ANTHONY GETTINO
Sports Editor
Let me be clear: death threats don’t belong anywhere in society.
But that hasn’t stopped them from becoming commonplace in our world of sports.
During this season’s NBA Finals, Danny Green, a guard on the Los Angeles Lakers, missed an open shot from the top of the key for the win with under 10 seconds remaining in the game.
The chaos that surrounded him and his family the following days was a travesty.
Since the NBA playoffs were played in a bubble, he wasn’t staying at his home during them. Thus, any mail sent to him would be sent to his family.
It wasn’t even just him receiving these threats, but they were being sent to his wife as well.
What Green had to say about the matter is the most shocking part about all of this.
“I had to ask, ‘Are you getting death threats?’ And she said, ‘Yeah, you are too,’ and I was like, I don’t know, because I don’t really pay attention or care. Nor am I upset, shaken or worried about it. I’m just not one of those types of people. I probably should be a little more paranoid or safe about things.”
Why is he so nonchalant about this? Why isn’t he upset in the slightest?
It’s because of how common death threats have become in sports.
Ever since the early days of sports in baseball, basketball and soccer, it seems as though death threats have gone hand-in-hand.
There were the death threats toward players like Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play Major League Baseball, and Hank Aaron, who started receiving death threats as he approached baseball’s all time home run record.
There were threats sent to olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos after they raised the “Black Power” symbol when they went to the podium for their medals.
But there were also death threats sent for the most bizarre reasons, like the threat sent to NFL player Brandon Jacobs for not scoring enough fantasy football points, or the threats Alabama fans sent LSU tight end Logan Stokes for pulling an Alabama player’s pants down as a joke in a pileup on the field.
But these threats can have consequences.
One example is when Colombian soccer player Andres Escobar accidentally scored a goal on his own net in a 3-1 loss to Romania in the 1994 World Cup.
He and the entire team received death threats for the rest of the day, but they didn’t think much of them, leading Escobar to go out on the town once the team returned home. He was harassed in the club, and he was ultimately stabbed six times outside of the club by a gang member he confronted about the harassment.
This is why death threats aren’t okay. While most of these ultimately are just threats, there will be times that they aren’t.
There shouldn’t be a chance of someone losing a loved one over a simple game.