I've posted this before, but here's a great article in from an issue of GQ magazine last year about the groupies at the Houston all-star game. http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_4514
Scoop Jackson would have a 10 thousand word rant before the second instance of bad press would be released. Evan
women chase money. so I don't know what the point of this article is other than spotlighting women who look for nba players. ask a stripper about the OTC conference every year in Houston. Its their biggest earning period, strippers come from out of town to get in on the action.
For those outside Houston, OTC is the Offshore Technology Conference for Deepwater Oil and Gas. If I am not mistaken, isn't the biggest earning period was during some kind of democratic or republican event?
The NFL already has begun investigating what role Tennessee cornerback Adam "Pacman" Jones may have played in a shooting in Las Vegas last weekend that left one person paralyzed. "We are certainly looking into it, that's standard procedure," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said. "Other than that, we have no comment." If Jones is found to have participated in the event, he could face severe penalties from the NFL under the personal conduct policy. In addition, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and NFL Players Association executive director Gene Upshaw said last month that they are extremely concerned with the recent conduct of NFL players. That stance could raise the likelihood that Jones faces sanctions from the league. Jones, who has not been arrested in this incident, has been charged three times in relation to crimes since being drafted as the No. 6 overall pick in 2005. ADVERTISEMENT According to a report in the Las Vegas Journal-Review, Jones was in Las Vegas for the NBA All-Star festivities. Jones and an entourage of a half-dozen people attended a strip club in the city. The visit ended with three people having been shot by a person that the co-owner of the club said was with Jones. One of the three victims was left paralyzed, according to a report in the Las Vegas Journal-Review. According to the report, the incident was precipitated by Jones going onto the stage at the strip club and tossing hundreds of $1 bills in the air. As strippers rushed the stage to collect the money, Jones allegedly became angry, grabbed one of the strippers by the hair and drove her head into the stage. A fight ensued and as Jones and his entourage began to leave, a person in the entourage reportedly began shooting. Jones' attorney denied that Jones knew the shooter, but a co-owner of the club said Jones came and left with the shooter. "He denied any knowledge of the shooter, but he was sitting right next to him," club co-owner Robert Susnar told the Las Vegas Review-Journal for Wednesday's edition. "Those guys came in together and left together." http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=jc-jonesinvestigation022207&prov=yhoo&type=lgns
That's not indicative of a lack of organization or being overwhelmed -- from a security standpoint -- by a major sporting event. Just in case some aren't aware, Houston officials routinely coach officials in other cities across the US on law enforcement/organization and the such. We're not perfect, no one is, but we are by FAR one of the best in the nation at handling major events such as the Super Bowl/NBA ASG/MLB ASG. Let's see what happens with NOLA next season, I don't have a good feeling about that one...
Whitlock's article makes me wonder if he has ever been to Vegas. Not the tourist side, the real city of Vegas nd surrounding suburbs. It is gang-central with gang-related deaths happening everyday. They just happened to come to the Strip because of the All-Star game and did their dirt in public. To tie Las Vegas' problems to the NBA is a joke. You didn't have that kind of problems when it was in Houston. Didn't have those kinds of problems in Denver. But all of a sudden because Vegas has a crime problem it is the NBA's fault? Whitlock can write some good articles, but he can also write articles that are seemingly only have one purpose. That purpose is to get his name in the press.
I emailed my buddy who lives in Vegas and asked him what was up. Here's what he said: So, that's it in a nutshell. Sounds like it was a big party with mostly black folks, and if you're street-wise, you know what this means: white people were scared and probably over-reacted a bit. I see this kind of thing every year in Galveston during beach party weekend. People close their resturaunts, people leave town...it's silly, really. Sure, there are some thugs out there, but it's not a racial thing IMO, it's a thug thing.
This sh*t made me LOL when I read it. Simmons can still make me laugh, but his bashing of cities that aren't Miami, SD, or Boston annoys me.
I didn't know that but I'm not suprised. HPD don't play!!!! I really noticed this around Bayou Classic time. I went to the Classic in NO around 2001 or 2002. Some dude got shot on the main street but the party kept going on. Someone got shot at outside the Mercury Room when the Classic was in Houston, and HPD sent everyone home.
My uncle lives out in Vegas and I'm there 3-4 times a year, but the jaywalking was 10x worst than usual. People wouldn't stop for a moment. Basically you waited at the red light so you can get a green light and then waited for that light to turn back red b/c nobody would stop. I have been going to Vegas 3-4 times a year since 1992 so I'm very well aware of LV laws, but this was just complete nonsense.
Looks like Scoop set the record straight on a few "issues": http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=jackson/070228 What really happened in Vegas? By Scoop Jackson Page 2 As the reports continue to flow from the activities during NBA All-Star Weekend, the rage begins to build. Hip-Hop Woodstock. The Black KKK. Weekend leaves NBA with a black eye. What? Seriously? For real? As difficult as it is not to turn this generalization of the entire hip-hop culture into an issue of race, let's be honest, it is about nothing else. Was part of Las Vegas during the All-Star weekend out of control? Yes. But nothing more than usual considering the circumstances. This was Vegas!!! A place that labeled itself Sin City before the NBA got there. Expecting everyone to act "accordingly" over the weekend is like expecting all married men in Brazil during Carnival not to sleep with another woman. Not saying it's right, but to think that nothing will happen is a little naive -- dumb to be exact. Did people really think that everyone who went to Vegas would act like they were spending four days during an NBA All-Star Weekend in Park City, Utah? But that's not the issue. That's not where the irresponsibility lies. The irresponsibility lies with those writers and broadcast hosts who failed to do diligent research before they typed a word or opened their mouths. History verses his story? As usual, we lost. At some point over the last week, there should have been more balanced reporting. If not balanced, then fair. But this is an unfair sports world we live in. A world, it seems on a regular basis, that is getting more and more comfortable with dispensing covert innuendoes and subliminal messages. Especially when it comes to those of us who have love for and are part of the game of basketball. Specifically the part where young black men are getting paid millions of dollars and don't change the people around them once they get drafted. But if I screamed the "R" word, everyone would say I'm wrong. They say numbers don't lie. True. But the people who crunch the numbers sometimes do, and those who fail to look at all the numbers fall into the same category as Bill O'Reilly. With that, let's put the Vegas weekend into a real perspective. According to reports, there were 403 arrests made in Vegas over the five-day All-Star Weekend (Thursday through Monday). Not saying that's a good thing, not defending the acts that got those 403 people locked up. But in order to see the truth behind that number, we need to look at what that 403 means. As the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported, according to the Las Vegas Police Department there was an average of 80.6 arrests made every 24 hours in Vegas over those five days. Compare that to New Year's Eve, when 130 arrests were made in a 12-hour period. Now, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor's Authority, there were 302,000 people in town for All-Star weekend, about the same number of people (300,000) estimated in Vegas for New Year's Eve. That means the rate for arrests for New Year's Eve was more than three times that of All-Star Weekend. But what happened while the NBA was in town is headline news? This is what becomes the reflection of a people, a culture? This is what constitutes columns and conversations of lawlessness and over-the-top irrational behavior? This is what gives people the right to editorialize and portray us as animals? Where were these writers and broadcasters during New Year's Eve in Vegas? Where were they when the police reports were being filled out saying that of the 403 arrests, 172 were of local residents and only 231 were from outsiders who came to visit Vegas? Where were they when the police reports said that of those 403 arrests, 239 were for prostitution-related incidents, compared to an average week of 175 arrests for those same crimes. And none of these arrests involved an NBA player. And I won't even get into, as Harvey Araton of the New York Times wrote, how nobody blamed NASCAR "for the death of a motorist who was shot in a road-rage encounter during a traffic jam after leaving the Daytona 500." NASCAR ain't the NBA. You know the difference, I know the difference. But an NFL player comes into town, wilds out, tosses $81,000 up in the air, someone gets shot, and it becomes a reflection of the NBA? Media, please. Yet we are supposed to sit here and accept this? Accept what is being written and said -- and insinuated -- and say nothing? We should remain quiet as if there's absolute truth to what is being communicated about the behavior of the "hip-hop thugs and their baby mammas" (code: young black people) who went to Vegas and displayed a side of ignorance that had veteran reporters and columnists "scared" to go out of their rooms? But in Dallas a few weeks ago at the NHL All-Star Game these same cats felt safe as kittens. Racism, please? It's not even worth me going there. I was asked on a radio show whether I thought in the next 10 years the NBA would have another All-Star Game in Vegas. My answer was no. But it had nothing to do with the actions that went down in Vegas, as the person who asked me the question was insinuating. "One," I said, "there's no guarantee that the league will have a team there by then." And two, "neither will New York, Atlanta, L.A., D.C., Philly, Denver, Cleveland, the Bay or any other city that over the last 10 years has hosted an All-Star Game." I reminded him that the NBA doesn't get down like that. It spreads the All-Star Game around to give each city the opportunity to benefit from the attention and financial windfall (reportedly over $91 million over the four days in Vegas) that an All-Star Game brings. The radio host heard me but wasn't feeling me. Which is more irritating than anything in this recent campaign to make an entire culture (and part of a race) of people look or seem less than zero. No one wants to do the math. No one wants to look at all 360 degrees of the issue. No one wants to be responsible in their jobs. Unbiased? Please. Please. Please. What went on in Vegas didn't stay in Vegas. And I'm not saying it should have, but if people are going to be responsible for putting out info about what went down, the least they can do is understand their facts before they start calling all us kettles black.
Bill Simmons's rebuttal of scoop: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/blog/index?name=simmons I hate writing a rebuttal to another writer's column. I hate it. These days on the Internet, people spend far too much time writing about other writers instead of just writing about sports. Pretty soon, there will be Web sites devoted to writers writing about writers who write about other writers. We're not headed in the right direction. At the same time, I couldn't let Scoop Jackson's "Vegas wasn't that bad" column just fade away without disputing two crucial pieces of his argument: Piece No. 1: Scoop's assertion that "only" 403 people were arrested during NBA All-Star Weekend, a number apparently obtained from Deputy Lt. E. Sterr Bunny of the Las Vegas Police Department. I don't think it's very smart to base the premise of a column around a leap of faith that Vegas police reported every single crime, mugging, brawl, assault, theft and indiscretion from that weekend (even the ones for which the perpetrators weren't caught). Besides, how many arrests can you have when there weren't enough cops in the first place? Almost all of the police were concentrated between Mandalay Bay and MGM, with everyone walking the other half of the Strip (from Bellagio to the Wynn) apparently expected to fend for themselves. As Cavs beat writer Brian Windhorst pointed out this week, there was a lawlessness and lack of decency along the Strip almost defied description. (Hell, even some of the players were scared -- check out the comments from Tracy McGrady and Rafer Alston in the Houston Chronicle.) Did those 403 "reported" arrests cover everyone who robbed cab drivers, menaced tourists in unpatrolled parking garages, pawed women's breasts, started fights in cab lines, skipped out on restaurant bills and everything else? In my opinion, no. Everything I witnessed and wrote about last week was backed up by scores of other writers and media people. Seriously, does anyone believe Vegas would accurately report arrest figures when the city was using that weekend as an audition for an NBA franchise? Since when did Vegas become a bastion of integrity? It's Vegas! That's why we love the place -- because it's NOT a bastion of integrity, remember? I'm trusting the eyewitness accounts of people who were there -- friends, friends of friends, readers and other writers -- over a dubious arrest figure from a woefully unprepared city. Piece No. 2: Scoop's insinuation that certain media members were intimidated by the blackness of the event and ended up stereotyping hip-hop culture with phrases like "The Hip-Hop Woodstock" (I wrote that one) and "The Black KKK" (Jason Whitlock wrote that one and, by the way, he's black). I found this interesting because Scoop wrote in his original All-Star column that (A) somebody joked at one of his dinners that their casino was "South Central," and (B) Vegas was a "four-day Freaknic [sic]." Hmmmm ... The "South Central" reference needs no further explanation, although it was a terrible Glenn Plummer movie and that probably needs to be mentioned. "Freaknik" was started by African-American college students in Atlanta in the early '80s; they had a noble dream of turning Freaknik into an annual party weekend, almost like a Black Mardi Gras. And for a few years, they actually pulled it off. By the mid-'90s, the event became so overcrowded and dangerous that Atlanta cops legitimately couldn't police the crush of people, leading to negative press and a groundswell to disband the event that didn't fully take hold until a brutal rape in '99. That was the final straw for Freaknik. Needless to say, comparing All-Star Weekend to Freaknik isn't the most flattering comparison. Scoop still made that connection Feb. 20. Eight days later, here's how Scoop started his Feb. 28 column: As the reports continue to flow from the activities during NBA All-Star Weekend, the rage begins to build. Hip-Hop Woodstock. The Black KKK. Weekend leaves NBA with a black eye. What? Seriously? For real? As difficult as it is not to turn this generalization of the entire hip-hop culture into an issue of race, let's be honest, it is about nothing else. The generalization of the entire hip-hop culture? Wait, wasn't this the same guy who compared All-Star Weekend to a four-day Freaknik? No wonder he ended his column with a "pot calling the kettle black" reference ... perhaps it was a Freudian slip. Here's the sad thing: There was a good follow-up column that needed to be written about Vegas. The NBA was unfairly blamed for the general craziness of the weekend, with the Pacman Jones incident getting the most play ... like it was the NBA's fault that an NFL star caused the biggest riot of the weekend. The NBA didn't screw up; Vegas screwed up. The city failed to stack the Strip and the surrounding parts of the city with enough cops and security guards, and they made the mistake of hoping everyone would act appropriately. For any other weekend, that was a reasonably sound game plan. For a weekend in which the NBA All-Star Game was the THIRD biggest event behind Chinese New Year and the Fashion Convention? Not a good idea. If you owned a car and resided within driving distance of Vegas, you needed only to find a space in a garage and you were good to go for the weekend, even if you didn't have a place to sleep. Contrary to public belief, New Orleans won't be as chaotic an All-Star destination because the city will flood downtown with cops -- no way the Big Easy makes the same mistake as Vegas did -- and because out-of-towners won't be able to cruise into the city and park downtown without any trouble. Over everything else, that's where Vegas screwed up. So who gets blamed? Naturally, the NBA. The league's fundamental issue has remained the same for four decades: It's a league of mostly black players marketing itself to a mostly white audience and a mostly white media. That delicate balance was the premise of David Halberstam's watershed sports book "The Breaks of the Game," which was published 25 years ago, back when MJ was playing for Carolina and Michael Jackson was on his second nose. Nothing has really changed. Just look at the way Iverson's credentials were belittled when Philly shopped him last December, or the comically skewed reaction to a Nuggets-Knicks brawl that wasn't one-tenth as violent as the Senators-Sabres brawl last week. Certain media members will always delight in sticking it to the NBA, with the underlying theme being, "Sorry, I just can't identify with those black guys." I wish Scoop had tackled this subject, asking why some media members gleefully used All-Star Weekend as their latest excuse to crush the league. Instead, he played the race card, based his premise on a dubious statistic and came off misguided. Once upon a time, the late Ralph Wiley repeatedly proved an African-American sports columnist could write intelligently about racial issues without using his skin color as a crutch. After Ralph passed away three years ago, Scoop Jackson vowed to carry Ralph's torch on Page 2. I just wish he'd brought that torch to Vegas.
