throwdown with carmelo anthony 1 by Mr. Wright licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 GenericIn "Tough Guise", there was a part about sports and masculinity. A highlight from Michael Jordan, a worldwide known legend of basketball, was chosen to support the idea that in the most popular basketball league NBA, one earns his popularity and respect by disrespecting another sportsman. In other words, if you soar to the hoop to dunk, and give so much strength to it that even the defending player loses his balance and kisses the floor then you are "the man". This is so popular in the NBA that there's a name exactly for this scene, a "facial". "In your face" they also say. The photograph is of Carmelo Anthony, who is about to "give a facial" to an Argentinian player. Katz was completely correct in his observations, I know it, as I often follow NBA. To support even more, a few days ago I watched "the best 10 dunks in November" in NBATV, and guess what? The best one was with the most humiliation. It really is great for the dunker, but what about the defender, and his self-esteem? Of course this has nothing to do with crimes or stuff, but still, it is a harmful damage to some, as if one steals the masculinity from another and adds it to himself.
Fascinating observations...and it also isn't very sportsmanlike, is it? I mean, in football, if a player scores a goal and then rips his shirt off, he normally gets a yellow card. I find American sports far more aggressive than European ones. For some reason, the players think they need to add 'entertainment value' to the game.
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