Kicking. Squealing.
From USA Today (Deadspin also covers):
Is it possible in 2012 to have a team that is too white or too black?
That question is being asked in Minnesota where the Timberwolves will have five black players on its 15-man roster.
“How did we get a roster that resembles the 1955 Lakers?” Tyrone Terrell, chairman of St. Paul’s African American leadership council asked Jerry Zgoda and Dennis Brackin of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “I think everything is a strategy. Nothing happens by happenstance.”
Last season, African-Americans took 78% of the roster spots. So are the Timberwolves pandering to a fan-based that is white?
Team president David Kahn said that is “patently false” and points out that the team’s reach for the best players have included stars from Russia, Spain and Puerto Rico.
The T-Wolves projected lineup (when everyone is healthy) has Brandon Roy as the only black player along with Nikola Pekovic, Ricky Rubio, Andrei Kirilenko and superstar Kevin Love.
“It’s just basketball,” Roy said. “I never really had to feel like I’m the only black guy out here. I’ve played on teams that maybe had all black guys and the feeling is just the same when I’m out there on the floor playing with these guys. The only problem we have is in the weight room, arguing over what music we’re going to listen to.”
But Ron Edwards, a local civil rights advocate said “I think, personally, that it was calculated. Is this an attempt to get fans back in the stands? Minnesota, after all, is a pretty white state.”
Tony Manfred of Business Insider makes the case that Minnesota is exploiting market inefficiencies. A sort of Moneyball approach to the NBA. This strategy would make sense. Minnesota is a small NBA market and they are ranked 27th in the league in terms of roster salary. They’ll spend $51 million on player salaries this year compared to the L.A. Lakers who will spend $99 million. If Minnesota does actually want to win but is limited financially, it would make sense for them to employ the players that are undervalued by the market. Given the stigma that white players are inferior to black players (and that international players can’t play NBA style basketball), it is reasonable to believe that white and international players provide good value.
I don’t think that the Whiteness of Minnesota matters all that much. Minnesota has a sufficient number of black people to fill the seats at the Timberwolf arena. The excess of potential fans doesn’t help all that much except in the sales of sweat shirts.
A separate question is why does it seem like nearly all of the best white players in the league are foreigners? Love is as far as I can tell the only true star.
I have a theory about why this might be. Here’s a hint: Love’s hometown, Lake Oswego, Oregon is over 90% white.
Tyrone Terrell, go fuck yourself. That is all.
I remember an interview with Mark Cuban about 6 years ago where he was asked why he had so many international players on the Dallas Mavericks. He said the American College Basketball did not properly prepare American players by forcing them to play positions that they could never play in the NBA, while International players had the correct training.
“Nothing happens by happenstance.” this statement by itself marks the speaker as a hopeless moron. Unfortunately, it’s ridiculously common among semi-educated blacks. But this guy is such a dipshit he can’t really be held accountable. The reporters are a different story. What the hell is wrong with them to air these kinds of irrelevant and outrageous conspiracy theories?
Only winning will get fans back in the stands and of course with the the roster the Timberwolves have they might only win 20 games this season.
Nah, the Timberwolves won 26 games last year in a short season, even including their collapse after Rubio got injured.
They’ll be vastly improved and should win about 35-38 games but probably won’t make the playoffs.
A few years back, the Edmonton Oilers hockey team had about four or five black guys on their roster. Just about everyone saw it for what it was: a slightly quirky coincidence. Even in the best of circumstances, our brains are conditioned to see patterns in random events.
And when you have some stupid racial axe to grind? Yeah, you’re gonna see conspiracy theories.
dufu,
Maybe it’s because white American kids are told over and over – their whole lives – that they can never beat black players. Russian/Eastern European guys aren’t mentally conditioned that way, so they don’t go in expecting to lose from the get-go.
Dufu, Steve Sailer did a piece on this and came to the same conclusion.
Rubio is a “star” when he is healthy. He has the eyes in the back of his head thing.
As an exercise in probability, what are the chances that any team will have four of five starting positions filled by white players? White players are apparently 17 per cent of the league. I would guess that the odds of that work out to be pretty low; it ain’t rocket science and but i do not have the answer to that question.
At some point the odds are low enough that other factors are considered likely to be in play. A racist conspiracy on the part of the T-wolves management is entertaining to the professional half-wits, but really.
More plausible is that these white players seemed to be good deals. This line-up will test that out, but the game theory gets involved.
It was suggested was that these players would be play well together due to similar playing styles. Putting together a team with that as a goal would be a winner and a workaround of the market. (It seems such an obvious strategy and goal – winning with teamwork – something needs clarifying.)
Players more focused on a team are going to have less value as individuals, but that team focus can only be revealed and maximized when combined with similar players; interesting variables.
White players in Europe are not suffocated at a young age by the black dominance of the sport. They have a clear path to move upward and to the top. American whites also self-select and take themselves out believing they can’t accomplish this because it’s dominated by some other group.
The same thing is happening in education in the US. White people are being pushed out at the top. First by Jews and now by East and South Asians.
The problem here is two-fold. First, you have the cowardly owner unwilling to be blunt about his desire for the freedom to run his team as seen fit and instead he gives passive lip service to Liberalism. When he was asked to account for his freedom to be a predominantly white basketball team he had to make invisible the fact that this freedom was IN NOT HAVING MORE black players on his team. Just as NFL coaches and management seek to free themselves from the dominance of the traditional white QB (REAL TEAM LEADER) and replace him with his antithesis (a receiver-like, “Predator”-looking Cindy Lauper hot pink arm sleeve-wearing RrrroBERT Griffin the Third), this owner HAS ALREADY went through the liberated meat-grinder. The NBA has been free of the traditional white court leader in the NBA for decades. They are now “slaves” to the dominant black athletes in the sport. Minnesota ownership is seeking a way out without actually having to articulate it. Secondly, the whole excuse of declining white ATHLETES is demolished by the sheer difference in the raw demographic pools of which to choose WHITE APPLES AND BLACK APPLES.
Meaning, from whence to draw apples and apples such that we draw TOP white athletes from the ELIGIBLE 15-24 year old pool of white males and we draw TOP black athletes from the ELIGIBLE 15-24 year old pool of black males? The raw size of the pools added to the difference in eligibility based on incarceration, school failure, school dropout, etc. suggests that the “black male as superior athletes is why he dominates professional basketball and football” is totally not the real story.
It’s a bit ironic that this article is written about a team having white overrepresentation while not editorializing on how grossly overrepresented blacks are within the same sport. Sailer posted months back on the weird gap of NBA white American talent vs. euro white talent considering the white US population compared to europe. That is an article no journalist dare write if they wish to keep their paycheck.
I played bball through high school and our coach would costantly say, “If a team could run the Princeton system with NBA talent, they’d be unstoppable”. That is not what Minny is doing as Rubio is a maestro with his vision plus you cant run the Princeton system in the NBA, but I definitely buy into the Moneyball aspect.
SOBL1…
What your coach meant is if only he could have black athletic superiority with superior white intelligence would the game of basketball reach its highest level. Unfortunately, he would no doubt give blunt credence to the idea of the former while making invisible by any manner the latter. Yet, the former notion is actually quite contentious while the latter notion is seemingly not contentious at all.
Ghetto ball replaced real basketball a few decades ago. Ghetto ball has no place for whites who played the old style game systematically and strategic based. Also, rules were rigorously enforced, unlike today. Today’s game is a farce of what it used to be, mostly one on ones and two on two’s, and not much defense.
Two other points:
1. Blacks mature faster physically/athletically than others. This gives in edge in development during youth.
2. White Americans (especially affluent ones) have much wider tastes in athletics than blacks. When I coached 8th grade basketball my white kids did snowboarding, rockclimbing, soccer, traveling baseball, golf, etc. With blacks it’s solely basketball/football because those don’t require you to provide your own equipment and don’t require a father to be around to help get you involved in the sport.
Camlost has a great point on physical maturity. If studies show blacks hit puberty earlier by a year vs. hispanics asians and whites, it’s not just the developmental edge of being a year or two ahead in muscular development but also coordination. All men recall that year when they grew tall or bulked up that their coordination suffered for that year or so. It took me a full year to recover my speed and agility when I shot up from 5’6″ to 6’1″. If that growth spurt happens at 12-13 instead of 15, it will make a difference, and if you do have a high level of speed, strength, jumping ability, an extra year of working with and adjusting to that body is a HUGE advantage.
Tyrone Terrell has a good point. I’d go a step further, and say the Celtics, Nets, Knicks, 76ers, Raptors, Bulls, Cavaliers, Pistons, Pacers, Bucks, Hawks, Bobcats, Heat, Magic, Wizards, Warriors, Clippers, Lakers, Suns, Kings, Mavericks, Rockets, Grizzlies, Hornets, Spurs, Nuggets, Thunder, Blazers, and Jazz are too black.