RE-POST WHO ARE THESE CLOWNS? - MIKE IN DA - JUNE 28, 2010

Re-Post, This summer got pretty brutal. So brutal, Mike in Da had to sound off.  Mike's scoreboard is looking pretty impressive: Birthday Bit removed from the Morning Show, the Joe O'Donnel Experiment axed, and a few more

WHO ARE THESE CLOWNS?
Written by: Astro Mike Ganis aka Mike In DA

Date Posted: 6/28/2010

This past Saturday night (June 26) on SportsRadio610, Ben Nance and Joe O'Donnell hosted the 7-11 pm time slot. Except for the overnight hours when vampires roam the streets, these four hours are the equivalent of the elephant graveyard for sports talk. That's where shows usually go to die.

First off, I don't know Joe O'Donnell from Rosie O"Donnell or Ben Nance from Jim Nantz and by the way they handled their show, I don't really care to know them.

Because the NBA draft was last Thursday, they had a related topic. Although this topic has been beaten to death plenty of times before on various sports talk shows, the guys decided to ask why there are so few American born white players in the NBA and if and when will the trend turn around.

Before I go any further, my answer to the last question about when will the trend turn around is when the 13th Amendment is repealed and Blacks are banned from the NBA. Case closed!


These guys were talking about the "research" they did for this topic, like they were doing a PhD thesis on DNA. Well, if they did their "research" correctly, all these guys had to do was check out the list of top 100 local high school boys' basketball players in the Houston area or the Top 100 nationally ranked kids by MaxPreps, ESPN, rivals.com, etc. They could have also checked 8th grade lists also. There aren't too many crackers on those lists.


The hosts from their in-depth "research" pointed out the fact that only two White Americans were drafted this year. They also had stats over the last decade showing the small number of White Americans who played in the NBA All-Star Games.

We know there aren't too many White Americans in the Association. They are so few and far between, I can name most of them off the top of my head in one paragraph: Chase Budinger, Brian Scalabrine, Troy Murphy, Kirk Hinrich, Chris Anderson, J.J. Redick, Jason Williams, Jeff Foster, Chris Kaman, Luke Walton, Kevin Love, Luke Ridnour, David Lee, Nick Collison, Spencer Hawes, Matt Bonner, Joel Przybilla, Steve Blake, Mike Miller, Mike Dunleavy Jr., Brad Miller, and Adam Morrison. I missed some, but you get the idea. There really aren't that many.


The guys asked why do players like Adam Morrison, J.J. Redick, etc., perform so well in college and not as well in the NBA. They didn't even see the purpose of drafting white guys like Gordon Hayward because they are probably doomed to fail or at least underperform in the NBA.


If you look at Duke basketball, you'll see that their white players dominate in the college ranks, but when they get to the league they seem to stay on a team for a year or two or three and then they're out. That pretty much goes for any White American basketball player that plays college ball.

Callers started chiming in and well over half of the callers were Blacks and most were right on target with their responses. During one call, the caller in his response couldn't think of the name of a white player who played in the NBA in the 1970's and who averaged over 40 ppg in his college career with his dad as head coach and who later died of a heart attack while playing a pickup game. The two hosts were clueless as to who this caller was referring to. How many possible answers are there for that question?

So I thought I'd call in and tell these guys how disappointed I was that they didn't know who Pete Maravich was. By the time I got on air, which was about a half hour later, one of them said they knew it was Pistol Pete and he was the guy's favorite player. I assume he googled it or someone e-mailed or texted in Pete's name because a half hour earlier, the guy didn't realize the caller was talking about the host's favorite player. I don't know how old the said host is, but since Maravich retired in 1980, the host had to be at least into his early 40's, which I personally find hard to believe.


I then continued with my call, in effect echoing what most of the previous callers were saying. I kept on saying that the lack of White players in the league is due to their absence of athleticism, which makes them a problem on the defensive end of the court. Before I could go any further, they cut me off and thanked me for calling. That was just when I was starting to get warmed up.

These bozos could not accept the fact that Blacks are athletically superior to Whites in hoops, as caller upon caller insisted. And they expect a turnaround somewhere down the road. Who are these guys kidding?


White Americans are not important to the NBA's success. Most white fans want to see top quality basketball and even though many may be mildly racially biased to a degree, they don't mind it if the court is full of Blacks and/or White non-Americans.

I've been following the NBA almost since its inception. In the late 1940's and early '50's, I was a Laker fan because the bespectacled goofy-looking George Mikan was my favorite player. During the period when the majority of players in the league were white, the NBA was basically a regional league that was not as popular as the NCAA. Remember that the 1980 NBA Final was shown on tape delay. So a statement that the NBA's most successful days were when the league was dominated by White Americans is false. Even in the days when White players were the majority, it was the Black guys who built the NBA into what it is today going back to the playing days of Bill Russell, Wilt, the Big O, Elgin Baylor, Sam Jones, Hal Greer, Lenny Wilkens, Elvin Hayes, Walt Frazier, Nate Thurmond, and then Kareem and Doctor Erving.


If you are searching for the peak of the NBA's popularity, you have to look to the '90s, specifically during the second Chicago Bulls run before the lockout. The NBA was arguably the most popular of the big four pro leagues and it had classic Finals match-ups between the Bulls and Jazz, one of the best match-ups of all time.

The NBA was already dominated by black superstars at this point, with a few White American superstars in the league during the '80s like Larry Bird and Kevin McHale. Black superstars paved the way for that awesome decade of basketball in the '90s that, even with the thuggish tactics of the Knicks, was the most exciting period of the NBA.

During the '90s, I don't remember many White Americans who were elite NBA players, though Chris Mullin of the Warriors could be considered as such. So if you are telling me that the reason the NBA had such a big following was because of White Americans, you are off your rocker. The NBA has never had to rely on White stars to succeed like the NFL and the MLB, so I don't know why many feel that having white athletes equals mainstream popularity.

Is the United States still so racially biased that people believe that Americans will tune in more to watch a White athlete at the top of his sport over a Black one?

It's obvious that White American players' lack of athleticism is what makes them a liability in hoops. In the last decade or so, foreign players are starting to dominate the game like black athletes do. Steve Nash is a great player and so is Dirk Nowitzki. There are many non-American white players that are very successful, while the percentage of White American athletes is falling, as the non-American white players are rising.


There's a hell of a lot of running and jumping going on in basketball. I'm saying that all other skills being equally developed, the ones with the greatest athleticism are at an advantage. That's pretty straight forward.


Basketball is a sport where explosive athleticism is a major advantage. Sure, developed skills are extremely important too, but I believe Blacks are at the top of the food chain when it comes to athleticism.


While certain players can shoot the lights out, if they are not able to keep up with the quickness of today's athletes, then what good are they.


If all other skills are equally developed, but the Black athlete is more powerfully explosive, he's got the edge, hence greater representation in the league. It's a league about winning, so teams will take whoever gives them the best chance to win.

No sense tap dancing around it, looking for every intricate answer but the obvious one. Occam's Razor applies here. That's a principle that says the simplest explanation is usually the correct one and that is that Blacks have greater explosive athleticism and that's why there is a preponderance of Blacks in the NBA over Whites.


This is not unique about basketball in America. Blacks are generally over-represented in every sport that requires some physiological traits as long as the black population plays that sport.

I honestly believe that if there was a skating rink in every neighborhood in America and it was inexpensive to play hockey, Blacks would populate the sport to a dominant degree and that it would leave many of the professional spots in the NBA open for others.

You say Blacks don't play hockey, but why is that? It's because it is too freaking expensive to play for mostly poor black American youths. Black American youths don't play soccer because soccer isn't made available in the mostly poor black areas because there isn't land available to make soccer playing fields available. Again it comes down to money.


Of course they can't dominate sports they don't play, be it for socio-economic or cultural reasons. This is absolutely obvious.

There are so many social factors involved that arguing the genetic one seems a copout. I would argue that the genetic argument may in fact be a sign of racism in light of the fact that this discussion ONLY seems to happen when discussing black-dominated sports. No one makes this argument in White or Asian dominated sports, like Olympic weight lifting or diving or ping pong. Why do we seek genetic arguments when Blacks overperform, but not when Whites overperform?


And face it, White American players aren't as much fun to watch as Blacks are.


Ben and Joe are looking for the next John Stockton, Larry Bird, or Jerry West in the NBA, but that's not going to happen if they can't play defense. There have only been two White American athletes that have made the NBA All-Star game in the past decade or so and they weren't even starters. Also, Kirk Hinrich is the only white player to make second team all-defensive player in the past fifteen years.


The NBA has turned more to the international or European players because they have more experience on a professional level. European players are more like black players because of their ability and work ethic. These athletes have a precedent to look at and measure themselves with.

In closing, when Lesbian Craig and Bobby Z were hosting the Sunday Night Block Party, I never expected them to win any Edward R. Murrow Awards for Broadcasting, but when I see two younger inexperienced talk show hosts on the weekend like these two clowns, Lesbo and Bobby Z should ask for a Congressional  investigation as to why they were dumped and guys like Ben and Joe get to show up every weekend.

Saturday night's topic would have been one that the SBP would have handled much better than these two clowns and SBP would have come up with a satisfactory conclusion, which these guys never came up with.


Joe and Ben were just acting as Saturday night time-fillers for four hours. As a matter of fact, a lot of local sports talk shows just act as time-fillers for many of us. At 7 pm, not many listeners said to themselves, "Wow, it's time for Joe and Ben. I'm going to stop what I'm doing and listen to them to see what sports knowledge they can pass on to me."


HMW

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