A promotional television advertisement has outraged several black American former stars of the National Basketball League (NBL) who said a scene featuring a black player hopping into bed with a white couple is insensitive and racist.
The commercial shows a series of Australian basketball players throwing a ball around a suburban house. Near the end, Sydney Kings forward Taj McCullough, who is black American, leaps onto a white couple’s bed and nuzzles up to the woman. McCullough is the only black player featured in the commercial.
Former Melbourne Tigers player Darryl McDonald slammed the commercial.
“It puts black Americans in a bad light,” McDonald, who is also black American, told Sydney’s Daily Telegraph. “That commercial has nothing to do with basketball. Nobody else would present their sport this way.”
Cal Bruton and Leroy Loggins, black Americans who became naturalized Australians after starring in Australia’s domestic league in the 1980s with the now defunct Brisbane Bullets, were both highly critical of the concept of the advertisement.
Bruton said it was particularly insensitive because it calls to mind the case of former Brisbane Bullets player Bryant Matthews.
Matthews, a black American, was convicted in 2007 of raping a white woman who was in bed with her partner at the time of the attack.
Although Bruton was hesitant to dub the spot overtly racist, he did say it was in “poor taste.”
“To be portrayed in that light, to me, just was a little bit below the belt,” Bruton said yesterday.
“You wouldn’t ever see an ad like that of Kobe Bryant jumping into bed in America,” he said.
Loggins, who played for Australia at the 1992 Olympics, said the depiction in the ad was off-key.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Loggins said. “Why would you show a black American jumping into bed with a man’s wife to promote basketball? I don’t even know how someone could think up a commercial like that. You would never see any other sport in the world, that takes themselves seriously, portraying a black athlete that way.”
The Ten Network has been airing the commercial for the past two weeks. Ten’s head of sports marketing, Sam Heard, said yesterday there were no plans to pull the ad.
An NBL spokesman said the league would issue a statement on the controversy later yesterday.
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