CON GAMES: Why White (American) Men Can’t Jump

June 2nd, 2008 at 06:39am Michael Conniff 2

Unlike Catholic priests in Barack Obama’s old-school neighborhood church, the true sports fan is all but color-blind—a state the sporting literati might call purblind in hopes of turning a phrase.

If you loved the old New York Knicks it was purely because of the way they played, not because Bill Bradley was a Rhodes Scholar whitey from Princeton, or Willis Reed, the captain, earned his all-blacks at Grambling. Even though players post-Jordan have brought more blacknuss into the league—yo, Alan Iverson—the true fan truly appreciates the likes of A.I. for his mo’ better hustle and durability, not for his corn rows and too-many tatoos.

Color’s got just about nothing to do with it, bro.

Except for this weird high-def thing happening to basketball in the United States, a phenomenon there for all to see during the 2008 National Basketball Association (NBA) playoffs. The latest league tagline—“Where Amazing Happens”—actually describes the most amazing thing: in the NBA, the appearance of white players in every village and town.

Manu Ginobli for the San Antonio Spurs. Pau Gasol, Vladimir Radmonovic, and Sasha Vujacic for the Los Angeles Lakers, Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Anderson Varejao of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Andrei Kirilenko and Mehmet Okur of the Utah Jazz. Peja Stojakovic of the New Orleans Hornets. Linas Kleiza of the Denver Nuggets. Dirk Nowitzki of the Dallas Mavericks. And Steve Nash, the Phoenix Suns point guard and two-time NBA Most Valuable Player.

These white players are not the traditional fill-in-the-blank tomato cans, the token towel-waving 12^th men that NBA franchises have been famous for. Every one of them either starts for their team or plays significant minutes. Ginobli and Gasol are stars if not quite superstars; Ilgauskas, Okur, and Stojakovic are primary scorers on their teams; and Nowitzki and Nash are certifiable MVPs. Some teams would not have made the playoffs at all were it not for their white players.

Who says white men can’t jump?

But there’s a catch. Not one of the above are white American players. The whole lot of them come from all over the world: Russia, Turkey, Argentina, Lithuania, Spain, and so on. Which is not to say middling white American players are entirely missing in action. Luke Walton of the Lakers is the exception to the rule, the son of the great (and greatly talkative) Bill Walton. Brent Barry of the Spurs, son of the great (and greatly talkative) Rick Barry, is over the hill but managed a transcendent game against Los Angeles in the Western Conference Finals, no small feat. Matt Harpring of the Utah Jazz is a hard-nosed dead-ender who plays basketball like he’s looking for the line scrimmage. At best the white Americans are role players or riding the bench.

So what happened? Wha’s up?

It’s old news, really. European players grew up learning the pure, fundamental, God-bless American game while Americans of every persuasion tried to play like Mike. Without the hops, without the drive, without the obsession, a whole generation of players were left without the fundamentals Michael Jordan learned from Dean Smith and Bob Knight.

As George W. Bush might put it, white American players are all hat and no cowboy. That goes for plenty of black players too.

In my opinion, the same Americans who don’t want to read don’t want to set a pick, or play help defense, or learn the screen and roll, or stop and pop from anywhere short of the three-point line. American basketball players who have to use their brains instead of their raw ability invariably find that learning the basics of basketball, like reading Shakespeare, is simply not worth the toil and trouble.

Of course, the true fan could care less about the color or nationality of players in the NBA as long as they’re the best specimens of the species available. White, black—Mexican, American, European, South American, Asian, African—if a player can play, we flat-out don’t care. For the purblind fan, black or white, being color-blind is fundamental.

Entry Filed under: Sports, Con Games, United Post