The Huntsman Center was lively on Saturday afternoon.
With the stands filled with locals, visitors and celebrities — ranging from former Utah Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell and Jazz part-owner Dwyane Wade to the Rev. Jesse Jackson — Southern University and Grambling State played a hard-fought overtime game in front of a raucous crowd.
Grambling won the game, 69-64, but the significance of having two historically Black college teams on the University of Utah’s campus this weekend went beyond the box score.
The HBCU game was part of an annual showcase that is now in its second year. NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum told The Salt Lake Tribune said the value of the game being in Salt Lake City is exposing Utahns to HBCUs in a setting where they may otherwise not be exposed to them.
“That matters,” Tatum said. “So that people can see it, people can understand it, people can feel it. And I think that is a big part of what we do: We bring people together that might not otherwise come together, and through that comes understanding, comes learning, and hopefully makes us better on both sides.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Orchesis dancers perform with The World Famed Tiger Marching Band from Grambling during a break in the action in the HBCU game between the Grambling State Tigers and the Southern University Jaguars at the Jon M. Huntsman Center, on Saturday, Feb. 18, 2023.
Basketball has brought a sharper lens to problems of racism in Utah of late. The former Jazz guard Mitchell recently detailed his experiences fighting for social justice in Utah and said the backlash he faced from some made it “draining” to play here. On Saturday, Mitchell walked along the Huntsman Center court at halftime of an overtime game between the two historically Black colleges.
A day earlier, the Utah Jazz Hall of Famer Karl Malone and the notorious Beehive State hater Vernon Maxwell sat less than 5 feet from each other this weekend and painted starkly different pictures of their experiences playing professional basketball in Salt Lake City.
“I’ve been in Utah and I’ve never heard a racial slur or anything like that when I played in the arena. I wouldn’t have allowed it,” Malone said. “Utah is my home and I love Utah. I don’t care what you’re thinking in your mind about me if it’s racial. I never heard it. I’ll defend Utah to the death.”
Maxwell, always on a visiting team when he played in Salt Lake, provided a diametrically opposed recollection.
“When I used to come here and play — I mean, I don’t care what team I played with — I was gonna get abused with the N-word,” Maxwell said. “And I used to tell your — God bless him — I told your owner [Larry H. Miller] at halftime, ‘Hey, the fans over here, they’re racist; they’re over here calling me the N-word.’ And nobody ever would do anything or say anything.”
With the NBA holding several events throughout All-Star Weekend geared toward elevating the Black community in Utah and beyond, their contrasting comments hold weight.
After the game, Southern guard Terrell Williams Jr. gave some candid remarks about the significance of the two schools playing in a state where Black people make up only 1.2% of the population. He started by saying the game can show how much class people of color have.
“We don’t take anything for granted,” Williams said. “Just show what we’re about, for real.”
Layton City Council member Bettina Smith Edmondson told The Tribune she brought teenagers and other young students in elementary and middle schools from her community to several of the weekend’s events, including the HBCU game. In doing so, she was “exposing them to this culture and what it’s about,” she said. Layton is 1.8% Black, per the latest U.S. Census data.
Edmondson said the HBCU Classic brought the education, support, unity and professionalism of the Black community to light — aspects that are not always portrayed by the media, she said. Her aim is for the entire state of Utah to work through difficulties among all of its communities in an effort to work together, build toward the future, get more people to come to Utah and make Utah feel welcoming to everyone.
“Those are the things that we want to try to work on,” Edmondson said. “And I think that’s exactly what you’re seeing today. That’s what you’re seeing this weekend. That’s what the NBA is trying to do.”
Case in point: The NBA through its foundation held the first-ever pitch competition Thursday. It featured eight Black entrepreneurs — most of them from Utah — presenting their businesses to a four-person panel of judges in hopes of winning prize money.
Jenna White, a Salt Lake City resident, won the contest’s grand prize of $50,000 with the pitch of her business Empire Body Waxing. She feels Utah needs to recognize that “we have incredible Black businesses and we don’t get the exposure that we deserve.”
“Utah has come a long way, but we still have so far to go,” White said. “So I appreciate that, now, I’m being highlighted in this way so hopefully people can be intentional in where they shop because we’re out here.”
White added that she hopes by the time her children are starting their own businesses, “it’s normal and they won’t have to deal with the nuances and different things that myself and the other members of the Black community have had to deal with.”
Kimmy Paluch, a Salt Lake resident and managing partner at Beta Boom, was one of the four judges at the “Shark Tank”-like competition. She said the event can further the racial and social justice initiatives the NBA has championed in recent years, particularly by addressing the wealth gap that exists due to “systemic reasons.”
“I hope that this is not a moment where we’re just realizing it,” Paluch said. “I think that we’ve been demonstrating our excellence in very many ways. We’re less than 2%, but we’re a very strong community that has been building amazing businesses right here in our state for decades. So it’s been wonderful to have this moment, and I do hope it just reinforces what we already know.”
