Unfortunate Metaphor

Just caught the fourth quarter of the Lakers/Warriors game from Staples. A player on the Warriors hit two clutch threes in the final 38 seconds to seal the win.

Bob Fitzgerald, understandably excited, said something like, "Every good western has its gunslinger. And tonight, that's Stephen Jackson."

The Stephen Jackson who has this tattoo.

Ric Bucher wrote an excellent profile of Stack Jack last month that doesn't shy away from his history with guns and violence.

It's just interesting to me how prevalent and cherished the "gunslinger" metaphor in our culture (Fitzgerald went on to say this evening that tonight Jackson was "John Wayne.") And personally, I use it all the time. But when an athlete in real life gets shot (Darrent Williams, Shaun Taylor), some of the same people who throw around these labels are the first to moralize about "ghetto mentality" and "thug life." I'm not saying Fitzgerald does that, I'm just noticing the irony. There's a similar dynamic with the term "warrior," which gets thrown around a lot, but then when Kellen Winslow, Jr. rants after a game that he's a "soldier" gets scolded about wounded veterans at Walter Reed (I'm talking about you, Mark May).

So we, as sports fans, should maybe stop using these terms. Or we should lighten up a little when Kevin Garnett takes the metaphor a step further and says he's getting strapped with his "nine, his uzi," etc...Brad Miller certainly added to the levity there when he said he was getting his crossbow and shotgun or whatever Nugent-style arsenal he was going to meet KG with.