Whose game? Who’s in the game?

CHARLOTTE (Steve Goldberg's Wheel World) - There's a conversation out there, the subject of which is whether or not able-bodied individuals should be allowed to play competitive wheelchair basketball.

The key word I inject here is "competitive" because that aspect will confine the discussion to essentially everything that isn't pick-up or practice and just games where results matter. What follows here is not resolution but rather endorsement of what should be a productive rather than divisive conversation.

The reason that any of this is on my mind now is that last Monday, I came across a Portuguese website called Paralympic Palette that published an interview with the influential Canadian wheelchair basketball icon, Patrick Anderson.

In it, Anderson was asked his opinion of allowing the integration of non-disabled players into organized, and I'll say it again - competitive - wheelchair basketball.

"I grew up in an environment in Canada where I didn’t even realize there was a debate about it until I got older."

 

Patrick Anderson (CAN) at the 2012 London Paralympics 

"Once I became aware, it wasn't really a hot debate. it was like 'Oh that's interesting. Other places in the world don't do this'. When I looked at my peer group, the guys I played against when I was a teenager, most of them, in my classification, were able-bodied players."

Anderson's comments were in stark contrast to a recent article that wheelchair basketball pioneer and historian Armand "Tip" Thiboutot published a couple of weeks ago on Facebook. In most simplistic form, Anderson is for it and Thiboutot is not.

But nothing is ever that simple.

Both Thiboutot and Anderson have proven their unquestionable passion and dedication to the game which renders both their positions on this valid, though markedly opposite.

Tip brought up the point of whether able-bodied players should be allowed as a point of reference in his bigger-picture argument regarding the democratic process of the NWBA. That is not relevant here; just the topic of able-bodied participation is.

He noted that the NWBA Board of Directors had approved a proposal by the Intercollegiate Division, "to permit able-bodied athletes to participate as Class 4.5 as a pilot test".

In response to a comment to his post about whether those athletes with higher levels of disability are being marginalized in favor of those with lesser impairments in general – a discussion for another time as it applies to this column - Thiboutot responded that he had written about this in his book Wheelchairs Can Jump: "the addition of persons without disabilities would constitute adding the majority to a minority, not the other way around. Integration involves adding a previously excluded part to the whole, while this form of integration proposes including the whole to the part."

Some viewers thought this wheelchair basketball themed Guinness ad was condescending in that the able-bodied players let their friend in a wheelchair play with them. I see it the other way - he let them play with him. 

I get his point in the respect to a valid concern that opening the sport might have the undesired effect of pushing those it was created for out. With just the cost of entry though - the price tag on a quality basketball chair would make the rarest of Air Jordans seem a bargain - I don't see that happening.

In many areas there may not be enough players with a disability to field a team. In others, it may be a desire to up the competitive level as Anderson inferred. (That's never a given though. When I sat in with my Rollin' Hornets friends years ago, my mediocrity in the stand-up game was awesome compared to my despair in the chair. I suddenly acquired a whole new lack of ability.)

"At some point I realized," said Anderson, "if these guys weren’t here this would be pretty dull."

No disrespect intended there; Anderson is that athlete, that person, who always searches to climb a higher mountain, to play against someone better.

"For me that's what the sport is on a fundamental level," he says. "It's not a disabled sport, it's just a sport and I think that has a lot of value. That's why I’m not afraid to say that I think other countries should consider it and maybe at an international level they should do it as well."

He also understands the hesitancy. A former University of Illinois player, he invoked the late Dr. Tim Nugent.

"He and other people from his generation perhaps just had to work so hard to open up opportunities for people with disabilities and they remember what a struggle that was. They are afraid that it is going to disappear if able-bodied players come and play."

Maybe it is a generational thing. Tip was certainly part of the struggle to establish and build the game. He shared a comment from Dr. Nugent on the NWBA situation given last September.

"I was told that the Board had approved able bodied individuals playing on regular collegiate WC teams and that's not their role or responsibility. I hope it isn't true. I am dumbfounded."

Anderson shared his experience that, "In Canada, it's not what happens, it just gets better and richer. Able-bodied players just add to the community in all kinds of positive ways."

The Lehigh University men's and women's basketball teams learned just how hard it is to play wheelchair basketball in an exhibition match-up against the Lehigh Valley Freewheelers in April 2015. The final score was not close. The Lehigh Valley Freewheelers, an organization of disabled athletes, dominated the whole game and won by a score of 75-30. Photo courtesy of Chris Barry/B&W Photo

He also adds that, in a classified system the threat is not to players with greater disability (e.g., 1.0 to 2.5 range) but to athletes like himself, a double lower leg amputee and highest classified at 4.5.

"Generally low class(ification) players don't have a problem with it. It's high class players who can lose their court time."

I believe Tip and Pat are both right but with some very unwavering caveats. I strongly endorse that the Paralympic Games and the primary competitions of the NWBA and other wheelchair basketball leagues around the world should only be for individuals who would qualify for Paralympic participation.

Why? Ask some national soccer team coaches if their domestic leagues develop the players at every position they need when clubs are allowed to fill their rosters with whatever international talent they can afford?

That said, I also think you can have it both ways. Keep the traditional league/divisions as they currently exist and add new ones that allow for able-bodied players, perhaps, for example, a division where there are no classification point rules, one truly open to all players (even though it means some disability levels might be shut out the same way lesser skilled players are in every competitive situation).

What do you think? Let’s talk about it.

Steve Goldberg

FIBA

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