Time for Foxboro to decide.

The proverbial feces is about to hit the fan in Foxboro, where the debate over the use of Native American imagery to identify its high school athletic teams will be debated this week, and then decided next week.

The School Committee will have a forum Tuesday night at the Ahern School for residents to offer three-minute presentations on the topic. Then on Oct. 2, at the committee's regular meeting, the issue will be put to a binding vote.

The current Foxboro High sports logo.

There are many ways this can go. Either the town will stop using the logo that was formerly the intellectual property of the NFL franchise in Washington, D.C., or it will also drop the nickname "Warriors," or maybe it will keep "Warriors" and cease any connection to Native American imagery -- something recently done by the King Philip Regional High School athletic program.

The open forum has been limited to Foxboro residents only, although an exception was made for those in the METCO program which brings inner-city youngsters into the Foxboro school system. Would-be speakers had to register to speak, and the School Committee intends to keep a tight rein on the proceedings.

I would have loved to put in my two cents' worth on this issue. I've covered Foxboro sports regionally since the late 1960s and then post-college at The Sun Chronicle and The Patriot Ledger of Quincy from 1977 through 2018. Today, I do occasional work for Foxboro Cable Access, having called several girls' basketball games for Cable 8 Sports including last season's Division 2 state championship game. And I lived in the town from 2002 through 2015. But this is my only forum for personal opinion now, and while I may be as knowledgeable on the subject as anyone that will speak on Tuesday, it's not my place to ask to do so.

Had I the opportunity, however, I may have opened by telling the School Committee that they really botched this process. 

For at least a couple of years prior to the current controversy, Foxboro was already phasing out the Native American imagery. They've done it quietly and without calling attention to it. In most correspondence regarding the athletic program, the former logo of the Washington Redskins, which the NFL team adopted in the early 1970s and didn't appear on Foxboro football helmets until 1983, had disappeared in favor of a stylized blue and gold F. Gradually, the logo also disappeared from the few athletic uniforms that previously had an embroidered version of it. About the only place where the logo was still in use was the football helmets.

This also identifies Foxboro sports.

I have a feeling that an order could have been issued quietly from above to remove the Redskins logo and to replace it with the same logo being used on school correspondence, and no one would have been the wiser. There may have been a few grumbles at first when someone actually noticed the change, but eventually, everyone would have gone on with their lives and dealt with far more pressing issues, and it wouldn't have become a public bitch fest -- which it has already become, given the petitions circulating around town and the signs touting "Warrior Pride" on front lawns.

But no, the school committee brought this up several months ago and had a series of meetings, and public pronouncements of angst attracted the Boston TV stations' cameras to chronicle yet another battle over political correctness brewing in the commonwealth. It now has a life of its own.

Even my former newspaper has chimed in. They've suggested in different editorials to drop the logo, to drop "Warriors," and even to rename the Foxboro teams after the professional football team that calls the town home. Personally, I don't believe there's a lot of sentiment in favor of the latter -- especially now that the Brady-less Patriots can barely beat the New York Jets. 

The fact is, this could have all been handled quietly and with sensitivity to Native American culture by dropping the Redskins logo that was ripped off Washington's helmets in 2020. They could have kept "Warriors," as King Philip has, without the triggering imagery.

I imagine the oratory will be emotional on Tuesday. There will be townies that will decry wokeness and blame Communists and so on, and there will be well-meaning individuals that will try to point out that the younger generation of Foxboro students are rejecting the old stereotypes and trying to show more respect to other races and other cultures.

Foxboro, after all, is changing. Once one of the whitest communities in the commonwealth, the student population (currently about 2,500) is 74.6 percent white, 8.6 percent Hispanic, 7.5 percent African-American and 5.2 percent Asian. The numbers from the state Department of Education also indicate that Foxboro's student population is 0.2 percent Native American. The kids don't do the tomahawk chop at their games and they probably don't have the same feelings for the old logo as their parents did -- or maybe even their grandparents.

Now that this has become a full-blown issue, I don't see a happy ending for those that want to embrace the current logo, and maybe even the nickname. Natick, Barnstable, Nashoba Regional, Taconic High of Pittsfield and several others have either changed their nicknames or dropped Native American imagery, or both. Walpole dropped "Rebels" and Westford Academy altered "Grey Ghosts" to simply "Ghosts" because their nicknames carried the hint of Confederate taint. Stonehill College and Bryant University made clean sweeps of old nicknames and imagery. Others like Tewksbury, Braintree and Dartmouth have battled tooth-and-nail to keep theirs.

My compromise for Foxboro, because it has increased visibility from the Patriots' presence in town, would be to drop the logo and keep Warriors -- and then hope that some attention-seeking lawmaker doesn't again file a bill in the state legislature seeking a complete ban of nicknames and logos with even a hint of Native American imagery. It's already happened four times in the last decade, and one of these days, one of those bills may make it out of committee and force everyone to adopt non-offensive monikers such as "Screaming Turtles" or "River Rabbits."

I feel for Foxboro. I really do. Nobody likes to be told to do something. But maybe we should remember that "Redskins" was a slur from the very beginning, and its sports use originated right in our own backyard, with the Boston Redskins NFL franchise that adopted the name in 1933 and kept it when it moved to Washington in 1937. I would not want the former logo of that team to be associated with my community solely for those reasons.

This Hornet offends no one.

But then again, I don't have to worry about that in my hometown. In the 1940s, one of the more popular serials on national radio was "The Green Hornet," stories of a crusading newspaper publisher named Britt Reid that fought crime at night as a costumed hero, with his trusty Asian sidekick Kato at his side. When Mansfield High School students were polled to adopt a nickname, they voted overwhelmingly for "Green Hornets," with "Marauders" a distant second. 

To date, nobody I know has been offended by "Green Hornets" or the accompanying insect imagery -- although the students of the 1970s embraced The Incredible Hulk as an alternate mascot (well ahead of the curve of Hulk's current popularity) without changing the nickname. But fortunately, the students of the 1940s were wise not to create a mascot based on the Kato character. We'd be in a world of hurt over that, I suspect.

I wish my friends in Foxboro the best of luck in settling this without too many ruffled feathers. I'd have a hard time thinking of the Foxboro Warriors as anything else. And I think there's still time for the art of compromise to preserve "Warriors" for a long time, no matter what the state legislature does. I'll probably tune into Foxboro Cable Access to see how the battle is waged.

Sad to be losing 'Winning Time.'

Larry Bird, Red Auerbach, Magic Johnson and Dr. Jerry Buss in "Winning Time."

Yes, I know it was basically pro-Los Angeles Lakers propaganda.

Yes, I know it was highly dramatized and that it played fast and loose with the truth.

Yes, I know that it was intended as entertainment, and not as a documentary.

I still very much enjoyed "Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty" on HBO. And I'm sad that the network I first paid to see as Home Box Office in 1976 has decided to cancel it with so much of the story untold.

HBO has not been kind to my favorite shows of late. Most recently, they decided not to renew the grittier take on "Perry Mason" that was a tour de force for Welsh actor Matthew Rhys (late of "The Americans") in the role that Raymond Burr originated on the late-1950s CBS show of the same name. And now, they've blown up "Winning Time," based on the book by former sportswriter Jeff Pearlman about the emergence of the franchise under the frenetic "Showtime" ownership of Dr. Jerry Buss.

The show got two seasons, but it may have gotten off on the wrong foot right off the bat by changing the name from that of the book -- after all, "Showtime" is the name of a competing, CBS-owned premium cable network. And in many ways, the cable Showtime has been kicking HBO's ass with quality programs for a while now, so the Warner Bros./Discovery empire was not about to give CBS free publicity. 

Kind of like the Lakers and the Celtics. But I digress.

The fictional LA Lakers of 1984

"Winning Time" opened on March 6, 2022, with Earvin "Magic" Johnson (played admirably and endearingly by newcomer Quincy Isaiah) learning for the first time of his HIV diagnosis inside a hospital examination room. That was certainly enough to pull me in from the start -- but little did I know that we'd never revisit that moment despite its importance to the entire Lakers saga because the series would end abruptly on Sunday night. As I said in a social media post, that left an extinction-level crater in the plot for all time.

As the series unfolded, we were introduced to quite a few compelling, if exaggerated, characters -- John C. Reilly (whose gifts as a likeable character actor keep him working steadily) as the flamboyant team owner whose intricate comb-over must have been Donald Trump's inspiration; Jason Segal as the out-of-his-element coach Paul Westhead; Adrien Brody in a steadily more appealing portrayal of player-turned-announcer-turned-coach Pat Riley; Jason Clarke as a foul-mouthed and wound-too-tight Jerry West; DeVaughn Nixon (Laker guard Norm Nixon's son) as his father; Solomon Hughes as the gruff, aging Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; Sean Patrick Small as a surprisingly believable Larry Bird; Michael Chiklis as Red Auerbach (a great villain for this tale if ever there was one); and Hadley Robinson as Jeanie Buss, the owner's daughter, who was starting to emerge as the heir apparent to the Laker legacy before the premature demise of the series ended the storyline.

Jason Clarke as the fictionalized Jerry West.

Almost immediately upon the show's debut, the critics started chirping with their all-too-pious nitpicks over the accuracy of the subject matter. At the top of that list was the portrayal of Jerry West, whose lawyers demanded apologies and retractions regarding the over-the-top portrayal by Clarke as the ex-Laker star and eventual general manager. I've seen more than my share of sportswriters that covered the Lakers -- even the great Bob Ryan, whose coverage of the Celtics of that era is the stuff of legend -- offering testimony that the "real" Jerry West was not the cartoon figure he was portrayed as in "Winning Time."

Well, I'm sure that's so. But once I got the feel of this show, I didn't much care. I wasn't looking for a Ken Burns documentary. I was looking for something to make me laugh and keep me watching -- and listening to the Jerry West character unleashing megaton-level tirades against coaches, players and even Dr. Buss kept me coming back.

Besides, seeing that incorporated into this long, lingering wet kiss to the Lakers of the early 1980s helped me to forget the indignities heaped upon Boston and the Celtics in the name of dramatic license.

Of course, the show portrayed the Celtics and Auerbach as entitled and condescending. Given that the franchise absolutely dominated the NBA in the years before anyone really cared about pro basketball, perhaps it was deserved. It certainly served the narrative.

Yes, I quibbled with the portrayal of Boston basketball fans and all Bostonians in general as racist assholes. That's just too familiar and too easy a stereotype that screenwriters use to set the scene of anything involving Boston. We're either all hoodlums from Charlestown or the bastard sons of Whitey Bulger, and we all speak with the flattest R's and all extend the word "there" to two or three syllables, and I'm just fucking sick of it. By the way, all Italian-Americans are mafioso, as well.

But again, it was just a story. I didn't lose any sleep over it. I may have been more upset that they absolutely blew the rare casting and use of Celtics play-by-play legend Johnny Most during the narrative. Johnny was a unique character in real life, no getting around that, but what "Winning Time" presented was unrecognizable to me.

Sean Patrick Small and Quincy Isaiah as Larry and Magic.

At the same time, I thought as the show progressed into its second season and matured in its narrative, it took great pains to present a more balanced and relatable version of Larry Bird to its Laker-friendly audience. One of the episodes this season compared and contrasted the personal and private lives of Bird and Johnson as they faced both triumph and tragedy on the road to an eventual battle-of-the-titans showdown that they both wanted and needed to legitimize their legacies.

Dyed-in-the-wool Angelinos probably still hated Larry Bird after that episode, but I have to believe they may have respected him more after getting a glimpse of what made him what he was. And even if it was fictionalized, it was still worthwhile to watch.

After two seasons, I really came to appreciate that "Winning Time," while intended to lionize the Lakers of the 1980s, wasn't afraid to show a few warts as well. There was a lot of in-house tension both on the court and off it, and the off-court stories (even if wildly exaggerated) are what fueled my continued interest in the narrative. I particularly enjoyed John C. Reilly's frequent breaking of the fourth wall to converse with viewers about Dr. Buss' occasionally slap-dash motivations. But at the end of the day, learning that the show had been canceled left me feeling like waiting all day to hit the free shrimp at the end of the press box buffet line, only to find they're run out by the time I got there.

The series ended happily for Celtics fans, with Bird & Co. winning the 1984 title and leaving the Lakers to sulk in the old Garden's locker room. (And as an aside, how about that CGI? The old scoreboard, the tiered upper balconies, the banners in the rafters ... they really made it look as if the old Garden had been reconstructed and used for filming the basketball scenes. Kudos!)

But that clearly wasn't where it supposed to end.

Season 3, I'm told, was supposed to be about the Lakers' redemption. But there are other topics I'd have wanted to see. For instance, it's now well-known that Bird and Johnson left their personal animus behind when they filmed a commercial for Converse shoes in the 1984 offseason. They later wrote a book together (with former Globe writer Jackie MacMullan) about the formation and strength of their friendship. Would we have seen that reach the small screen? I also wonder if the show would have reached Dr. Buss' losing battle with lung cancer and the eventual groundbreaking succession of Jeanie Buss as the team's owner.

And of course, there was that opening sequence about Magic's HIV diagnosis. We never will see how "Winning Time" would have treated that.

And that's a damn shame. 

The whole thing may not have been entirely true, but then again, Donald Trump was our president for four miserable years. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. But at least fiction is still more entertaining.

The Owner's Box, Ep. 49

Norwood hoop coach Kristen McDonnell makes her fourth appearance on the podcast.

A good podcast is usually the result of having good guests. So it is for Episode 49 of The Owner's Box, in which I welcomed Norwood High School girls' basketball coach Kristen McDonnell to Fulton Pond Studios (virtually, at least) for her fourth appearance on the show.

It was the first time in 53 months that we've been together on the podcast, so we had a lot to talk about. We discussed her transition back to coaching girls from a successful stint with the boys' team, during which she led Norwood to a state title game. She also explained her innovative summer program of "pickup basketball" for high school girls, and she even offered me a few tips about what to expect if I get a knee replacement.

It's always a pleasure to talk hoops with Kristen, who is as successful and knowledgeable a coach as there is in Massachusetts these days. I hope you'll enjoy listening to it as much as we did recording it.