This is How Things Are Now
Kevin Porter Jr signs with the Clippers
TW: Domestic violence
I don’t know if Kevin Porter Jr was thinking about his NBA future while he was assaulting his partner.
On second thought, he probably wasn’t. Why would he? No matter how heinous his acts were— and they were bad enough for him to plead guilty to a charge of reckless assault and a second-degree harassment violation — they weren’t ever going to fundamentally impact his future in the NBA, a league that has made its stance on hiring and re-hiring abusers abundantly clear (it doesn’t give a shit.)
Porter Jr had nothing to worry about, really.
On June 30th, less than a year after Porter Jr’s arrest, and a few hours after NBA free agency opened up, Porter Jr signed a two-year deal with the Los Angeles Clippers. He was never suspended by the NBA, and I believe the NBA’s investigation of him is still ongoing. In other words, the NBA was hoping everyone would forget about this, which will be a smidge harder now that he’s back in the league. Don’t hold your breath for a satisfying resolution there.
Well-known company man Shams Charania made sure to inform us that Sam Permut of Roc Nation Sports negotiated the deal and that Porter Jr had “multiple NBA suitors” after “six weeks of strong play in Greece in April and May,” eventually choosing the Clippers. Somehow, Shams forgot to mention why Porter Jr was playing in Greece in the first place.
No NBA team harbors a moral compass. Every team that didn’t sign Kevin Porter Jr on Sunday didn’t sign him because they merely didn’t sign him. Not signing him wasn’t out of solicitude toward the knowledge of Porter Jr’s past, it wasn’t because they care about victims of DV, and it wasn’t because those 29 teams care about the type of people that inhabit their rosters. The teams that didn’t sign Porter Jr just happened to not sign him.
Plenty of fun things happened during the opening weekend of free agency and I want to discuss those things eventually, but in this moment my brain is stuck on the Clippers signing Porter Jr.
In a league where these types of signings have become more commonplace than most of us care to admit, this particular signing might be the grossest of them all, because Porter Jr was about 7,000 miles away from Los Angeles this Spring when he was playing in Greece. Do you know how far out of their way the Clippers (and the “multiple” other suitors Porter Jr had) went to try and sign Porter Jr? He was out of the league! Out of the country! The continent! It would have been so much easier to not sign him. Instead, NBA teams decided that Porter Jr (who is a garbage ass, shitcan basketball player by the way, not that his basketball skills matter in the entirety of this story, but that fact does make this whole situation even more confounding) was worth the time and financial investment required to bring him back stateside.
Something fascinating happens after an abuser signs their first contract back in a professional sports league. Everyone in said league stops pretending to care about what they did. Time heals all, I guess, but I don’t think you’re allowed to use that cliche if you’re the one who did the thing that made healing necessary in the first place.
This happened with Miles Bridges, who assaulted his partner in front of their children, then re-signed with the Hornets last summer after taking a year off basketball and is now being treated as just another NBA free agent. When he signs with a team in the coming weeks, I can all but guarantee that his “legal issues” will be a footnote in his signing. Cap hit, roster fit, and
This happened with Tyreek Hill— notoriously bad person— who has inexplicably become one of the most respected players in the NFL.
Other teams watch a franchise sign a player and think Wait, we don’t have to care if they’re a good person or not? Great. Teams, GMs, and owners look around, waiting for someone else to flinch first, and after that first move, nobody pretends to care anymore. The first team that signs these guys is forced to put on a charade for a few months that the problem player is going through counseling or taking anger management classes, but that eventually fizzles out and then everything is normal again. It’s pretty frustrating to watch unfold time and again.
At the beginning of the NBA season, Charles Barkley pressed NBA commissioner and cousin of Casper the Friendly Ghost Adam Silver about the NBA being too soft on domestic violence. Silver lied to Barkley’s face on TV, telling him"If a guy does cross the line, the consequences are enormous.”
A two-month long vacation to Greece and then a multi-million dollar contract to play basketball in Los Angeles is what Adam Silver considers massive consequences, apparently, because that’s essentially what Kevin Porter Jr got.
Barkley speaking up was unprecedented, and a great step toward forcing the NBA to care about the type of people it employs. He’s a former player with a big platform, and it took legitimate courage to press Silver on this issue. But the league won’t feel any pressure until current players start speaking up too. Someone be brave, please and say you’re uncomfortable with the league’s leniency on abuse. You don’t even have to mention Miles Bridges or Kevin Porter Jr by name.
Of course I’m cheering on the downfall of the Los Angeles Clippers, but at this point, cheering against the team that signed a guy like Kevin Porter Jr feels trite, because we know how many NBA teams are willing to sign guys like Kevin Porter Jr.
Adam Silver has made very clear what he allows and doesn’t allow in his league, and violence against women is on the “allow” list.
I am not excited to find out what the line is that players must cross to receive those “enormous consequences.” If Miles Bridges didn’t cross it and Kevin Porter Jr didn’t cross it, then “crossing the line” must require something really, really horrifying. Adam Silver is comfortable with finding out just what that something is.
Thank you for speaking on this Quinn. This is the most covered up, swept under the rug stuff in sports. The popularity of Tyreek hill astounds me. The stuff these players and teams do is disgusting, sometimes you ask where dignity and values have gone at all.
That was an incredible editorial, Quinn. You are clearly confident with your views (which I love), and not afraid of pushback.