Fuck Yea[h] NBA

“In 2006, after a long college night, a friend slurred, “Magic Johnson is Luke Walton with ‘black guy athleticism!’” It remains the dumbest statement I’ve ever heard, even with the circumstances considered. Magic Johnson was a basketball genius whose skills could not be replicated by giving a bench player some imaginary blackness elixir. Magic was also a mediocre leaper who walked like a hunched duck when he dribbled.”

It’s not often you find a writer talented enough to write about race in the NBA without making it sound like they’re condescending to their audience, or trying to further some alterior motive. Ethan Sherwood Strauss’ HoopSpeak post So White Guys ‘Do the Most with the Least’ doesn’t fall into that trap. 

Strauss is discussing the Annual General Manager’s survey; every year the survey has been conducted the question: “Which player does the most with the least?” has always been answered almost exclusively with white players. In a league where 4 out of 5 guys are black, this is a pretty interesting takeaway from the survey on a yearly basis.

Strauss makes a bunch of solid points about why the issue of race shrouds the general manager’s answers. Are white guys really less athletic, and only successful in the NBA because they work hard and have a high basketball IQ? Are black players only successful because they’re athletic? Why do GM’s associate athleticism and natural ability with blackness and “doing more with less” to a white pigment. 

It’s because that’s the overriding way many view success in the NBA after factoring in race, and EVERYONE factors in race—whether we want to admit it or not. It clouds onlooker’s judgements about a player, even general managers that make personnel decisions.  

Here’s how Strauss concludes the column:

“Something feels wrong about this. Hey white player, your talent is actually wisdom. Hey black player, your wisdom is actually talent. I am not sure how to correct these stereotypes, but can we at least acknowledge their power?

I am often told by readers, “Race isn’t a factor in how (some particular athlete) is perceived!” Nash doesn’t receive any more favorable media coverage, LeBron isn’t afforded any more undue hatred, it’s a peachy world where nobody sees color or ascribes certain attributes to the hue. Dude, if race was not a major factor in how people get perceived, race would not exist. The neighborhood to my left is nearly exclusively black. The neighborhoods to my right are overwhelmingly white. If race can dictate where people live their lives, it can certainly influence how players are viewed.”

It’s worth questioning how these surveys are answered when consistently—every year—a group of white players (this year it was Kevin Love, Luis Scola, and Steve Nash) are ranked in the top three for “doing the most with least.” Why are Caucasian players considered harder workers doing more with less? If you flip it, why are black players only successful because of some innate athleticism?

Strauss’ example for why this trope is still pervasive is the film: White Men Can’t Jump. You don’t even need to be familar with the film (love you Rosie Perez), to know why this is a pretty apt analogy. The title says it all.

Here’s where it gets uncomfortable: if white guys incapable of being athletic are black guys incapable of working hard? That last clause in the hypothetical question probably made everyone reading shake their heads (and it should!) because it’s a fallacy popularized by bigoted white Americans in the early part of our country’s history to deride African-Americans as innately less than white Americans.

Thankfully, that line of thinking is in this country’s rear-view mirror, and yet, here we are in 2012 faced with these same questions on race. If we try to avoid them they become even more internalized and covert, and consequently, more likely to continue. 

Racism still exists in America and elsewhere, and it’s not likely to go away if we bury our head’s in the sand when important questions about race, like the one postulated by Strauss, are asked. The racism these days isn’t on the surface though, it’s buried deep within our collective psyche. 

I’ll never forget hearing Larry Bird say (I forget on which video or special I originally heard the quote)

“As far as playing, I didn’t care who guarded me - red, yellow, black. I just didn’t want a white guy guarding me, because it’s disrespect to my game.”

Larry Bird said this, and a lot of people probably heard it and nodded in silent confirmation.   

Race is still a wedge issue in America today, and it colors our opinions on a subconscious level. To use one of Strauss’ examples, what makes Steve Nash able to do more with less when compared with Chris Paul? Paul is probably slower and less athletic than Nash because of his hobbled knee. Does Nash do more with less because he’s white? Of course not, but that’s the consensus because he’s Caucasian—at least, that’s one of the takeaways from the GM survey.  

A lot of answers in the survey don’t make sense (like Strauss’ ridiculous friend from college and his Magic-Luke Walton comparison). If the GM’s are answering as honestly as possible, that just means a player’s race is more embedded in their decision-making about those players than we’re likely to admit.

It’s a shame this isn’t discussed on larger outlets like ESPN or Yahoo Sports (Strauss writes for ESPN on occasion), but it makes a lot of people uncomfortable, and it has a tendency to backfire (I’m sure some people will have a problem with this post). 

No one wants to admit they’re judging a book by it’s cover; especially, when that metaphorical cover is one’s skin pigment.  But what other conclusion can you draw from these annual GM surveys?

I’m just glad a talented writer like Strauss made the correlation and wrote about it in a concise and insightful way, at least more so than I’ve attempted to do here.

Hopefully next year either Chris Paul, David West or Al Jefferson are in the top three that “do more with less,” but I doubt it. It’s the same reason I doubt Kevin Love will make the “most athletic” list or Dirk Nowitzki the “best finishers” list. 

[HoopSpeak; Pics: via & via]