There are bad ideas, there are terrible ideas, and then there are ideas so aggressively, almost artistically misguided that you have to wonder if someone in the room actively hates Black people—or at the very least assumes we won’t notice.
Social media has actually been floating the idea of calling the possible NBA expansion team in Las Vegas the…..wait for it….”Spades.”
Fam! Fam, again!
This is why Black folks have been raging against the destruction of Black History at the hands of the Grand Wizard-in-chief. Because the next thing you know, you’re going to look up and the Houston Rockets will be playing the Las Vegas Sambos.
Seriously. Even kicking around the idea of calling the Vegas team the “Spades” isn’t just tone-deaf, it’s Tone-Loc.
Like, are ya’ll good?
I’m not going to hold your hand when I tell you that a “spade” isn’t just a card suit (As I know some users thought it would be cute to call the NBA team the “Spades” since the WNBA team is the “Aces”). The word has a long, ugly history as a racial slur aimed at Black people. Not “kind of problematic.” Not “depending on context.” We’re talking about a term that has been used explicitly and repeatedly to demean, dehumanize, and flatten Black folks into a caricature. The kind of language that lived comfortably alongside segregation signs and Jim Crow punchlines.
And this is why Black History matters. The term “Spade” as a racial slur goes all the way back to early 20th-century Europe and the U.S., tied to the black suit in playing cards and weaponized as shorthand for Blackness itself. It gained traction in American vernacular during a time when racism wasn’t coded—it was casual, explicit, and socially acceptable. It sat in the same linguistic junk drawer as other slurs we all agree are radioactive. The difference is that “spade,” for whatever reason, sometimes slips through conversations with a shrug, as if history just…expired.
Source: History Tells Us Las Vegas ‘Spades’ Is A Bad Idea For An NBA Team Name
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