Sportswriter Mike Wise Explains Issues With Pacers’ Locker Room Music

Last week, Washington Post columnist Mike Wise expressed his concern with the music being played in the Pacers’ locker room before games. After receiving some outrage on Twitter, he elaborated on those thoughts today.

In an interview with XXL, Wise acknowledged that as someone who has been covering the NBA since the mid-90s, he remembers the days when Charles Oakley and the Knicks used to come out to Biggie‘s “Mo Money, Mo Problems”. But he says over time, he’s changed his stance on the relationship between basketball and hip-hop:

At the time it was almost a rite of passage; if you understood the message or maybe a lyric that a player liked or felt connected to, all of a sudden you were connected to that person, and it was almost like, “Oh this is cool, I’m in the sanctuary, I’m down with the fellas,” you know? And you know, you get older, you listen to the words, and you realize we live in a little more, hopefully, time of elevated consciousness when it comes to stuff. And you start hearing it differently, and you go, “Well, hold on, that’s N-bomb this, N-Bomb that, that’s B-s and hoes,” and it was just like, wow, that’s not how I remember it.

Wise also said he felt that no one wanted to have a honest conversation with him about the issue, and that if teams want to play music with explicit lyrics, perhaps they could consider using the radio edit versions. Before conducting this interview, Wise also wrote a column over the weekend explaining why he thinks the locker room music is a problem.

(via XXL)

What do you think about Mike Wise’s comments?

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