The former NBA first overall pick Kwame Brown, often known for being outspoken and his public rants about life, society and what’s wrong with culture and sports, joins The Pivot today for an in-depth conversation about who he truly is as a man and what he stands for.
Ryan, Channing and Fred sit down with Kwame to peel back the layers of this once basketball great and find out if it’s anger or frustration that fuel his words.
Selected as the first overall pick at age of 19 in 2001, Kwame talks about his experience as a child and rough upbringing to making it out to discover a life as not just a professional basketball player, but one of the best in the country at his young age.
Kwame talks about playing with Michael Jordan, the misconceptions of his rookie year and why he was labeled a problem player and later known as a bust. He shares his experience of playing with Kobe Bryant and being on the court for the legend’s historic 81 point performances and also how Kobe shaped him as a better player and man.
Sharing his truth regarding past issues and incidents between his ongoing battle with Stephen A Smith, the use of the word bust and former players speaking out on him- Kwame is not holding back and using his voice as an open book through his platform.
Working now to help today’s youth and provide an outlet and teach through his experiences, Kwame is focused on bringing reality to young men in the community and helping them evolve into better people with hope through opportunities.
The light-colored jersey blends right in with the floorboards—causing problems for digital advertisers.
Just when you thought companies couldn’t possibly shove more advertisements into your eye sockets, technology proved it was possible. Digital (or virtual) ads are promos inserted into media post-production or in real time. They first emerged in video games, then started creeping into TV shows on streaming platforms. And during the pandemic, digital ads began making their way onto the basketball court in NBA broadcasts.
On top of ensuring that nowhere in sports is safe from commercialization, the virtual ads have had at least one other, unintended side effect: They killed a well-loved team uniform. In a green screen-style snafu, certain jerseys were too close in color to the polished wooden floors of NBA arenas. Thus, digital ads ended up distorted by players wearing the offending outfits, as first reported by Paul Lukas, the uniform-obsessed aesthetics aficionado who writes the popular UniWatch newsletter.
Specifically, the proliferation of digital ads forced the Milwaukee Bucks’ to give up their cream-colored jerseys. The uniforms were an alternate used during some games from 2017-2020. The colorway was inspired by the team’s home city nickname (in turn, inspired by a local building material). Fans of the Wisconsin franchise loved the look, according to Lukas who spoke with the Bucks’ chief marketing officer, Dustin Godsey. “It was incredibly well received,” Godsey told Lukas. “It helped us kind of build that Cream City brand.”
But there was a problem. The teams’ sponsors started noticing that players wearing the jerseys were getting in the way of their ads—and reported a “pixelation effect,” said Godsey. As a result, the Milwaukee uniforms (and all cream uniforms) were banned NBA-wide. The move also impacts the Philadelphia 76ers, who’ve had a “parchment” colored uniform variant in rotation for the past three seasons, according to Lukas.
It may seem a small thing, but the off-white prohibition is a clear signal of the growing influence that advertisers are having in the sports league and beyond—and the technology enabling that influence. Ad tech is big business, arguably the biggest business—maybe even the only business.
Target 8 takes you inside the investigation into a brutal 2019 double murder as the feds search for their killer, one of the 15 most wanted suspects in America. (Feb. 8, 2022)
Sylvia Mendez knows a thing or two about breaking barriers. But, as she noted Wednesday, this may have been her first time cutting a ceremonial ribbon.
Not far from where she and her brothers were denied enrollment at a school because of their Mexican heritage, setting in motion a landmark desegregation case with national reverberations, the civil rights icon visited Westminster High School to help dedicate a brand new learning pavilion named in her honor.
“I am very aware how much work went into putting this together,” Mendez said. “Muchísimas gracias. I am so grateful, and so thank you. Thank you very much.”
On an outside wall, a towering mural created by artist Chuck Adame — with the help of fellow artists Israel “Ezra” Cervantes and Jose Joaquin — captures both the vision of the pavilion and the significance of Mendez v. Westminster.
The dignified profile of Sylvia Mendez occupies the top left corner of the mural, along with the year her case was resolved. Also depicted are her parents, Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez, the Presidential Medal of Freedom she was awarded in 2011, a blindfolded Lady Justice, books with the term “equality” written on their spines in multiple languages, and the Japanese kanji character for “harmony.” The latter symbolizes the family’s bond with members of the Munemitsu family who leased their farmland to the Mendezes after being ordered to an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II.
This story begins in 1943, also in Westminster. That’s where Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez tried to enroll Sylvia and her brothers, Geronimo and Gonzalo, at 17th Street School, known as “the white school.”
But district officials directed the family to Hoover Elementary, a campus for Mexican American children. Sylvia Mendez, just 8 years old at the time, would later describe Hoover as “a terrible little shack” with dirt for a playground.
Her parents hired a local attorney, who later consolidated the case with four other Orange County families who were willing to take legal action. Mendez, et al v. Westminster claimed that 5,000 children throughout the county were unjustly harmed by unconstitutional segregation policies.
The families won a groundbreaking victory in the U.S. District Court in 1946 that was upheld by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals the following year. On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Brown v. Board of Education decision, which asserted that all laws promoting school segregation were unconstitutional.
Gonzalo Mendez died in 1964, and Felicitas Mendez died in 1998. In accordance with her mother’s wishes, Sylvia Mendez has spent much of her post-retirement life speaking publicly about the case and talking to students about the importance of education.
She’s now 85, and there is little doubt that her efforts to raise awareness have been successful, expanding the case’s profile across the country.
The Santa Ana Unified School District opened Gonzalo Felicitas Mendez Fundamental Intermediate School in 2000. More recently, the Westminster School District rededicating its central office with a marquee that reads, “Westminster School District, In Honor of La Familia Mendez.” And last year, Felicitas Mendez became the subject of a Google Doodle.
“In Mendez v. Westminster there was no violence, I have to tell you,” she said. “People came together to right a wrong. It took my parents and the other families a lot of courage. This court case is all about the struggle for equal education and for basic human rights.”
An investigation is underway at an Indiana high school after a photo caption in the school’s 2020 yearbook listed a student on the boys basketball team as “BLACK GUY” instead of by his name.
After images of the photo in the Brown County High School yearbook were posted to social media Monday, the superintendent apologized that evening in a Facebook Live video.
“It has been brought to our attention that that yearbook has a truly incomprehensible statement included in it,” the superintendent, Laura Hammack, said, adding that officials were “trying to better understand what that situation is all about.”
Hammack declined a request for an interview Thursday and referred NBC News to a statement she and Brown County High School principal, Matthew Stark, released Monday.
Brown County High School is a public school in Nashville, roughly 50 miles south of Indianapolis. There were 577 students enrolled in the 2019-20 school year, the majority of whom — 92.2 percent — are white, according to state data.
Earlier on Wednesday, Quaker Oats announced it’s retiring the 130-year-old Aunt Jemima brand and logo. “As we work to make progress toward racial equality through several initiatives, we also must take a hard look at our portfolio of brands and ensure they reflect our values and meet our consumers’ expectations,” the Pepsi (PEP)-owned company said in a statement.
Uncle Ben’s owner Mars is planning to change the rice maker’s “brand identity” — one of several food companies planning to overhaul logos and packaging that have long been criticized for perpetuating harmful racial stereotypes.
And Conagra, which makes Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup, said it would conduct a complete brand and packaging review. Conagra noted it “can see that our packaging may be interpreted in a way that is wholly inconsistent with our values.”
USC has revoked the season ticket and Trojan Athletic Fund membership privileges from football booster Marla Brown after her series of tweets Sunday night.
In a statement, USC athletic director Mike Bohn said the university quickly investigated the matter and that Brown’s account has been flagged to ensure she cannot make future purchases.
“Thank you to the USC community for helping us identify this individual so that we could move to swiftly terminate our relationship,” Bohn said. “We stand in solidarity with the Black community.”
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