As the NBA went into its spring All-Star break, the Utah Jazz, led by three league All-Stars, held the best record in basketball. Given the misconceptions the media often encourage about Utah and its fans, the team’s success has created more than a few awkward interactions between the Jazz’s stars and coastal media figures convinced their professional bona fides give them the right to degrade whomever they wish.
In late January, TNT’s Shaquille O’Neal confronted Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell, claiming in an interview that he “didn’t have what it takes to get to the next level” and to lead a team to a championship. “What do you have to say to that?” O’Neal asked. The former star center made these comments during a remote spot after a game in which the 24-year-old Mitchell had put in a wonderful all-around performance, leading his team to victory. On the surface, not much about O’Neal’s hostility made sense.
As a player, O’Neal used brute force to push his opponents aside and “dunk in their mugs.” As a TNT commentator, he has continued the practice, bullying nearly everyone he can, including current NBA players he deems awkward or low status, such as JaVale McGee of the Cleveland Cavaliers. McGee, though good-natured, is truly unintentionally comical. But why does O’Neal feel the need to dunk on players such as the Jazz’s Rudy Gobert and Mitchell, the latter being one of the league’s most exciting young stars? The ugly answer arrived when the NBA selected this season’s All-Star squads.
For the last few years, the NBA has allowed the two top receivers of votes from fans to select their own teams — yes, like children choosing “shirts” and “skins” in middle school. This year’s selection process degenerated into mean girls-like behavior, with those at the top of the NBA food chain purposefully excluding peers they deem lesser. In a move that felt as coordinated as it did immature, the two captains, LeBron James and Kevin Durant, both overlooked Mitchell and Gobert until the last two selections — something just as humiliating for top basketball professionals as it is for nerdy teenagers.
Shortly after the selection process, TNT’s Charles Barkley confronted James and Durant over their “slander” of the young Jazz stars. James merely laughed off the charge, justifying his choices with the following statement: “In video games growing up, we never played with Utah. Even as great as Karl Malone and John Stockton was, we would never have picked those guys in video games — never.” Durant then chuckled at James’s denigration of Utah, as did many of the former players who regularly appear on TNT’s NBA broadcast.
In the coastal culture of the NBA media scene, anything associated with Utah is a bull’s-eye for bullying and insult. National NBA commentators frequently mock Utah and its culture based upon stereotypes and highly outdated assumptions that derive directly from the anti-Mormon sentiment from the 19th century.
Dispelling misconceptions about Utah dominates almost every initial conversation any Utahan has while traveling outside the state. How many people realize that Mormons do not, in fact, control Salt Lake City politics or culture? Utah’s capital is one of the most consistently “blue” cities in the nation. “SLC,” as locals affectionately call it, hasn’t elected a Republican mayor since 1972, nearly 50 years ago. The most powerful lobby group in the city is not the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but Equality Utah, an LGBTQ rights organization. For many Mormons, Salt Lake City is not Jerusalem but Gomorrah. Devout Mormons long ago left for Provo and distant counties in the region.
Anti-Mormonism remains the country’s greatest unspoken, and entirely common, form of prejudice. It’s so deeply embedded in the coastal American mindset that an African Frenchman (Gobert) and African American (Mitchell), both paid handsomely to play for Utah’s sole major sports team, are ridiculed for their mere association with the state the church founded.
Mormons, as I’ve written previously, have a history in the United States that mirrors that of Jews in Europe. They were chased out of New York, then Missouri, whose governor signed an order stating that Mormons “must be exterminated or driven from the State,” then Illinois, where Mormon founder Joseph Smith was jailed then murdered by an anti-Mormon mob. Only in 1847, after three failed attempts at finding acceptance, did Mormons seek the protection of the isolated mountains of the Utah territory.
For those hesitant to label anti-Utah sentiment prejudice, let’s play the role of John Rawls and look at the situation from behind the “veil of ignorance.” Remove the names of parties involved but describe the essentials: A region is founded by an internal religious minority fleeing persecution. Stereotypes about this minority persist for more than a century. During this time, the nation’s tabloids sell newspapers titillating readers with grotesque misrepresentations of this minority religious culture, almost always portraying it with disgust and revulsion. Contemporary media, including an extended drama series on HBO and a smash-hit Broadway play, continue to ridicule and misrepresent it. It’s not personal, they insist: Audiences just enjoy laughing at the minority’s expense.
If we were talking about Muslims or Jews, everyone would see the problem. But Mormons? It’s all in good fun.
The ritualistic Utah-bashing prevalent in basketball circles represents sports culture at its worst. A small-market team earned a moment to shine, and instead, everyone laughed at its expense. Utah and the Jazz will never sit at the cool kids’ table. Don’t even ask — it’s not gonna happen. Mormons? Yeesh. They’re just weird. James didn’t have to say the last part out loud. Everyone knew what he meant.
B. Duncan Moench is a lecturer at the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University and the host of the podcast Keeping It Civil.
