Tag: basketball

Racist double standards, #47

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

SSDD: Ex-NBA player Kenyon Martin blasts current NBA player Jeremy Lin about having dreadlocks, accuses him of “wanting to be black,” Lin rebuts with kindness but also points out Martin’s Chinese character tattoos, owning him as if slavery still existed

Another day, another double standard where a black guy cries victim of ____, but has no hesitation of taking it out on Asian guys.  Honestly, there was a time where I kind of liked Kenyon Martin; I loved those Nets teams of the 2000s with Jason Kidd and Richard Jefferson, and I totally pulled for them in the Finals against the Spurs where they lost in six.

Sure, there were always questions about his character, his propensity to whine and argue fouls and his perceived character based on the countless tattoos and questionable demeanor.  But he was still a really decent basketball player that was fun to watch, so I never had any problem with him, even when those Nets teams disbanded and he went off to Denver before I stopped giving any shits about the NBA in general.

But I guess I’m not surprised by him coming out on social media and blasting current-Net Jeremy Lin for having dreadlocks and accusing him of misappropriating black culture and “trying to be black.”  However, I did think of how stupid he sounded before I even read about Lin’s rebuttal, because one, he’s validating the oft-notion that black guys love to pull the race card when they feel that they’re being wronged, but have zero hesitations when it comes to putting down Asians themselves.  Two, dreadlocks do not solely belong to black culture, as I’m sure hippies of all races and colors, Jamaicans and any other Dutch or Latin cultures that utilize dreads would attest to.  And third, I astutely remember that Kenyon Martin has at least one prominent tattoo of Chinese characters, which by his logic would mean he’s misappropriating Chinese culture, thus making him a giant hypocrite.

Well, Kenyon Martin wasn’t in the NBA because of his brains; it just so happens unfortunately for him that the guy he was trading social media barbs with is also Harvard-educated on top of being on his former team.

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Why is this a surprise?

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It shouldn’t be a surprise: retired NBA great Tim Duncan kickboxes to stay in shape, and is apparently very good at it, according to his coach

The insinuation is that this is somehow newsworthy because there’s a modicum of surprise that a man like Tim Duncan, who was best identified as a stalwart basketball player, has the audacity to partake in something not-basketball, like kickboxing.  And that he’s actually pretty good at it, almost good enough to be “a legit competitor in MMA” according to his coach.

But if anyone who followed Tim Duncan’s career as a basketball player shouldn’t really be at all that surprised to find out that he’s also good at kickboxing, because he’s pretty much good at everything once he gets a grasp of the fundamentals.  After all, he wasn’t nicknamed “the Big Fundamental” without just cause.

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Dwyane Wade might have learned his lesson question mark

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Not that I pay much attention to the NBA offseason, a headline caught my eye that revisited a topic I wrote about a long time ago: “Dwyane Wade leaning towards picking up $24 million option.”  This was amusing to me, because I remember writing about, in great detail, the foolishness exhibited by Dwyane Wade a few years ago, when he opted out of two-years, $40 million left on his contract with the Heat, thinking he could make more as a free agent, but then being grossly incorrect, and ending up signing a new deal back with the Heat for three-years, $31 million, thus losing a guaranteed $9 million on a really bad gamble.  Owned.

Anyway, it’s pretty incredible that a dwindling talent like Wade would even get the opportunity to revisit this decision, but for what it’s worth, he has name value and some talent left, and we revisit a familiar crossroads in his career, where he is looking at the choice between a one-year, $24 million option year, or declaring the scary, scary waters of free agency.  And considering the fact that he’s now 35 and his numbers have been on a gradual decline over the years, it seems like a very obvious choice on what he should consider, but then again I thought the same thing back when he took the chance anyway, and gambled away $9 million dollars.  Owned.

So it seems like kind of a no-brainer that Wade is leaning towards accepting the $24 million option year, because there’s no guarantee that he’s going to get a multi-year deal that can exceed that, let alone match it.  Although it’s still speculation, and “he’s leaning,” there’s still no guarantee that he’ll actually accept it, even if were the most ingenious idea in the world for him, but I hope for his sake that he learned his lesson in the past and will actually just take the guaranteed fuckin money and not be so greedy, although it would be the quite the hilarious story if he ended up gambling again and then ended up getting the shaft again, and signing like a two-year deal for like $18 million with like, the Milwaukee Bucks.  Owned.

Why change a solid logo?

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Supposedly, there are rumblings that the NBA needs to change its logo.  The Undefeated has made a game of potential silhouettes to replace Jerry West; naturally being The Undefeated, ten of them are black guys, and then Larry Bird, almost like an obligation to option out a non-black guy as to not seem too obvious. But the question I really have is, why??  Why change the NBA logo?  There’s nothing at all wrong with it!

This isn’t like the Cleveland Indians, Washington Redskins, Atlanta Braves or any other sports team name that triggers white guilt and is always in the conversation of needing to be changed because they’re construed as offensive.  This isn’t like the Vietnamese skin care center that uses a logo that’s too infringe-y to an existing copyright and needs to be changed, so people don’t mistake them as manufacturers of zombie serum.  Or this isn’t like, Wendy’s, whose prior wild western-looking type face made their brand look as old as the era in which the font best represents.

The NBA logo is an icon in itself, and has no need for change, especially for no good reason other than the sake of change.  It doesn’t help when Jerry West, the alleged basis of the silhouette in the logo is all white-guilty and is clamoring for a change as well, but thankfully the NBA themselves continues to deny it as to deny leverage to West.

But really, there’s no need for change.  What for?  MLB has never changed their logo, and you better fucking believe that the NFL isn’t going to change their logo.  Stability and longevity is what gives strength to logos, and the NBA would be flushing 70+ years of tradition and history down the toilet because the world feels like change should occur on some basis other than never, for everything, including long standing identities and brands. 

Brands that want to last and thrive know how to commit and stick with something for the long haul.  The NBA changing their logo for no real good reason is a stupid idea, and I hope they never actually do it.

NBA: National Bitches Association

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Prior to reading this, I implore my six readers to press play and listen to the theme of when the NBA was truly golden, and basketball was a respectable sport rife with athletes playing against other athletes in the game of basketball, and news was limited to solely basketball-related stories.

This is a topic that’s been on my head for quite some time, but never really chose to run with it, because quite frankly the world is full of way more interesting stories, or things that I’d rather write about, like overturned tractor trailers, or conspiracy theories about MARTA.  But then I saw this article about Ray Allen being a bitch because all his former Celtics teammates had a championship team reunion and didn’t invite him, because they are all bitches as well.

This story follows a week that also saw DeMar DeRozan of the Toronto Raptors whining about how his team would have advanced in the playoffs if they had LeBron James; like a sore loser, or, like a bitch. 

And speaking of LeBron James, earlier in the season, he had an altercation with a teammate, but instead of going Old Testament on him and kicking his ass in the locker room or throwing him under the bus to the media, instead he, the guy who brought glory back to Cleveland, won numerous championships and has nothing left to prove, assumes blame, takes responsibility for the altercation and apologizes to the jobber teammate, the fans and the organization.

Like a bitch.

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An ugly, ugly classic

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If there’s ever any reason why college basketball is so often lauded as amongst the most exciting of sports is that it’s seldom that its annual national championship is ever decided in a decisive or completely unanimous manner.  It doesn’t matter if a team goes undefeated throughout the regular season, they will inevitably run into a serious contender be it a team from another conference, or the Cinderella story that’s making a miracle run, or a team that hatched the perfect plan to counter them, or sometimes all of the above.

The 2016-2017 National Championship game seemed kind of lackluster in the sense that it featured two #1 seeds, in Gonzaga University against the oft-present University of North Carolina, especially since the Zags took down Cinderella in the Final Four when they took out South Carolina and UNC dropped Oregon who was having their own surprisingly deep run in the tournament.  But few people ever want to see two #1s going at it for the National Championship, since that’s kind of the expectation, and sports fans typically want to see the unexpected, the Cinderellas, and the underdogs prevail.

But as is often the case with the National Championship, the game was definitely no snoozer, and despite the claims and the accusations that Gonzaga was a paper #1, meaning they didn’t really deserve their rank on account of playing in a weak conference, especially in contrast to their opponents who plays in the ACC against very strong basketball programs like Virginia, Louisville, Syracuse and Duke, they still showed up to play, and gave UNC tremendous resistance in a hard-fought, foul-plagued and ugly slugfest of a basketball game.

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Settling on second best

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I know baseball just started today, and naturally the Braves begin the season with a loss, in spite of a pretty impressive pitching duel being Julio Teheran and Noah Syndergaard, but if there was one sports headline that caught my attention more than anything else, it was the announcement made by Georgetown University, declaring that the next coach of the once-vaunted Hoyas, would be none other than Georgetown alum, and former NBA player, Patrick Ewing.

I know that Patrick Ewing basically carried the Hoyas to their only national championship back in like 1984, so I get why they think that he has the pedigree to lead the school’s basketball program into a renaissance, but I don’t really think that they really thought about what his career amounted to after he left Georgetown. 

I won’t deny that I was a gigantic Knicks fan back in the 90s, and at one point I even had a Patrick Ewing jersey.  But there’s also no denying the sheer amount of failure endured by Patrick Ewing throughout his professional career; losing the 1994 NBA Finals, the missed finger roll in 1995, watching the Knicks flourish in his injury absence in 1999 and making the NBA Finals, only to lose as soon as he was reactivated to play, and about the 766 times he was tormented and owned by Michael Jordan and/or the Chicago Bulls throughout his career.

Make no mistake, there’s pretty much nobody in the history of basketball that symbolizes failure, falling short, dashed expectations and broken dreams more than Patrick Ewing.  I wanted Patrick Ewing to get an NBA ring more than anyone back in those days, as a member of the Knicks.  But year after year, the ring never came, and the window of opportunity opened and shut in the span of my formative years.  I watched MJ crush his hopes, then Hakeem Olajuwon, then Reggie Miller.  And then Tim Duncan showed up and emerged to stamp nails into his Knicks career before he started bouncing around the NBA to teams like Seattle and Orlando.

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