I support Naomi Osaka — but. That’s the line being pushed by the sports journalism world, with everyone from Stephen A. Smith on ESPN to Tim Dahlberg with the Associated Press has offered a version of this yes / but argument saying they hoped she would get help, that the mental health concerns are real, but — and the but is the most important element of their arguments — she had an obligation to the people who run the tournament to follow their rules.
Osaka, the reigning Australian Open champion and the no. 2 player in the world, after she withdrew from the French Open over the weekend. Osaka had announced last week that she would not be participating in press conferences, saying on social media that the press, tennis administration, and even fans often “have no regard for athletes' mental health and this rings very true whenever I see a press conference or partake in one. We're often sat there and asked questions that we've been asked multiple times before or asked questions that bring doubt into our minds and I'm just not going to subject myself to people that doubt me.”
Dahlberg, in an AP column, offered support and criticism, going so far as to close out a column that defended the corporate structure that oversees tennis and requires athletes to sit and answer questions that the power structure of the sport, or sports more generally, rarely have to answer by offering her the back of his hand.
“Hopefully, the time off serves Osaka well. Assuming her issues are as deep as she says — and there’s no reason to assume otherwise — a long break may be just what she needs.”
Smith responded by saying he supported her, but then added:
“She’s a professional and what she was asked to do by the French Open is what she’s asked everywhere in the world of professional tennis, as is the case with many other professional sports leagues.” Smith did follow this up a day later by opening up about his own mental health struggles, but his argument — like Dahlberg’s — was essentially an apology for the corporate power structure that has come to rule tennis.
Osaka’s decision comes in the wake of a series of ugly incidents in which fans in the NBA have assaulted players, dumping food on Russell Westbrook in Philly, spitting on Trae Young at the Garden, throwing a bottle at Kyrie Irving in Boston, lambasting Ja Morant’s family with racial epithets in Utah. This kind of fan behavior is unacceptable, and part of the larger cultural environment in which we ask athletes to compete. The argument is that we pay them handsomely, and those paychecks mean they are then required to put up with the kind of behavior from fans and the media that no one else is expected to sit back and take.
Westbrook, for instance, said after having food dumped on him following an on-court injury — was blunt.
“There are certain things that cross the line. Any other setting ... a guy were to come up on the street and pour popcorn on my head, you know what happens.”
The league and the arenas acted swiftly, but there are fans who’ve accused Westbrook of overreacting, of making this into something more than it is. I’m not erecting a straw man here — I’ve had actual conversations with friends and other fans who see Westbrook as making something out of nothing. This thinking, I can only assume, stems from the same underlying sense that also informs the response to Osaka, an assumption that the paychecks they are earning, which fans believe they fund directly, means they have to take whatever it is that fans dish out.
Race and gender play roles here, as does a history in which players were treated as chattel, tied to their teams, managers, and sports who then controlled much of their lives.
Let’s also not forget that Osaka is just 23, and that she has been in the public eye for much of her short adult life. Even Westbrook, who we might think of as a grizzled veteran, is only 32. Yet, we are asking them to face pressures on the court, the field, and so, that are well beyond what most others are asked to face. And we add to their pressure by asking them to sit at a podium and answer what are most often inane questions, especially following tough losses, assuming they will be thoughtful and forthright. When they speak up about something important, however, as Osaka has done about Black Lives Matter, as Colin Kaepernick has done with police violence, as LeBron James has done and Dom Smith and so many others, we tell them to shut up and play, or claim they have no authority to speak, that they are just dumb jocks.