lot of Paul Allen's ventures, despite clearly being overwhelmed. But I suppose that should be in the next essay I write about chapter two. It should cover persuasion, connections, and how in our age, said companies expect you to work only one role to keep you tied. 
 
All right, anyways.