Black People

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Golf

      Lee Elder Paved the Way for Tiger Woods's Masters Dominance

      by

      Lee Elder forced golf forward by winning his way into the Masters tournament in 1975, the first Black player to do so, laying a path for Tiger Woods and others.How do we measure athletic greatness? By the number of big wins and unforgettable championships?Or by something less obvious but perhaps more profound: an athlete’s resolve to go against the grain and upend the status quo in both sport and society, even at the risk of personal harm?If the latter measure is as true a test as any, we must make room in the pantheon of the all-time greats for Lee Elder. An indefatigable African American golfer, he died on Sunday at age 87, nearly a half-century after he stood against the stultifying stain of racism and became the first Black golfer to play at the Masters, paving the way for no less than Tiger Woods.“He was the first,” said Woods, not long after he stunned the sports world by winning the Masters in 1997, at age 21. “He was the one I looked up to. Because of what he did, I was able to play here, which was my dream.”What a journey, what a life. The hard, tumultuous arc of sports in the back half of the 20th century — indeed the arc of American history during that time — can be traced through Elder.He was a Black man born in the Jim Crow South who taught himself to play golf on segregated courses and polished his trade on the barnstorming golf tour akin to baseball’s Negro leagues.He dreamed of making it to the biggest stage, but professional golf took its own sweet time while sports such as baseball, basketball and football slowly integrated. The Professional Golfers Association kept its Caucasian-only clause until 1961.Elder never wavered. He broke through on the PGA Tour in 1968, as a 34-year-old. In those days, with the battle for civil rights well underway, the Masters began receiving pressure to add at least one Black player to its field. In 1973, a group of 18 congressional representatives even petitioned the tournament for just that. Elder was among the top 40 money earners on tour and had played in multiple U.S. Opens and P.G.A. Championships — so why not Augusta National?But after choosing not to invite outstanding Black golfers such as Charlie Sifford during the 1960s, the tournament settled on a stringent requirement for its participants: victory at a PGA Tour event.Elder earned that at the 1974 Monsanto Open — the same Florida event where, six years earlier, he had been forced to change clothes in a parking lot because Black people were not allowed to use the country club locker room.Elder possessed an understated but firm resolve. He wasn’t quick to raise a fuss about racism, but he wasn’t afraid to speak up about it, either. “The Masters has never wanted a Black player, and they kept changing the rules to make it harder for Blacks,” he said, adding: “I got them off the hook by winning.”Elder served as a ceremonial starter for the Masters in 2021. He was cheered by Gary Player, in black, and Jack Nicklaus, right.Doug Mills/The New York TimesSince its inception in 1934, the Masters has dripped in the antebellum codes of the South. Held at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, on a former indigo plantation, the only African Americans allowed on the course were groundskeepers and caddies. Nobody described the Masters more truthfully than the Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray. The tournament, he wrote in 1969, was “as white as the Ku Klux Klan.”In the months leading up to the 1975 Masters, Elder was the target of multiple death threats. “Sometimes it was sent to the course where I was playing, sometimes it came to my house,” he said. “Stuff like, ‘You better watch behind trees,’ ‘You won’t make it to Augusta.’ It was bad stuff, but I expected it.”But on April 10, 1975, there he stood, at the first tee, surrounded by a gallery full of close friends, including the football star Jim Brown. When Elder smashed his tee shot straight down the fairway, he did not just make history at the Masters, he pried open the cloistered and often racist world of golf to new possibilities.Looking back at the contours of his career beyond 1975, one sees a consistent solidity. He won three more PGA Tour titles and then eight on the Senior Tour and represented the United States in the Ryder Cup. It will always be a great unknown — the heights Elder could have reached if the opportunity had been equal and he had been able to play PGA Tour events in his prime.We can say this much for certain: Elder fixed himself in the sports history firmament at the Masters in 1975. He will always remain there, a North Star for others to follow.Woods came along just over two decades later, winning the 1997 Masters by 12 strokes and announcing himself as the heir not just to Elder but to Jack Nicklaus, who won at Augusta six times. As Woods marched past a gallery of awe-struck fans on his way to receive the champion’s green jacket for the first of five times, he saw Elder, and the two embraced. Past met present, paving the future.And yet the road to equality in golf remains elusive. The sport was overwhelmingly white in Elder’s era and overwhelmingly white when Woods burst on the scene. It remains overwhelmingly white.The game is “still slacking quite a bit” when it comes to diversity, Cameron Champ, 26, whose mother is white and father is Black, said while speaking about Elder this week. Champ is one of the few players of African American heritage on tour and one of the game’s most vocal about the need to diversify.It took until this year — prodded by tumultuous nationwide protests over racism and police brutality in 2020 — for the Masters to truly give Elder his due.In April, aside Nicklaus and Gary Player, Elder sat at Augusta National’s first tee as an honorary starter for this year’s tournament. Tubes snaked into his nose to deliver oxygen. He was too hobbled to take a shot.A gallery of the tournament’s players stood nearby, paying proper respect to a golfer whose greatness extended far beyond the fairway. The cold, crisp morning had a reverent, unforgettable feel, recalled Champ, whose paternal grandfather fell for golf in part because of Elder and then taught the game to his grandson.But it took 46 years for golf to honor Elder at the Masters. Think about that.Why didn’t it happen in 1985, the 10th anniversary of his smashing past Augusta National’s color line? Or in 1995, 20 years after the fact? Or at any other time?Why must change always take so long? More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Golf

      Lee Elder, Who Broke a Golf Color Barrier, Dies at 87

      by

      In his prime he played in a league for Black players, but in 1975, at 40, he became the first African American to take part in the Masters tournament.Lee Elder, who became the first African American golfer to play in the Masters tournament, a signature moment in the breaking of racial barriers on the pro golf tour, died on Sunday in Escondido, Calif. He was 87.The PGA Tour announced the death but provided no other details.When Elder teed off at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia in April 1975, he was 40 years old. Years earlier, in his prime, he played in the United Golfers Association tour, the sport’s version of baseball’s Negro leagues. The PGA of America, the national association of pro golfers, accepted only “members of the Caucasian race,” as its rules had spelled out, until 1961.Elder was among the leading players on the UGA tour, which over the years also featured such outstanding golfers as Ted Rhodes, Charlie Sifford, who was the first Black player on the PGA Tour, and Pete Brown while offering comparatively meager purses.Elder first played regularly on the PGA Tour in 1968, and that August he took Jack Nicklaus to a playoff at the American Golf Classic in Akron, Ohio, losing in sudden death.“The game of golf lost a hero in Lee Elder,” Nicklaus said in a statement on Monday.The Masters, played annually at Augusta National, had no clause barring Black golfers, but unofficially it remained closed to them. With the rise of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, however, it came under pressure to integrate its ranks.The tournament eased a bit in 1971 by announcing that any player who subsequently won a PGA Tour event would automatically qualify for it. Elder came close, finishing second in the Texas Open and losing a playoff to Lee Trevino in the Greater Hartford tournament in 1972.But those performances did not persuade the Masters to bend its new rule and accord Elder a spot. Elder broke through after capturing the 1974 Monsanto Open at the Pensacola Country Club in Florida, where six years earlier he and other African American PGA Tour members playing there had been refused entrance to the clubhouse. They had to dress in a parking lot.That victory finally brought the 1975 Masters invitation. In the run-up to the tournament Elder received death threats. He rented two houses near the Augusta National course and moved between them as a security measure.When he teed off for his first shot, a huge crowd lined the fairway. “I remember thinking, ‘How am I going to tee off without killing somebody,’” he told The New York Times in 2000, wryly reflecting on the pressure he faced.Elder at the Masters in 1975. Black employees of the Augusta National Golf Club lined the 18th fairway when he played it. “I couldn’t hold back the tears,” he said.Leonard Kamsler/Popperfoto via Getty ImagesHis shot off the first tee was straight down the middle, but he ended up far back in the field in the first two rounds, shooting 74 and 78, and missed the cut to continue to play through the weekend by four strokes. He received a fine reception from the galleries, though.“The display from the employees of Augusta National was especially moving,” Elder told Golf Digest in 2019. “Most of the staff was Black, and on Friday, they left their duties to line the 18th fairway as I walked toward the green. I couldn’t hold back the tears. Of all the acknowledgments of what I had accomplished by getting there, this one meant the most.”Elder played in the Masters six times, his top finish a tie for 17th place in 1979. He won four PGA Tour events and finished second 10 times, playing regularly through 1989 and earning $1.02 million in purses. He also played for the U.S. team in the 1979 Ryder Cup. He joined the PGA Senior Tour, now the Champions Tour, in 1984 and won eight times, earning more than $1.6 million. He won four tournaments overseas.Elder and his first wife, Rose Harper, created a foundation in 1974 to provide college scholarships for members of families with limited incomes. He promoted summer youth golf development programs and raised funds for the United Negro College Fund.In 2019, he received the United States Golf Association’s highest honor, the Bob Jones Award, named for the co-founder of the Masters and presented for outstanding sportsmanship.Elder in November 2020 at the Augusta club after he was named an honorary starter for the 2021 Masters.Doug Mills/The New York TimesRobert Lee Elder was born on July 14, 1934, in Dallas, one of 10 children. His father, Charles, a coal truck driver, was killed during Army service in Germany in World War II when Lee was 9. His mother, Almeta, died three months later.Elder caddied at an all-white club in the Dallas area, earning tips to help his family, then went to Los Angeles to live with an aunt. He worked as a caddy again and dropped out of high school to pursue a career in golf, at times touring the Southwest as a “hustler,” winning private bets against players who had no idea how good he was.At 18, after playing against the heavyweight champion Joe Louis, an avid golfer, Elder became a protégé of Rhodes, who was Louis’s golf instructor.Following two years in the stateside Army, Elder joined the United Golfers Association tour in 1961. In one stretch of 22 consecutive tournaments, he won 18.Gary Player, the South African native and one of golf’s greatest international golfers, invited Elder to play in his country’s Open and PGA championships in 1971, having received permission from the prime minister. Black people mingled with white in the crowd at what became the first integrated golf tournament in South Africa since the adoption of apartheid in 1948.Elder’s survivors include his second wife, Sharon, with whom he lived in Escondido. He returned to Augusta National in 1997 to watch Tiger Woods win the Masters by a record-setting 12 strokes, becoming the first African American golfer to win one of golf’s four major tournaments.Elder with Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus, right, during the opening ceremony of the 2021 Masters tournament in April. They were honorary starters. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters“Lee Elder came down, that meant a lot to me,” Woods said afterward. “He was the first. He was the one I looked up to. Charlie Sifford, all of them. Because of them, I was able to play here. I was able to play on the PGA Tour. When I turned pro at 20, I was able to live my dream because of those guys.”On April 8 this year, Elder became the first Black player to take part in a decades-old Masters tradition, joining Nicklaus and Player as that year’s honorary starters, who strike the tournament’s ceremonial first shots. Though he brought his clubs with him, arthritis in his knees left him without enough stability to take a shot.But he received a standing ovation. The ceremony, he said, “was one of the most emotional experiences I have ever been involved in” and “something I will cherish for the rest of my life.”Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

    • 175 Shares139 Views

      in Basket

      New Black N.B.A. Coaches Wonder Why It Took So Long to Get a Shot

      by

      The N.B.A.’s coaching ranks have long been dominated by white men, but a demand from Black players for more diversity may be changing things.Jamahl Mosley has traveled the world for basketball.He played for professional teams in Mexico, Australia, Spain, Finland and South Korea. He was a player development coach with the N.B.A.’s Denver Nuggets when Carmelo Anthony was there. He was an assistant coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers during the four long years after LeBron James left for Miami. Dirk Nowitzki’s final years with the Mavericks and the rise of Luka Doncic? Mosley was there, too, as an assistant in Dallas.He spent 16 seasons on N.B.A. coaching staffs, developing his skills and hoping for his big break to be a head coach. He had heeded his mother’s advice about playing college basketball for a Black coach, to learn leadership skills from someone who looked like him. The doubts about his ever getting that kind of job only surfaced in recent years when he interviewed for — and was turned down for — seven N.B.A. head coaching jobs.“Because you knew you were qualified,” Mosley said. “You knew you had interviewed well. You knew that you had the ability to do it.”The N.B.A.’s coaching and executive ranks have long been dominated by white men, even though more than 70 percent of players are Black. But this year, Mosley became part of an unusual off-season, in which seven of eight head coaching vacancies were filled by Black candidates. Five of them, including Mosley, who was hired by the Orlando Magic in July, are first-time head coaches. The others are Wes Unseld Jr. of the Washington Wizards, Willie Green of the New Orleans Pelicans, Ime Udoka of the Boston Celtics and Chauncey Billups of the Portland Trail Blazers. Jason Kidd of the Dallas Mavericks and Nate McMillan of the Atlanta Hawks had been head coaches elsewhere before.“If this was 15 years ago, we probably don’t get these positions,” Green said.The uptick — 13 of the league’s 30 coaches are now Black and two others are not white — came during a broader national conversation about race and hiring practices. Black players harnessed their voices to seek change that they felt was overdue.“This is a stain on the league that no one can deny,” Michele Roberts, the executive director of the players’ union, said in an interview, “and we’ve got to continue to do better.”‘There’s a natural cultural bond’Long before he became the coach of the Celtics, Udoka was a self-described student of the game. As a teenager in Portland, Ore., he would record games that featured some of his favorite college players, standouts like Syracuse’s Lawrence Moten and Lamond Murray of the University of California, Berkeley. Then he would head to the playground to mimic their moves. (Udoka still has a stack of VHS tapes at home.)“There’s a natural cultural bond that Black coaches are going to have with their players,” Boston Celtics Coach Ime Udoka said.Michael Dwyer/Associated Press“I wasn’t the most athletic or skilled guy,” Udoka said, “so I really had to use my brain for an advantage. I always thought through the game a certain way, and I think some coaches saw that in me, too.”Udoka grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood, went to a Black high school and had Black coaches. He was not especially conscious of race, he said, since being in that environment was all he knew. But his high school coach “preached family and togetherness and a brotherhood,” Udoka said, and he carried those lessons with him.Udoka was bouncing around the N.B.A. as a defense-minded forward when he got what he described as “the coaching bug.” He helped found an Amateur Athletic Union team in Portland that included Terrence Ross and Terrence Jones, future N.B.A. players. Udoka also participated in coaching clinics hosted by the N.B.A. players’ union. After retiring, he joined the San Antonio Spurs in 2012 as an assistant under Gregg Popovich.The Celtics job opened in June when the team announced that Brad Stevens, who had coached the team for eight seasons, would be its new president of basketball operations. Jaylen Brown, one of the Celtics’ young stars, said in a recent interview with The Undefeated that he had told the team to hire a Black candidate. Representation was important to him, he said.Udoka, left, talked with Marcus Smart during a preseason game this month.Winslow Townson/Associated Press“Players were asking and demanding and wanting to see more guys who looked like them,” Udoka said. He added: “In coaching, I think there’s been a shift from Xs and Os and game plans to the value that’s placed on relationships. And there’s a natural cultural bond that Black coaches are going to have with their players.”Udoka said he was not suggesting that white coaches couldn’t bond with Black players. He cited Popovich, who is white, as someone who has long stressed the importance of relationships. But for a new coach on a new team, it would be naïve to believe that race was not a factor.“Basketball is mainly minority-based,” Celtics point guard Marcus Smart said in an interview. “So having a minority as a coach, I can connect with him. I can say things to him, or he can say things to me, and we get it. Whereas it’s different when you don’t. You have to try to figure out, OK, how can I meet them halfway?”Still, a coach is a coach: Udoka suspended Smart for the team’s preseason finale for breaking an unspecified team rule.‘This decision is coming fast’About three years ago, Rick Carlisle, as president of the National Basketball Coaches Association, was hearing from an increasing number of young assistants of diverse backgrounds who felt they were not getting a fair shake at head coaching jobs.The league and the coaches’ association soon began the N.B.A. Coaches Equality Initiative, a program aimed at developing young coaches and ensuring that qualified candidates are visible when jobs arise. Since 2019, there have been numerous workshops, summits, panel discussions and networking opportunities.David Vanterpool, left, was passed over for the head coaching job in Minnesota after the team fired Ryan Saunders, right.David Zalubowski/Associated PressAnd there is an app, a coaches database that was unveiled last year. It now includes profiles of about 300 coaches, whom the league’s power brokers — owners, general managers, team presidents — can access, Carlisle said. Coaches can upload their histories, their philosophies and even their interview clips. Think of it is as Bumble for the N.B.A. coaching set. But it is all part of a larger mission, said Oris Stuart, the chief people and inclusion officer for the league.“We have ongoing conversations with our teams about the importance of making sure that, as they’re making decisions, the process is inclusive,” Stuart said in an interview. “We focus on the importance of making sure that the best talent is considered, that we make a wide reach and that we go beyond the pre-established networks that people are working from.”But within the past year, the hiring processes for two white coaches — including the one that landed Carlisle with the Indiana Pacers — have been criticized for not appearing to be inclusive.The Minnesota Timberwolves fired Ryan Saunders as their coach in February and announced his replacement, Chris Finch, who is white, on the same day. The Timberwolves chose not to promote the team’s associate head coach, David Vanterpool, who is Black, which would have been typical after a midseason firing. (Vanterpool is now an assistant for the Nets.)The perception was that there was no way the Timberwolves could have seriously considered any Black candidates given their accelerated timeline, said Roberts, the executive director of the players’ union. The timing of the change, she added, “got under a lot of people’s skin.”Within days, Carlisle and David Fogel, the executive director of the coaches’ association, released a statement in which the organization expressed its “disappointment” with Minnesota’s search, saying that it is “our responsibility to point out when an organization fails to conduct a thorough and transparent search of candidates from a wide range of diverse backgrounds.”Rick Carlisle expressed some trepidation before he accepted the offer of head coach from the Indiana Pacers in June.Doug Mcschooler/Associated PressBut just a few months later, in June, Carlisle accepted the Pacers job after what appeared to be an abbreviated search. Indiana had fired Nate Bjorkgren earlier in the month after just one season, and they had interviewed only one other candidate when they offered Carlisle the job. Chad Buchanan, Indiana’s general manager, said in an interview that the team wanted an experienced coach and that Carlisle had unexpectedly become available after he resigned from the Dallas Mavericks, which he had coached for 13 seasons and led to a championship in 2011.Buchanan sought to assure Carlisle by telling him that the Pacers had interviewed 17 candidates, of whom eight were Black and one was female, before hiring Bjorkgren eight months earlier.“This was something I was concerned about,” Carlisle said, “but when they gave me that information, I was comfortable moving forward.”Washington Wizards Coach Wes Unseld Jr. was known as the Genius for his attention to detail and his instinctive feel for the game.Sarah Stier/Getty Images‘It’s more of a systemic issue’As an economics major at Johns Hopkins University, Wes Unseld Jr. thought he would get into investment banking. But for two summers, before and after graduating in 1997, he interned for the Wizards. His father, also Wes, who was synonymous with the franchise from his Hall of Fame playing days, had moved into the front office as the team’s general manager after seven seasons as its head coach. The elder Unseld invited his son to learn the ropes, just in case the financial world was not for him.“If you’re going to be in this business, you’ve got to learn the business,” Wes Unseld Jr. recalled his father telling him. “So I’m thinking, OK, I’ll be around basketball. ‘No, you’re going to intern in every department.’ Community relations, public relations, marketing, sales — you name it, I did it.”Unseld, who was a very good Division III player for Johns Hopkins, soon realized that he could not leave the game behind, and he became one of the many unsung, behind-the-scenes fixtures in the N.B.A. After eight seasons as a scout for Washington, he spent the next 16 as an assistant for various teams around the league. He refined offenses. He built defenses. With the Wizards, he was known as The Genius for his attention to detail and his instinctive feel for the game. In Denver, he helped shape Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray into stars.Yet Unseld could not land a head coaching job. He said he was never sure if his race was a factor. “When an opportunity doesn’t pan out, sometimes it’s easy to ask, ‘Was it that?’” Unseld said. “And it may have been. It’s difficult to tell.”Willie Green, the head coach of the New Orleans Pelicans, spoke to reporters at a news conference last month.Sean Gardner/Getty ImagesAfter a record 14 Black coaches were manning benches for teams at the start of the 2012-13 season, those numbers dipped in subsequent years, showing how tenuous progress can be. Unseld said the N.B.A. is “a network business like any other business.”“If you’re not connected to the decision makers, it can be difficult,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s an overt way of not interviewing or not giving people of color a chance, but maybe they just don’t have that network to pull from. It’s more of a systemic issue.”Roberts commended the coaches’ association for working to address that issue in recent seasons. But the real power, she said, has come from the players themselves.“A happy team is probably a more successful team,” she said. “And if the players think management is thumbing its nose at their articulated concerns about a coaching staff, then what’s their motivation to stay?”In New Orleans, Willie Green often thinks of his uncle, Gary Green, who coached him when he was growing up in Detroit, and who imbued him with the fundamentals. After several years as an assistant with Golden State and Phoenix, Green said he felt a heightened sense of responsibility.“We have to be caretakers of these opportunities,” he said.In Boston, Garrett Jackson, a former player on Udoka’s A.A.U. team, is now one of Udoka’s video coordinators. And Mosley got his first win for the Magic with a narrow victory against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. He was gifted the game ball, then got back to business.“It’s like anything,” he said. “You just put your head down and do the work.” More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Basket

      Magic Johnson, le business, la NBA, les Lakers et LeBron

      by

      Johnson prédit le nom des prochaines grandes équipes rivales au sein de la N.B.A, et évoque son seul regret du temps où il dirigeait les Los Angeles Lakers.The New York Times traduit en français une sélection de ses meilleurs articles. Retrouvez-les ici.Beaucoup d’athlètes de nos jours envisagent leur héritage au-delà des terrains de compétition, au travers d’entreprises qu’ils auront créées et de soutien apporté à leurs communautés. Magic Johnson a été pionnier de cet état d’esprit en fondant un empire commercial une fois sa carrière de joueur de la N.B.A, la National Basketball Association derrière lui.“C’était tout naturel pour moi de revenir dans la communauté dans laquelle j’avais grandi, pour l’aider à changer, pour fonder des entreprises et créer des emplois pour les gens”, nous explique Johnson lors d’un récent entretien téléphonique. “Ce qui manquait dans la communauté Noire, c’était des services et des produits de qualité.”Et Johnson de citer des joueurs comme LeBron James, Kevin Durant et Stephen Curry comme exemples de joueurs qui suivent ses pas: en inspirer d’autres, sur le terrain et en dehors.Johnson a servi d’ambassadeur officieux de la N.B.A. pendant la quasi-totalité de sa vie d’adulte: sa rivalité avec Larry Bird et les Boston Celtics dans les années 1980 a propulsé vers des sommets la notoriété de la ligue auprès du grand public, et les exploits de la Dream Team dont il faisait partie aux Jeux Olympiques d’été en 1992 ont contribué à populariser le jeu à l’échelle mondiale.Ce titre est maintenant officiel: pour célébrer ses 75 ans, la N.B.A. a choisi Johnson, Clyde Drexler Dirk Nowitzki, Bob Pettit et Oscar Robertson pour représenter, en 2021-2002, les différentes périodes de son histoire.Johnson, qui a abruptement quitté son rôle de président des opérations basketball des Los Angeles Lakers en 2019, va également faire son retour cette saison sur la chaîne d’informations sportives ESPN comme commentateur dans l’émission “NBA Countdown”.L’ancienne star des Lakers a accordé une interview au New York Times dans laquelle il évoque l’état actuel du basketball, cette ère d’émancipation des joueurs, et un regret personnel qu’il garde de son mandat à la tête des Lakers.Cette interview a été condensée et légèrement éditée pour des besoins de clarté.La N.B.A. connaîtra-t-elle à nouveau de vraies rivalités, comme dans les années 1980 quand les Lakers se retrouvaient presque toujours en finale contre les Celtics?Je crois que, plus les Knicks et les Nets jouent, plus ça a des chances d’arriver, vous ne trouvez pas? Parce que Brooklyn est maintenant une équipe championne. Et les Knicks sont une équipe de playoff. Et c’est ce qu’on va voir. Donc ce qui se passe, c’est qu’il faut qu’elles soient bonnes au même moment. Il faut qu’il y ait vraiment de la haine entre elles.Quand on voyait Philadelphia contre Boston, Dr. J [Julius Erving] et Larry Bird, Chicago contre Detroit, Isiah Thomas, Bad Boys contre les Bulls de Michael Jordan, ils avaient une vraie aversion les uns pour les autres. Donc je pense qu’on est en train de créer quelques-unes de ces rivalités. Je ne sais pas si elle sera un jour aussi intense que celle des Lakers-Celtics, mais si au moins on arrive à une espèce de rivalité, c’est prometteur.Pour Johnson (à gauche), qui a gagné cinq championnats avec les Los Angeles Lakers, le secret d’une vraie rivalité entre équipes de la N.B.A. est qu’il y ait “vraiment de la haine entre elles”.AP Photo/Lennox McLendonUne grande partie de ce que vous laissez en héritage, c’est ce vous avez accompli en dehors des terrains de basket, comme businessman dans les commmunautés défavorisées. Qu’avez-vous appris en travaillant avec ces dernières, et quelles erreurs de grandes entreprises qui tentent de faire pareil avez-vous notées? voir ?Eh bien le commerce de détail a fait l’erreur de penser qu’on ne pouvait pas faire d’argent avec la communauté Noire. Et sans surprise, on a prouvé le contraire avec les Magic Johnson Theatres . C’est pour ça qu’on voit les grands détaillants s’investir plus que jamais aujourd’hui dans l’Amérique urbaine, parce qu’ils savent qu’ils auront un retour sur investissement.Ils essaient aussi de faire du bien dans nos communautés. Je dis toujours: on peut à la fois bien faire et faire du bien. Quand est arrivé toute cette histoire avec George Floyd, le fait qu’il ait été assassiné, on a vu beaucoup d’entreprises du Fortune 500 — parce qu’il y avait tellement de jeunes qui manifestaient dans les rues. Mais c’était pas juste des Noirs — c’était aussi des Blancs et d’autres groupes de personnes. C’est là que tout le monde s’est dit: “Ça suffit. Je dois faire quelque chose. Je vais investir dans l’Amérique urbaine. “Pas mal de PDG m’ont appelé pour dire : “Earvin, on veut faire quelque chose. On n’a aucune idée quoi faire.” J’ai répondu, “Eh bien vous pourriez commencer avant tout par mettre de l’argent dans des petites banques Noires parce que le Paycheck Protection Program, un programme fédéral d’aide aux entreprises touchées par la pandémie, n’a pas eu de retombées chez les Latinos, les propriétaires de petites entreprises, les petits entrepreneurs Noirs, ou les femmes entrepreneures. Et si ces banques avaient des fonds, alors elles pourraient vraiment accorder des prêts à ces entrepreneurs ou aux gens qui veulent s’acheter un premier logement, dans la communauté Noire. Maintenant elles ont plus de cash pour accorder plus de prêts, n’est-ce pas?” Alors il y en a beaucoup qui ont fait ça. Ensuite je leur ai dit, “Écoutez, votre conseil d’administration doit refléter l’Amérique, alors il faut que vous recrutiez davantage de gens ou que vous élargissiez vos conseils d’administration, et aussi au niveau de la direction et de la haute hiérarchie, il faut inclure davantage de minorités à ce niveau-là.”Est-ce que ça vous intéresserait de diriger à nouveau une franchise de la N.B.A?Tout dépend de la situation, donc si de bonnes criconstances se présentent, j’y réfléchirai peut-être. Tout est une question de timing. Tout dépend de l’équipe. Moi je suis un Laker du matin au soir, donc il y a des chances que je retravaille avec Jeanie Buss, et c’est pas une blague. C’est sérieux.On m’a déjà proposé d’être le propriétaire de certaines de ces équipes, et puis j’ai décliné ces offres. Mais encore une fois, j’aime tellement ce sport. Je connais ce sport. Je connais les joueurs. Je connais les agents. Ce qui est bien avec moi, c’est que je suis là où je sais ce qui marche. Je sais à quoi ressemble une équipe gagnante qui a sa place dans le championnat. Donc je sais comment parler aux joueurs — vous n’avez qu’à demander à Julius Randle et à Lonzon Ball et tous ceux-là, parce que j’aime les voir avancer et réussir si bien, et donc les aider à atteindre leur meilleur potentiel. C’était ça mon rôle, et après tu les vois y arriver. C’était vraiment bien de voir ça.Rétrospectivement, y a-t-il des choses que vous auriez fait différemment à la direction des Lakers?Non, j’avais un plan en tête. On était au dessus du plafond salarial. Mon plan était de nous faire passer ce plafond. On y est arrivé. J’ai dû faire des choix difficiles. Julius était en train de monter. Je sais que Larry Nance Jr. était en train de monter, donc on a dû prendre des décisions difficiles qui leur allaient, mais qui allaient aussi aux autres Lakers. Donc je ne pouvais pas leur signer ces rallonges parce que je savais que LeBron était en train de monter, et Kawhi Leonard et tous ces gars-là, donc j’essayais de réserver un peu de ce plafond, pour pouvoir signer une de ces superstars, parce qu’on ne peut pas gagner un championnat sans superstar. Au final, on a fait les choses comme il fallait.La seule chose que j’aurais peut-être dû faire, c’était peut-être de parler à LeBron avant de démissionner, parce que je sentais que je lui devais ça, donc je dirais que c’est peut–être la seule erreur que j’aie faite, de ne pas avoir parlé à Jeanie ni parlé à LeBron avant les faits. Oui, ça je ne le referais pas pareil.LeBron James est arrivé à Los Angeles tard dans sa carrière. Qu’est-ce qu’il peut faire pour gravir les échelons et devenir un des plus grands Lakers de l’histoire?La réponse, vous la connaissez: gagner, c’est tout. Il faut qu’il en gagne un autre. Les fans des Lakers l’adorent déjà. Il nous en déjà gagné un. Il a déjà son maillot, qui sera accroché, mais la plupart des gars qui sont chez les Lakers ont gagné plusieurs championnats. C’est tout ce qu’il a à faire. En gagner un autre, c’est tout. Parce qu’après, il ne s’agit pas juste des Lakers. Il s’agit de l’héritage qu’il laisse ici, et c’est pas seulement ici — c’est à Hollywood aussi. LeBron, il est tellement extraordinaire, et pas uniquement comme joueur de basketball: c’est la plus grande célébrité dans la ville de la célébrité. Il faut lui reconnaître ça, aussi. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Basket

      Magic Johnson Talks Business, Basketball and a Big Mistake With LeBron

      by

      Johnson predicted the N.B.A.’s next great rivalry and said he has only one regret from his time running the Los Angeles Lakers.Many modern athletes envision their legacies expanding beyond the playing fields, seeing themselves building companies and improving communities. Magic Johnson helped pioneer that mentality, carving out a business empire following the end of his N.B.A. playing career.“It was just a natural for me to go back in the community that I grew up in to bring about change, to build businesses, to create jobs for people,” Johnson said during a recent telephone call. “What was missing right in the Black community was really quality product services and goods.”Johnson cited players like LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry as current players carrying on his legacy of inspiring others on and off the court.Johnson served as an unofficial N.B.A. ambassador for most of his adult life by propelling the league into the mainstream through his rivalry with Larry Bird and the Boston Celtics in the 1980s and by helping to spread the game globally as a member of the Dream Team at the 1992 Summer Olympics.Now, that title is official with the N.B.A. choosing Johnson, Clyde Drexler, Dirk Nowitzki, Bob Pettit and Oscar Robertson to represent different eras as it celebrates its 75th anniversary throughout the 2021-22 season.Johnson, who abruptly left his role as the president of basketball operations for the Los Angeles Lakers in 2019, will also return to ESPN this season as a commentator on “NBA Countdown.”He recently spoke to The New York Times about the state of the game, this era of player empowerment and his singular regret from his tenure running the Lakers.This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.Will the N.B.A. ever have true rivalries again, like when the Lakers seemingly faced the Celtics every year in the 1980s?I think you’re going to see the more the Knicks and Nets play, it can become one, right? Because now Brooklyn is a championship team. The Knicks are a playoff team. And so you will see that. So what happens is you got to be good at the same time. There’s got to be a real hate toward each other.When we used to see Philadelphia against Boston, Dr. J [Julius Erving] and Larry Bird, Chicago against Detroit, Isiah Thomas, Bad Boys against Michael Jordan’s Bulls, there was a real dislike for each other. So I think we’re starting to create some of these rivalries. I don’t know if it ever gets to the level of the Lakers-Celtics, but at least if we get it to some type of rivalry, it’s going to be good.Johnson, who won five championships with the Los Angeles Lakers, said the key to a great N.B.A. rivalry is “real hate toward each other.”AP Photo/Lennox McLendonA large part of your legacy is the work you’ve done off the court in low-income communities as a businessman. What have you learned about working in those communities, and what are some of the mistakes you’ve seen from large corporations trying to make the same inroads?So, retail has made a mistake in thinking they couldn’t make money in the Black community. And sure enough, we proved that wrong with the Magic Johnson Theatres. We proved it wrong with the Starbucks. That’s why you see big retailers going into urban America more now than ever, because they know they can get a return on investment.They look to also do some good within our community. I always say, you can do well and do good at the same time. When the whole George Floyd situation happened, in terms of he was murdered, you saw a lot of Fortune 500 companies — because young people were out there protesting. But it wasn’t just Blacks — it was also whites and other groups of people. That’s when everybody said: “That’s wrong. I got to do something. Let me invest in urban America.”A lot of C.E.O.s called me and said: “Earvin, we want to do something. We quite don’t know what to do.” I said, “Well, No. 1, you could put money into small Black banks because the Paycheck Protection Program did not trickle down to Latinos, small business owners, Black small business owners, or women business owners. So if these banks had money, then they could actually make loans to these entrepreneurs or to those who want to buy a home for the first time in the Black community. Now they got more cash to provide more loans, right? So a lot of them did that. Then I said, “Hey, your board must reflect America, so you got to hire more people or bring more people on your board and also on the management and the C-suite level, you got to put more minorities on that level.”Are you interested in ever running an N.B.A. franchise again?It’s all about the right situation, so if the right situation comes I might think about it. It’s all about timing. It’s all about who that team is. I’m a Laker all day long, so I’m probably going to end up working with Jeanie Buss again, and I’m not laughing. That’s serious.I had offers before to own some of those teams and then I turned those offers down. But again, I love the game so much. I know the game. I know players. I know agents. The great thing about me, I’m set up where I know what works. I know what a winning and championship team looks like. So I know how to talk to the players — you can ask Julius Randle and Lonzo Ball and all those guys, because I’m happy to see them thriving and doing so well, and so just trying to help those guys reach their full potential. That was my role, and then you see them reaching it. So it was really good to see that.Is there anything you would have done differently during your time running the Lakers?No, I had a plan. We were over the salary cap. I had a plan to get us up out of the salary cap. We did that. I had to make tough decisions. Julius was coming up. I know Larry Nance Jr. was coming up, so we had to make tough decisions that worked out for them, but also worked out for the Lakers. So I couldn’t sign them to those extensions because I knew LeBron was coming up and Kawhi Leonard and all these guys, so I was trying to save enough of that cap space, so I could sign one of those superstars, because you have to have a superstar to win a championship. So, we did it right.The only thing I probably would’ve did was probably talked to LeBron before I stepped down, because I felt that I owed him that, so that’s probably the only mistake I made was not talking to Jeanie and talking to LeBron before I actually did it. So, yes, I would do that different.LeBron James came to Los Angeles late in his career. What can he do to climb the ranks of as one of the greatest Lakers?You know the answer to that: Just win. He’s got to win another one. The Laker fans already love him. He’s already brought us one. He’s already got his jersey, it’ll be hanging up, but most of the guys who’ve been with the Lakers have won multiple championships. So, that’s all he has to do. Just win another one. Then it’s not just about the Lakers. It’s all about his legacy here, and it’s not just here — it’s in Hollywood. LeBron, he’s so amazing, not just as a basketball player, but he’s the biggest celebrity in a celebrity-driven town. So you got to give him credit for that too, as well. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Basket

      Seimone Augustus Found Her Voice Long Before Coaching

      by

      The first time Seimone Augustus realized what she was capable of wasn’t when, as a 14-year-old, she landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated for Women next to the question, “Is She the Next Michael Jordan?”When Augustus, a W.N.B.A. legend who retired this year after 15 seasons, reflects on the moments that made her understand her potential, she thinks of the stands at Capitol High School in Baton Rouge, La. She led the team to back-to-back state titles, scoring 3,600 points and losing just seven games in four years.The school is at the center of the predominantly Black neighborhood where she grew up, a neighborhood she described as close-knit and full of “a bunch of people that you would never know who helped make my game the way it is.” With each win, though, the crowds that gathered to see Augustus play at the Capitol gymnasium started to look different.“The same white folks who, had we seen them driving down the street a year ago, would have been hitting the locks with their elbows and zooming through were suddenly embracing coming to the gym, wanting to experience whatever it is that they experienced while watching me play,” Augustus said.Only then did Augustus start to realize the kind of change her preternatural abilities on the court might enable her to push for off it. “I think it hit me then,” she said. “It was just a melting pot of people, the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen in my life.”Augustus ran practice drills with Sparks forward Nneka Ogwumike in July.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesAugustus’s legacy as a player — a women’s basketball pioneer, a three-time Olympic gold medalist and the cornerstone of the four-time champion Minnesota Lynx, one of basketball’s great dynasties — isn’t in question. But she is also one of sports’ most forward-thinking and undersung activists. Now, as an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Sparks, Augustus is working to help her players find the same solace and freedom that she did on the court and find ways to use their influence to advocate for themselves and their communities outside basketball.“How can I make this a safe space for you to just feel free and express yourself through basketball?” she asks them.Basketball has long served as that kind of refuge for Augustus.“Just being me was hard, to be honest,” she said, explaining that she was bullied in high school. “Every day walking down the hallway it was like: ‘She’s gay. She’s gay.’”Augustus’s parents and family supported her, but others were hostile. “You had parents coming up to my parents and saying, ‘Because your daughter is gay, she’s got my daughter feeling like she’s gay,’” Augustus said. “People I’ve never met in my life are blaming me for something that their child is now choosing to express.”At the same time, Augustus was racking up almost every accolade a high school basketball player could hope for — and trying to consider how the racist legacy of the Deep South community she grew up in would shape where she chose to play in college. Louisiana State University, her hometown school, did not employ a Black professor, Julian T. White, until 1971. “The whole recruiting process, I had so many people that were like, ‘Do not go there,’” she said.Ultimately, she decided to attend L.S.U. anyway: She wanted the chance both to stay close to home and to build a winning program instead of joining an established powerhouse like Tennessee or Connecticut. “I had a lot of elderly Black people that said, ‘Just to step on this campus was a lot for me, and I did that for you,’” Augustus said. “I think it helped give them a release. Like, at least we’re at peace enough to be able to enjoy this moment.”Those experiences laid the groundwork for Augustus’s transition to public-facing activism, which demanded self-assurance and sensitivity. Her first foray into advocacy was fittingly personal: She came out publicly in the L.G.B.T.Q. magazine The Advocate in May 2012, detailing her relationship with, and plans to marry, LaTaya Varner, who is now her wife.Augustus’s profile had never been higher, given that she had just led the Lynx to their first title, in 2011, and had been named the most valuable player of that year’s finals. But the decision was still risky. It would be years before the W.N.B.A. started a leaguewide L.G.B.T.Q. pride program, in 2014, and the timing was crucial since Minnesotans would vote on a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage that November.“That was like the first time I actually stepped out and used my voice,” Augustus said. “I felt like I was at a place in my life where I was ready to be open with people. I don’t think it was a big surprise, but for the people that needed it, it really helped them. I had so many people that came over, like, ‘I was able to tell my mom after 40 years.’”She continued to speak to the news media about the issue, telling her own story as a rebuke to the proposed Minnesota amendment. It was defeated, and same-sex marriage became legal in all 50 states soon after Augustus and Varner were married in 2015.“When she came out in 2012 and then started doing so much intentional work in Minnesota around marriage equality, we saw Seimone and then other players within the W.N.B.A. kick off conversations that became really reminiscent of the athlete activism of the ’60s,” said Anne Lieberman, director of policy and programs at Athlete Ally.Those conversations were never more influential than in 2016, when the stars of the Lynx — including Augustus — began to publicly support the Black Lives Matter movement. They spoke out against police brutality and wore shirts during warm-ups that bore the movement’s slogan in the wake of the police killings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling before Colin Kaepernick, for the same cause, made waves by taking a knee during the national anthem at N.F.L. games.For Augustus, both killings resonated deeply. She had spoken out about racial profiling by the police in suburban Minneapolis in 2012, where Castile was killed four years later; the corner store where Sterling was killed was the same one where she used to buy snacks when she was growing up in Baton Rouge.“Obviously, we’ve all been stopped by the police before,” Augustus said. “My dad has been in town in Minneapolis and gotten stopped by the police. That could have very well been my father or cousin or uncle or anybody.”The W.N.B.A. fined players for wearing the shirts, before rescinding the fines after player and public outcry. Four Lynx security guards, all off-duty police officers, walked out during a game in response to the players’ actions.“​​We had cops walk out on us and leave the Target Center wide open for people to just — if they wanted to come in and do something to us, we didn’t have anyone there to protect us,” Augustus said. “Because we wore T-shirts. Because people don’t want to be held accountable for their actions.”In the wake of George Floyd’s murder last year, the W.N.B.A. more proactively encouraged player activism as a part of its identity — four years after the Lynx first took a stand. “Now it’s like, ‘We’re celebrating you!’ And we’re like, ‘Uh huh, you’re celebrating now, but in years prior, it was kind of hard to get you to embrace it,’” Augustus said.Sparks Coach Derek Fisher said Augustus “played the game with a flair and a confidence.”Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesShe still remembers meetings where the league, she said, tried to goad players into wearing more makeup and skimpier uniforms, and how in her first years of playing it was the players with husbands and children who seemed to get all the publicity. “They would say, ‘We don’t have a cool factor,’ and I’m like, ‘We cool, what are you talking about?’” Augustus said. “It’s insane the conversations we had to have.”In an emailed statement in response to Augustus’s comments, Commissioner Cathy Engelbert cited the emphasis on L.G.B.T.Q.+ rights by the league’s Social Justice Council, which was established last season.“The W.N.B.A. has long been one of the most inclusive and welcoming sports leagues in terms of its commitment to players and fans,” she said, adding, “Today, that commitment continues to grow with countless demonstrations of inclusivity and with an understanding that there will always be more work to do.”Augustus has always prioritized the game itself, and that’s no different now that she’s a coach. But the seemingly effortless way in which she has integrated fighting for herself and her community into her basketball career seems likely to rub off on her protégés.“She played the game with a flair and a confidence that would tell you that she wants to be the loudest person in the room, but she really doesn’t,” Sparks Coach Derek Fisher said. “She just wants to help people get better and serve others.” More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Football

      Sam Cunningham Dies at 71; Fostered Integration on the Football Field

      by

      As one of three Black players in the U.S.C. backfield, he led the team to a stunning win in 1970 over Coach Bear Bryant’s all-white Alabama. He would go on to star for the New England Patriots.Sam Cunningham, a fullback for the integrated University of Southern California football team that in 1970 trounced Coach Bear Bryant’s all-white Alabama squad, died on Tuesday at his home in Inglewood, Calif. He was 71.His wife, Cine (Ivery) Cunningham, confirmed his death but did not cite a cause.Cunningham, a sophomore, was playing his first game for U.S.C. on Sept. 12, 1970, at Legion Field in Birmingham. For the Trojans it was a journey into the Deep South to a state that had been governed, and would be again, by the fiery segregationist George C. Wallace.Cunningham, whose nickname was Bam, formed an all-Black backfield with the quarterback Jimmy Jones and the tailback Clarence Davis. Cunningham, a backup player, was the game’s unexpected star, running for 135 yards on 12 carries and scoring two touchdowns in the Trojans’ 42-21 victory.For Alabama, it was a humiliating loss on the way to a 6-5-1 record — but it was also a lesson to Bryant that his Crimson Tide would falter in the future without Black players. He knew that already, having recruited Wilbur Jackson, a running back. But as a freshman, Jackson was not allowed to play for the varsity and watched the game at the stadium.Cunningham called the game a “tipping point” in the struggle for civil rights in sports. He told the U.S.C. athletics website in 2016 that it showed “that things should be equal on the football field as they should be in all other parts of life, but that’s not always the case.”The next year, Jackson and John Mitchell, a defensive end, integrated the Alabama team, which went 11-1 (including a win over U.S.C.). The team’s only loss was to Nebraska in the Orange Bowl.Richard Lapchick, a human-rights activist and the director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, said Bryant knew he needed to recruit Black players to stay competitive.In a phone interview, Lapchick said that Bryant had confided in Eddie Robinson, the longtime coach of the historically Black Grambling State University in Louisiana, about the impact of his team’s loss to U.S.C.“Eddie told me how often Bear talked to him about what the game meant,” Lapchick said, “and what Sam meant to his ability to integrate.”By 1977, Alabama had 17 Black football players on scholarship.Samuel Lewis Cunningham Jr. was born on Aug. 15, 1950, in Santa Barbara, Calif. His father was a railroad worker. His mother, Zoe (Ivory) Cunningham, died when he was young; he was raised by his father and stepmother, Mabel (Crook) Cunningham, a nurse.Sam and his brothers, Anthony, Bruce and Randall, a future quarterback with the Philadelphia Eagles and three other N.F.L. teams, were all athletic. Sam was introduced to organized sports in elementary school, where he played basketball, baseball, volleyball and flag football.He was recruited by Coach John McKay to U.S.C. and, in his three seasons on the team, gained 1,579 yards on 337 carries. He scored four short-yardage touchdowns in the Trojans’ 42-17 victory over Ohio State in the 1973 Rose Bowl, which wrapped up a 12-0 season. That year’s team was ranked No. 1 in college football.Cunningham was selected by the New England Patriots with the 11th overall pick in the 1973 N.F.L. draft. In his nine seasons with the team, he accumulated 5,453 rushing yards, including 516 in his first season, a Patriots rookie record, and 1,015 in 1977, making him the second Patriot to exceed 1,000 yards in a season. He sat out the 1980 season in a contract dispute, which prompted the Patriots to trade him to the Miami Dolphins. But he failed the team’s physical and returned to the Patriots shortly before the 1981 season.“Sam ‘Bam’ Cunningham was one of my favorite players throughout the ’70s, and my sons all loved him,” the Patriots’ owner, Robert Kraft, said in a statement. “After I bought the team in 1994, it was my honor to welcome him back to the team on multiple occasions, recognizing him as a 50th-anniversary team member and again for his induction into the Patriots Hall of Fame.”Cunningham became a landscape contractor after his playing career ended.In addition to his wife, he is survived by his daughter, Samahndi Cunningham; and his brothers.Cunningham joined Jones and Davis in the backfield early in the first quarter of that historic 1970 game against Alabama.“I didn’t go into any game looking to change history, even though history has a tendency to be changed by things of that nature,” he told The Santa Barbara Independent this year. “I always tried to play to the best of my ability, and that’s what I did that evening. I was put in the right spot and got touched by the hand of God.” More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

      How Facebook Failed to Stem Racist Abuse of England’s Soccer Players

      by

      In May 2019, Facebook asked the organizing bodies of English soccer to its London offices off Regent’s Park. On the agenda: what to do about the growing racist abuse on the social network against Black soccer players.At the meeting, Facebook gave representatives from four of England’s main soccer organizations — the Football Association, the Premier League, the English Football League and the Professional Footballers’ Association — what they felt was a brushoff, two people with knowledge of the conversation said. Company executives told the group that they had many issues to deal with, including content about terrorism and child sex abuse.A few months later, Facebook provided soccer representatives with an athlete safety guide, including directions on how players could shield themselves from bigotry using its tools. The message was clear: It was up to the players and the clubs to protect themselves online.The interactions were the start of what became a more than two-year campaign by English soccer to pressure Facebook and other social media companies to rein in online hate speech against their players. Soccer officials have since met numerous times with the platforms, sent an open letter calling for change and organized social media boycotts. Facebook’s employees have joined in, demanding that it to do more to stop the harassment.The pressure intensified after the European Championship last month, when three of England’s Black players were subjected to torrents of racial epithets on social media for missing penalty kicks in the final game’s decisive shootout. Prince William condemned the hate, and the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, threatened regulation and fines for companies that continued to permit racist abuse. Inside Facebook, the incident was escalated to a “Site Event 1,” the equivalent of a companywide five-alarm fire.Jadon Sancho, who missed a penalty kick during England’s loss in the European Championship final last month, was embraced by the team’s manager, Gareth Southgate.Pool photo by Laurence GriffithsYet as the Premier League, England’s top division, opens its season on Friday, soccer officials said that the social media companies — especially Facebook, the largest — hadn’t taken the issue seriously enough and that players were again steeling themselves for online hate.“Football is a growing global market that includes clubs, brands, sponsors and fans who are all tired of the obvious lack of desire from the tech giants to develop in-platform solutions for the issues we are dealing with daily,” said Simone Pound, head of equality, diversity and inclusion for the Professional Footballers’ Association, the players’ union.The impasse with English soccer is another instance of Facebook’s failing to solve speech problems on its platform, even after it was made aware of the level of abuse. While Facebook has introduced some measures to mitigate the harassment, soccer officials said they were insufficient.Social media companies aren’t doing enough “because the pain hasn’t become enough for them,” said Sanjay Bhandari, the chair of Kick It Out, an organization that supports equality in soccer.This season, Facebook is trying again. Its Instagram photo-sharing app rolled out new features on Wednesday to make racist material harder to view, according to a blog post. Among them, one will let users hide potentially harassing comments and messages from accounts that either don’t follow or recently followed them.“The unfortunate reality is that tackling racism on social media, much like tackling racism in society, is complex,” Karina Newton, Instagram’s global head of public policy, said in a statement. “We’ve made important strides, many of which have been driven by our discussions with groups being targeted with abuse, like the U.K. football community.”But Facebook executives also privately acknowledge that racist speech against English soccer players is likely to continue. “No one thing will fix this challenge overnight,” Steve Hatch, Facebook’s director for Britain and Ireland, wrote last month in an internal note that The Times reviewed.Some players appear resigned to the abuse. Four days after the European Championship final, Bukayo Saka, 19, one of the Black players who missed penalty kicks for England, posted on Twitter and Instagram that the “powerful platforms are not doing enough to stop these messages” and called it a “sad reality.”Around the same time, Facebook employees continued to report hateful comments to their employer on Mr. Saka’s posts in an effort to get them taken down. One that was reported — an Instagram comment that read, “Bro stay in Africa” — apparently did not violate the platform’s rules, according to the automated moderation system. It stayed up.#EnoughMuch of the racist abuse in English soccer has been directed at Black superstars in the Premier League, such as Raheem Sterling and Marcus Rashford. About 30 percent of players in the Premier League are Black, Mr. Bhandari said.Over time, these players have been harassed at soccer stadiums and on Facebook, where users are asked to provide their real names, and on Instagram and Twitter, which allows users to be anonymous. In April 2019, fed up with the behavior, some players and two former captains of the national team, David Beckham and Wayne Rooney, took part in a 24-hour social media boycott, posting red badges on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #Enough.A month later, English soccer officials held their first meeting with Facebook — and came away disappointed. Facebook said that “feedback from the meeting was taken on board and influenced further policy, product and enforcement efforts.”Tensions ratcheted up last year after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. When the Premier League restarted in June 2020 after a 100-day coronavirus hiatus, athletes from all 20 clubs began each match by taking a knee. Players continued the symbolic act last season and said they would also kneel this season.That has stoked more online abuse. In January, Mr. Rashford used Twitter to call out “humanity and social media at its worst” for the bigoted messages he had received. Two of his Manchester United teammates, who are also Black, were targeted on Instagram with monkey emojis — which are meant to dehumanize — after a loss.Inside Facebook, employees took note of the surge in racist speech. In one internal forum meant for flagging negative press to the communications department, one employee started cataloging articles about English soccer players who had been abused on Facebook’s platforms. By February, the list had grown to about 20 different news clips in a single month, according to a company document seen by The Times.Marcus Rashford kneeling in support of the Black Lives Matter movement before a Manchester United match in March.Pool photo by Peter PowellEnglish soccer organizations continued meeting with Facebook. This year, organizers also brought Twitter into the conversations, forming what became known as the Online Hate Working Group.But soccer officials grew frustrated at the lack of progress, they said. There was no indication that Facebook’s and Twitter’s top leaders were aware of the abuse, said Edleen John, who heads international relations and corporate affairs for the Football Association, England’s governing body for the sport. She and others began discussing writing an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, the chief executives of Facebook and Twitter.“Why don’t we try to communicate and get meetings with individuals right at the top of the organization and see if that will make change?” Ms. John said in an interview, explaining the thinking.In February, the chief executives of the Premier League, the Football Association and other groups published a 580-word letter to Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Dorsey accusing them of “inaction” against racial abuse. They demanded that the companies block racist and discriminatory content before it was sent or posted. They also pushed for user identity verification so offenders could be rooted out.But, Ms. John said, “we didn’t get a response” from Mr. Zuckerberg or Mr. Dorsey. In April, English soccer organizations, players and brands held a four-day boycott of social media.Twitter, which declined to comment, said in a blog post about racism on Tuesday that it had been “appalled by those who targeted players from the England football team with racist abuse following the Euro 2020 Final.”Messages of support adorning a mural of Mr. Rashford that was defaced after Italy defeated England for the European championship.Lindsey Parnaby/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAt Facebook, members of the policy team, which sets the rules around what content stays up or comes down, pushed back against the demands from soccer officials, three people with knowledge of the conversations said.They argued that terms or symbols used for racist abuse — such as a monkey emoji — could have different meanings depending on the context and should not be banned completely. Identity verification could also undermine anonymity on Instagram and create new problems for users, they argued.In April, Facebook announced a privacy setting called Hidden Words to automatically filter out messages and comments containing offensive words, phrases and emojis. Those comments cannot then be easily seen by the account user and will be hidden from those who follow the account. A month later, Instagram also began a test that allowed a slice of its users in the United States, South Africa, Brazil, Australia and Britain to flag “racist language or activity,” according to documents reviewed by The Times.The test generated hundreds of reports. One internal spreadsheet outlining the results included a tab titled “Dehumanization_Monkey/Primate.” It had more than 30 examples of comments using bigoted terms and emojis of monkeys, gorillas and bananas in connection with Black people.‘The Onus Is on Them’In the hours after England lost the European Championship final to Italy on July 11, racist comments against the players who missed penalty kicks — Mr. Saka, Mr. Rashford and Jadon Sancho — escalated. That set off a “site event” at Facebook, eventually triggering the kind of emergency associated with a major system outage of the site.Facebook employees rushed to internal forums to say they had reported monkey emojis or other degrading stereotypes. Some workers asked if they could volunteer to help sort through content or moderate comments for high-profile accounts.“We get this stream of utter bile every match, and it’s even worse when someone black misses,” one employee wrote on an internal forum.Gianluigi Donnarumma of Italy stopping Mr. Sancho’s penalty kick. England missed three of five penalty kicks, giving Italy the victory after play ended with the score tied.Laurence Griffiths/Getty ImagesBut the employees’ reports of racist speech were often met with automated messages saying the posts did not violate the company’s guidelines. Executives also provided talking points to employees that said Facebook had worked “swiftly to remove comments and accounts directing abuse at England’s footballers.”In one internal comment, Jerry Newman, Facebook’s director of sports partnerships for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, reminded workers that the company had introduced the Hidden Words feature so users could filter out offensive words or symbols. It was the players’ responsibility to use the feature, he wrote.“Ultimately the onus is on them to go into Instagram and input which emojis/words they don’t want to feature,” Mr. Newman said. Other Facebook executives said monkey emojis were not typically used negatively. If the company filtered certain terms out for everyone, they added, people might miss important messages.Adam Mosseri, Instagram’s chief executive, later said the platform could have done better, tweeting in response to a BBC reporter that the app “mistakenly” marked some of the racist comments as “benign.”Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, told the BBC that the app had “mistakenly” marked some racist comments as “benign.”Ricky Rhodes for The New York TimesBut Facebook also defended itself in a blog post. The company said it had removed 25 million pieces of hate content in the first three months of the year, while Instagram took down 6.3 million pieces, or 93 percent before a user reported it.Kelly Hogarth, who helps manage Mr. Rashford’s off-field activities, said he had no plans to leave social media, which serves as an important channel to fans. Still, she questioned how much of the burden should be on athletes to monitor abuse.“At what point does responsibility come off the player?” she wondered. She added, “I wouldn’t be under any illusions we will be in exactly the same place, having exactly the same conversation next season.” More