By Michael Miner
A lovely notion. But the Knicks players had something else in mind. Ward said, “Jews are stubborn, E. But tell me, why did they persecute Jesus unless he knew something they didn’t want to accept?”
That Sunday afternoon, Ward was booed when he took the court in Madison Square Garden. The Anti-Defamation League accused him and Houston of “anti-Semitism and religious bigotry.” NBA commissioner David Stern said Ward’s remarks “demonstrate zealotry of all types is intolerant and divisive.”
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In the wake of these developments, Bayless decided he could bring something important and still unexpressed to the story–the sensibility of a journalist who, like Ward, has read the Bible and takes it seriously and accepts it as literally true.
To lift the Knicks’ quotes out of this context–which is what the media promptly did–was to “run the risk of encouraging neo-Nazis and skinheads to believe Charlie Ward is sending them a message to get even for Jesus. And that horrifies me more than you know,” Bayless told me. Yet their biblical foundation could not be denied or dismissed. “If you believe the New Testament, as Ward does,” he said, “the statements he made to Konigsberg all ring of truth–but overly harsh and generalized truth.”
Konigsberg wrote that the players in the Bible group “have turned to religion in an effort to comprehend their good fortune.” To Bayless, this was a “cynical” explanation of their faith. I don’t see that, but I do fault Konigsberg for telling us less about the revealing Bible-study session than his readers deserve to know. He wasn’t a fly on the wall there. He participated; what the Knicks said about Jews they said to him for his reaction. Yet aside from a single “What?” there’s no hint of Konigsberg’s contribution to the moment. The players’ language is so provocative that we need to know if it was in any way invited, or if–when Konigsberg presumably defended his faith–the players respected what he said.
Bayless isn’t someone who regards it that way. What he believes, and Charlie Ward might not have thought of, is that God put Christ on earth to be crucified. “I think it was prophesied,” Bayless said. “Jesus had to die for our sins, and to be honest with you, I’m glad that he died. If it was prophesied that Jews would turn on him, that’s great, and I never think twice on it today. That’s like holding the present-day Sioux responsible for the massacre of Custer. I believe in it as a historical fact, but it was part of a grand plan. And I believe in the New Testament enough to believe that in Revelation–what we talked about earlier–that will all come true.”
