Kurtis Blow was 18 months from releasing “Ego Trip,” his 1984 album featuring one of the first meshes of hoops and bars, “ Basketball.” It would be a while before lyrics about star ballers were the norm. Hip-hop was in its infancy as a commercially viable genre. (There was no All-Star Weekend it was a one-day, one-game event.) The most notable, public friendship between an NBA star and musicians was Bill Walton’s lifetime affinity for the Grateful Dead. No celebrity game during All-Star Weekend. No nexus between ballers and entertainers existed back then. This was a legend on a different level, and the awe of the audience was tangible from the moment he stepped to the mic. His aviator sunglasses with the gradient and thin temples popped beneath the spotlight-style lighting on the court. He was resplendent in a steel-blue suit, set off by a light-blue banker’s shirt and a blue gingham tie a dangling white handkerchief added a bit of extra flair. 13, 1983, on the floor of The Forum - at the time the home of the Los Angeles Lakers and, that day, the site of the NBA All-Star Game. It was into this vanilla void that stepped Marvin Pentz Gay Jr., on Feb. So much so, it was considered a big ask when then- Suns owner Jerry Colangelo went to CBS Sports president Bob Wussler in 1975 requesting two minutes at the top of the network’s upcoming broadcast of the All-Star Game in Phoenix so crooner Andy Williams could sing “By The Time I Get to Phoenix” with Henry Mancini’s orchestra. While individual star players like Bill Russell and Oscar Robertson pointed out the inequalities faced by the league’s Black players, both on and off the court, the NBA as a whole was conspicuously conservative. The NBA was not always, as some of its critics would later say, “woke.” Or even a Black league, as it’s now known.įor its first three-plus decades, the league was as strait-laced and non-controversial as the other major U.S. For one afternoon, the time set aside to honor America became a historic homage to the rhythm and blues of Blackness, a tribute to the resilient genius of African American culture.Īnd after that afternoon in Inglewood, neither “The Star-Spangled Banner” nor the NBA would ever be the same.
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