{"id":37850,"date":"2013-10-24T23:12:07","date_gmt":"2013-10-25T03:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=37850"},"modified":"2020-07-08T23:12:18","modified_gmt":"2020-07-09T03:12:18","slug":"we-all-know-the-nba-is-racist-but-come-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=37850","title":{"rendered":"We all know the NBA is racist, but come on"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">It&#8217;s the &#8220;White Guy&#8221; award!! <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/APkrawczynski?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@APkrawczynski<\/a>: Another from NBA GM survey: <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/kevinlove?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@kevinlove<\/a> is player who makes most of &#8216;limited natural ability.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Kevin Love (@kevinlove) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/kevinlove\/status\/392720965282848768?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 22, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">I admit, I hardly pay any attention to the NBA these days, save for a few days in June, if the Spurs are knocking on the door of championship. But it doesn\u2019t really take more than a casual basketball observer to see what\u2019s going on in this situation, when apparently all of the NBA teams\u2019 general managers got together and conducted a little survey about their respective league and its players, and happened to have one particular query called:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/regressing.deadspin.com\/kevin-love-wins-white-guy-award-from-nba-executives-1450148792\/@kylenw\">Which player makes the most of limited natural ability?<\/a><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">With an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nba.com\/news\/2013-14-nba-gm-survey\/\">overwhelming majority of 24% of the vote<\/a>, Kevin Love was voted the guy who made the most of \u201climited natural ability.\u201d Think about that phrase for a second; it\u2019s almost like saying the \u201cfastest paraplegic runner with no legs\u201d or \u201cmost capable clinically dead person.\u201d Okay, so maybe those are some exaggerated examples, but there\u2019s no denying the fact that it\u2019s a very backhanded compliment of an \u201cachievement\u201d for NBA general managers to slap onto a guy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">The thing is, I know who Kevin Love is, because in spite of his apparent ability to maximize his limited natural abilities, he\u2019s actually a pretty popular basketball player. Partially due to his propensity to hit some buzzer beaters from time to time and that he\u2019s a pretty good rebounder, but mostly because the obvious fact that Kevin Love is white. He\u2019s a white guy in the NBA, and has a pretty colorful personality to boot, as humorously evident in his candor in blurting out the very obvious as it pertains to his \u201cwin\u201d as the guy to best utilize his limited natural abilities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\"><!--more--><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">But back to the point at hand, it\u2019s embarrassing for the NBA that they even had such a category on such a pointless survey in the first place. The implications it creates, on top of the fact that it\u2019s essentially naming guys in the league that are either white, not-black, and\/or are considered to be inferior athletes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">The first three guys listed are white; it almost sucks to be Jared Dudley (black), and to some degree J.J. Barea (Puerto Rican), because they\u2019re actually not white, and were in the running for The White Guy Award. But now, they\u2019ve got to feel like shit in a way, because they know definitively that the brass of the NBA views them as guys that they feel are playing their hearts out to less than superstar results. I know that just because they ruled the world in the college ranks, doesn\u2019t automatically translate into NBA success, but I remember Jared Dudley\u2019s career while he was at Boston College, and he was a monster back then. Boston College hasn\u2019t been relevant in the college ball scene since he left. Imagine if he tapped into some of that confidence and skill in the NBA? Suddenly, he might not be any longer in the running for the White Guy Award.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Contrarily, this also implies that the results that come out of the NBA\u2019s elite are something natural, or come easy to all of them. To anyone that is remotely interested in basketball knows that Kobe Bryant\u2019s training regimens are something of legend, citing 15+ hour days at the gym and court, working out and practicing basketball skills and drills obsessively and incessantly. In a way, The White Guy award is almost an insult to the elite players, because it discredits their own hard work and practice and assumes their talent to be simply unearned and natural.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">It also doesn\u2019t help that pretty much 100% of the guys that would be considered to be elite-level are all black guys. Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Durant. With occasional blips in the radar like Steve Nash, I guess The Black Guy Award would be the MVP?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Anyway, it\u2019s all fun and games, and Kevin Love takes home The White Guy Award in good stride and endears himself to sports fans even more with his candor and humor. But it\u2019s still embarrassing for the NBA to conduct such a pointless name-game in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">Ironically, since apparently Kevin Love is a two(?)-time winner of this \u201caward,\u201d they may as well start calling it the <em>Kevin Love Award<\/em> as of next season.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Lora; font-size: 12pt;\">But you know something, Kevin Love is the type of guy that added to any borderline pretender, instantly makes them a contender. Not bad for a guy with limited natural abilities.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s the &#8220;White Guy&#8221; award!! @APkrawczynski: Another from NBA GM survey: @kevinlove is player who makes most of &#8216;limited natural ability.&#8217; \u2014 Kevin Love (@kevinlove) October 22, 2013 I admit, I hardly pay any attention to the NBA these days, save for a few days in June, if the Spurs are knocking on the door &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=37850\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">We all know the NBA is racist, but come on<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[59,45,15,89,58,49],"class_list":["post-37850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-basketball","tag-fail","tag-og","tag-racism","tag-sports","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37850"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37852,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37850\/revisions\/37852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}