Actions speak louder than dunks

By Ron Kantowski

Saturday, Aug. 9, 2008 | 2 a.m.

A couple of months ago, LeBron James went “Outside the Lines” on ESPN, denouncing the Chinese for selling oil and guns to the murdering Sudanese militia. He said he would make an even bigger statement when Team USA got to Beijing.

Unless he plans to make his statement with dunks and rebounds while playing against guys with hard-to-pronounce names and funny-looking jump shots, it’s probably not going to happen.

LeBron was pretty quiet on Darfur and other topics not related to the pick-and-roll play when Team USA arrived in China to sell some shoes — er, win back the gold medal — this week. So was Kobe Bryant. So were Jerry Colangelo and Mike Krzyzewski, the team’s brain trust.

Coach K says the players are not experts on Darfur, so why would you want to ask them about it?

Oh, I don’t know, maybe because in the grand scheme of things it’s more important than who gets his picture on the Wheaties box and who can throw a javelin the farthest?

What if LeBron were to do something big instead of say something big?

On Sunday, Team USA will open pool play against China. There’s that crazy luck of the draw again.

Or maybe it’s those 300 million basketball fans Yao Ming has cultivated that produced this first-round matchup that has hearts aflutter, especially those that beat for companies that sell basketball shoes.

But what if LeBron were to sit out to protest?

What if he talked Kobe into joining him?

And they convinced Jason Kidd and the big guys that sitting out was the thing to do, at least if you care about human rights and that other political stuff?

That’s what Rob Miech, the guy who sits next to me, asked the other day. This is why I like sitting next to Rob. He makes me think about stuff.

Were Team USA to boycott Sunday’s game, all the tea in China would be focused on it instead of one-piece swimsuits and dirty air. You want to make a statement? That would be bigger than the one Donald Trump gets from his bank every month.

It wouldn’t be quite as big as Ali dodging the draft because he “ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet Cong” or the black-fisted salutes of sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the medal stand in Mexico City, because those were statements about the human condition in our country, not somebody else’s, and those expose raw nerves.

My guess is that if Team USA walked off the court and, in a symbolic gesture, met a bunch of Chinese kids down at Tiananmen Square and played pickup ball and signed autographs, they’d be forever linked with Jim Brown, Bill Russell, Billie Jean King and Arthur Ashe. And Joey Cheek, the speed skater who won two medals before using his 15 minutes of fame to become an advocate for human rights and had his visa revoked by the Chinese government before the first Visa commercial of these Olympics ran on TV.

There would be shock and outrage in China. And at NBC headquarters. But eventually, they might be remembered as heroes, even if David Stern would have some more explaining to do.

“People should understand that human rights and people’s lives are in jeopardy,” LeBron said in May. “We’re not talking about contracts here. We’re not talking about money.”

But when Team USA got off its well-appointed tour bus, he and his teammates weren’t talking about anything except maybe getting a hand in Pau Gasol’s face.

“Nothing’s changed,” King James told the press about the situation in Darfur. “It’s just time to play basketball. I’m not a government official or politician. I’ll let them do that.

“We are here to concentrate on a gold medal. Sports and politics just don’t match.”

Maybe not, but then why is it we can never seem to keep them apart?

For me, keeping sports and politics on opposite ends of the field was forever obliterated from the thought process back in high school when I turned on TV to watch Steve Prefontaine run and saw instead a guy with a burlap bag over his head holding a machine gun like he meant business on the balcony of the Olympic Village in Munich.

Becoming a spokesman on the human condition isn’t for everybody. It wasn’t for Michael Jordan, it isn’t for Tiger Woods and, when you think about it, Peyton Manning hasn’t had a lot to say about Darfur, either.

If you were planning to get up at the crack of dawn to watch the game, don’t worry. Team USA is not going to forfeit against China, because money speaks louder than words. And other reasons, with one of those being it may not be the right thing to do.

I’m just saying that if the team did walk, I’d listen.