Psrhea: Ice Cube No Vaseline Award : Art Modell & Chris Webber

The Ice Cube No Vaseline Award
by LeDarius Washington

It's been a while since I've done this feature. I've had to go to graduate school and do something as unimportant and mundane as study and go to class. But that doesn't mean I haven't been keeping up with what's been happening in the world. To that end, I have a couple of winners this time around.

In keeping with the theme of this particular edition of Psrhea Magazine, which seems to be more sports oriented than normal, I've decided that this month's winners will come from the world of sports. I think you will agree that these are deserving recipients.

The winner of the Ice Cube No-Vaseline Award for January:

ART MODELL

Along with 130 million other Americans I watched this year's Super Bowl, the XXXVth edition. And don't get me wrong, I actually thought beforehand that this would be an interesting game between two participants, the Baltimore Ravens and the New York Giants, whom I'm no fan of but I like nonetheless. Unlike previous years in which there was at least one participant whom I despised (Denver, St. Louis), or in the case of Super Bowl XXXIII, both teams. At a time when offense seemed to be ruling our collective football conscious, it was good to see two teams with suffocating defenses make it to the big dance. Especially the Ravens, who with linebacker Ray Lewis anchoring them could make the legitimate claim to being the best single-season defense ever. I think a lot of people don't realize that while it is the glamour guys on offense who get all the credit, it's the lunch pail guys on the defense that get you championships. Baltimore's defense was one of the few times in sports history when you can say that they would create the opportunities for them to win.

And that is what happened. The Ravens defense made it look easy in winning their first ever championship as the Ravens.

Ah, but there's the rub: That little caveat at the end of the last sentence - as the Ravens. Five years ago this team wasn't the Ravens. They were the Browns and they resided in Cleveland. It was through the mismanagement of the long-time owner of this franchise, Art Modell, that they stole away to Baltimore and became the Ravens. And in the process, broke the hearts of the most undyingly loyal fans in football.

Modell claimed that he couldn't make any money in Cleveland, that he was losing money. Well, that is true, he was losing money in Cleveland. But it wasn't the fault of the city of Cleveland. The city turned over management of 82,000-seat Municipal Stadium to the management company run by Modell in 1976. In essence, Modell had twenty years of sellouts every Sunday in the fall - and have no illusions, the Browns sold all 82,000 seats in what was then the largest stadium in the NFL without fail. It was Modell who negotiated the underwriting and advertising, Modell who negotiated the concessions and parking, Modell who signed the players and management, Modell who set the seat prices. If he wasn't making any money, it ultimately was his fault. For twenty years Modell mismanaged the Browns, and what does he do? He publicly blames the city of Cleveland for his mismanagement and holds it responsible for not making any money. When he demands a new stadium from the city they naturally balk, especially when he wants the city to build if for him at no financial risk to him even though he controls everything that has to do with Municipal Stadium. I could understand if he didn't control the stadium and wasn't making any money off the concessions, advertising and parking. But he was in control of all that, and he wants to hold the city hostage. It really kind of begs the questions: Just where are the profits from 82,000 sold-out seats going, Art?

So what does Modell do in response? Like a pimp courting hoes he goes to the one community that he knows is so desperate for a football team; the one community that had it's own identity stripped away when it's storied football team was stolen from them in the middle of the night fourteen years earlier; the one community which would steal one back because it was done to them: Baltimore. With the promise of a high eight-digit relocation fee, a new state-of-the-art stadium, luxury boxes, increased revenue stream, and control of the new venue by his management company, Modell bolts for Maryland, leaving the largest fan base in major professional sports to wonder what happened and how did it happen. Fortunately, the NFL recognizes the valuable market Cleveland is and promises an expansion team to the city four years hence, which is named the Browns because of an agreement Modell made to the NFL to leave the nickname and the team colors behind.

But here's the kicker: It only takes three years for Modell to mismanage the Ravens in Baltimore before he is pleading poverty. Once again Modell is swimming in red ink, so much so that he petitions the NFL for a return of the $29 million in partial relocation fee he had to pay the league.

Well, screw that. Despite his worst efforts Modell managed to put together a Super Bowl championship, which the players earned, but he so clearly does not deserve. His price for a Lombardi Trophy is the league gets to keep the $29 million. Because that will never make up for what he did to Cleveland, which had to start over by razing the old stadium, building a new stadium, rebuild a glorious football tradition and suffer through a really bad expansion team that, despite not being any good at the moment, is making money hand over fist with Al Lerner and Carmen Policy at the helm.

I'm happy for Ray Lewis and the rest of the Ravens, and to a certain degree I'm happy for the football-mad city of Baltimore, which deserves pro football and finally has a winner after thirty years. But even Baltimore didn't deserve a winner bad enough to warrant stripping another community of its treasured and storied football tradition. It should be Cleveland celebrating this Super Bowl championship. Because it isn't you, Art. You get an ointment-less salute from behind from us.

The winner of the Ice Cube No-Vaseline Award for February:

CHRIS WEBBER

As somebody who lives in northern California I have been an unwilling follower of Chris Webber's antics ever since he went into the NBA, first when he was with Golden State and played with no heart and was too immature to listen to anybody, now that he is with Sacramento and doesn't know what to do with himself now that his contract is about to expire, and even in between when he was with Washington and got into way too much trouble off the court to be an impact on it.

Before lamenting about Webber, let me start out by saying that he is an enormously talented athlete, one of the four or five most talented players in basketball, who we in Sacramento have had the privilege of watching because he finally decided to grow up enough to play with heart and intensity and experience his best years as a player - and the Kings' most successful years in Sacramento. Webber's been here 2 1/2 years, and in that time the Kings have made the playoffs twice, with a third on the way. He is the cornerstone of the Kings, who is having his best season by far. Now that he is in his free agent season, he is going to be the most sought-after free agent this off-season...

...And I don't have a problem with that. I think an athlete should have the right to determine with whom he plays and where, and as with any athlete in his position, I applaud Webber for having the kind of leverage that will result in the best economic situation for him, whether or not it is here in Sacramento.

But while he is exhibiting heart, hard work and intensity on the court, there is still a decided lack of maturity off it. When the Kings traded for Webber three years ago he was so mortified at having to come to as bad an organization as the Kings were then, that he was seriously considering not reporting. At the time he didn't want to be here, and the Kings knew that if he did report they might only get the three years left on his contract before he bolted to the brighter lights of the big city. You see, Webber believes himself to be the headliner at the top of the marquee: He shouldn't be fated to play in small independent films in out-of-the-way film festivals; he should be the star of the big Hollywood productions opening at tens of thousands of screens worldwide to rave reviews and Oscar nominations. To Webber's way of thinking, he should be among the giants - in New York with Clyde and Willis Reed or in Los Angeles with Kareem and Magic - and not with the little fish in a small cow town nobody's ever heard of, like Sacramento, where he will never get the recognition he believes he deserves.

But something happened to Webber on the way to the big city. The Kings actually built a team around him, and through shrewd drafting and player moves became the most entertaining team in the NBA, leading the league in scoring, becoming a nightly highlight on the sport's shows, getting more national exposure than everybody else save the Knicks and Lakers, and even taking both the Utah Jazz and the Lakers to within a breath of playoff elimination. Sacramentan's were left with the impression that this was where Webber wanted to be...

...But now he has mastered the art of talking out of both sides of his mouth. Examples? Oh, you bet.

Before last season Webber hinted that what they are building in Sacramento could work towards a serious championship contender and keep him here for years to come, but just before this season intimated how great it would be to play in New York with his buddy Latrell Sprewell (as if they didn't get into enough trouble in their one year together at Golden State).

He tells ownership that he does not want to be distracted with contract talk until the end of the season in one breath, and with his very next breath complains that the owners have never spoken to him.

One moment Webber laments about how there were too many distractions in Washington, but in the next he complains to a national periodical that there is nothing to do in Sacramento and he is "bored to death every day."

He says "the fact remains that Sacramento is not the most diverse place," but doesn't bother to explain what he means by "diverse." If Webber had bothered to finish college, he would know that "diverse" means varied and multi-cultural, which if I had to guess is not what Webber meant. No, "diverse" to Webber is clumsy politically correct-speak for "there isn't enough soul food and urban club life for him to 'keep it real'". Well, maybe Webber's world would be more "diverse" if it didn't consist almost exclusively of working at ARCO Arena - where the patrons are almost entirely white because most blacks and Hispanics can't afford NBA prices - and living in that antiseptic upper-class gated bedroom community in Granite Bay - where almost nobody of color exists but he made the conscious choice to live. If Webber got out more he would notice that there are several enclaves of "diversity" in Sacramento, large ethnic communities both in the city limits and outside of it, including several large African-American communities with soul food and soul clubs.

What's really galling about Webber's take on Sacramento's lack of diversity is that, if what he said really is what bothers him, then he of all people is in a unique position to do something about it. With an annual eight-figure salary he can open up his own club and his own restaurant that serves barbeque. That way, he not only will create an entertainment avenue for himself and the rest of the black community, but he also will make more money, and in the process create employment opportunities for blacks.

But Webber won't do that, because that would mean he has to commit to a community and a city and, in turn, show some loyalty to a particular team. Something Webber has failed to do in his eight years in the NBA. He fails to realize that one of the reasons that Clyde, Willis, Kareem and Magic were as revered as they are is because they committed to one place. It's the same reason that The Mailman and John Stockton are revered even though they play in Salt Lake City, Gary Payton is revered even though he plays in Seattle, and Tim Duncan and David Robinson are revered even though they play in San Antonio - three cities that don't have the "cultural diversity" he claims he desires.

No, I suspect that Webber's reasons for not liking Sacramento have nothing to do with "diversity" or the lack thereof. If that really were the case, then there are certain NBA venues - Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Portland, Vancouver, Toronto, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Denver, and Indianapolis among them - where he had better not even entertain an offer.

At this juncture I would just as soon Chris Webber just went away. I would hate to see the Kings lose him more than I would hate to see him leave, but I'm just tired of his antics. He stands for nothing, and he wants an entire community to show love and commit to him but he is unwilling to return the same commitment. My reasons for wanting him to leave transcend the sport itself, so Sacramento can do without him. The Kings, with Joe and Gavin Maloof as owners and Geoff Petrie and Rick Adelman running the team, are finally a good enough organization that they can survive the loss and retool and reload in a couple of years with somebody else as the cornerstone. With Webber they are serious championship contenders; without him they are just good enough to contend for a playoff spot. But before you go, Chris, here is something basketball-size for your ass...

LeDarius Washington is a graduate communications major at the University of California-Santa Cruz. His goal in life is to play Derrick Coleman in a one-on-one basketball game to decide who is the worst basketball player in the free world.