A Shtetl Too Far

The NBA Western Conference Finals is a gem, a matchup between the defending champ and the sport’s best team the past two seasons versus a young, promising group surrounding a singular talent. The Oklahoma City Thunder are a deep and versatile and tenacious bunch led by two-time MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and positioned for several years of excellence thanks to canny player acquisition and a well-run organization. The San Antonio Spurs leaped into the league’s upper tier this season behind the continued rise of Victor Wembenyama, an alien placed here to demonstrate human limitations (personally, I’m willing to give our new galactic overlords a chance at Earth stewardship, though I understand anyone’s desire to ride out the string under the current species – devil you know versus devil you don’t, and all that). 

Wembenyama’s length and athletic gifts make him appear elastic at times. He’s capable of turning a basketball court into a kind of funhouse mirror, the way he distorts and occupies space and forces opponents to adjust like no one else. That he is far from a finished product and still developing is either thrilling or terrifying, depending on your vantage. 

Speaking of distortion, in the runup to this matchup, the Oklahoma City newspaper, the Oklahoman, ran a column the day the series opened that rests somewhere between provocative and WTF?!? The headline provides a fitting, if jarring, launch: “Like Thunder, Israel is an underdog that has become hated.” The premise is that success can breed outsized contempt by opponents and critics, particularly when the successful entity – be it an athletic team or a country – is outside the mainstream or a glamour setting. “As both a fiercely proud Oklahoman and a Jew, the parallels between the Thunder and the nation of Israel are difficult to ignore. Neither was supposed to become what it is,” the author wrote. “Oklahoma City remains one of the NBA’s smallest markets. We lack the glamour of Los Angeles, the nightlife and beaches of Miami, Florida, or the finance and media power of New York City. Yet we built something remarkable anyway. Rather than buying relevance, we created it. Rather than following others, we reimagined our own path to success by relying on the resources and skills we had with discipline and our own brand of resilience. Israel’s story shares many of those attributes — a young, microscopic nation limited in natural resources, surrounded by hostility, perpetually under scrutiny, and constantly forced to justify its actions and existence. Israel nonetheless transformed itself into a global powerhouse of innovation, technology, defense, medicine and agriculture. Like the Thunder and even Oklahoma City, it has risen out of the ashes of a traumatic past despite all odds.” 

People love underdog stories, said the writer, but when underdogs consistently triumph that appreciation "mutates into skepticism and distrust. ... The Thunder are not hated because they somehow gamed the system. They are hated because they mastered it. Israel is not obsessively scrutinized because it failed, but due to its success despite deeply-rooted envy and darker historical motives." Hoo buddy, much to unpack. 

Nowhere in the column does the writer mention that the Thunder’s “traumatic past” included OKC businessman Clay Bennett shortly after purchasing the franchise moving it from Seattle to Oklahoma City after failing to extort $500 million from the state of Washington for a new arena complex. Nor does he mention that just a decade ago the Thunder had a nucleus of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and 6-11 Serge Ibaka and was oh-so-close to a title. Nor does he mention that plucky underdog Israel and its admittedly kick-ass military have been bankrolled and backstopped by the U.S., or that systematically squeezing the Palestinian people and targeting opponents across borders might prompt some justified scrutiny and criticism. 

To be fair, the Oklahoman piece wasn’t by a staff writer, but a guest column by an Oklahoma native businessman who transplanted to Chicago. You might think that a piece submitted by an outside source would come under greater examination than from a staff writer. One frequent casualty of the corporate strip-mining of newspapers, however, is editorial oversight. Fewer people to raise red flags or put the brakes on flawed writing. The Oklahoman did pull the piece later that day amid questions and backlash. Still, never should have run in the first place. Equating a basketball franchise's place in the sporting zeitgeist to a nation whose history and actions significantly impact the geopolitical sphere is a reach that even Wembenyama can’t match.