White Man's Burden
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by user Thefeed
I came across this article today from Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel and had a few thoughts to pass on. The article is about Magic rookie-to-be J.J. Redick, who was the most hated player in the country throughout his college career. It wasn't because he went to Duke, the most hated and one of the most successful teams in the country, or because his long-distance gunning beat teams from coast to coast. No, it's because Redick's white.
- The Plight of the White.
- In a sport where about 80 percent of NBA players and 60 percent of college players are black, it's become accepted practice to hate the white guy. Think of the most despised players in recent basketball history, and chances are it'll be someone of the Caucasian persuasion.
Bianchi goes on to discuss players like Bill Laimbeer, Teddy Dupay and Larry Bird to back up his assertion that the white man has it tough in the world of basketball. He doesn't, you'll note, write of the universally praised Steve Nash nor does he mention players like Dirk Nowitzki, Adam Morrison or John Stockton, to name three more white guys who never caught much guff.
People hated Laimbeer because he was a player who made up for mediocre talent by being a first-rate asshole. Did Robert Parish assault him because he was white or because he and the rest of his (black) Piston teammates had made a habit of cheap shotting Celtic players? And Dupay? He left Florida early in advance of allegations about gambling that would have made continuing his college career a long shot at best. He wasn't good enough for the NBA and has faded into obscurity. Bianchi writes that Dupay was reviled by opposing fans more than his teammates. Imagine college kids picking on a scrappy white kid who has the ball the majority of the time as point guard? What's that Bobby Hurley, you have something to say?
And Larry Bird? For heaven's sake, Mike, people hated Bird because he was better than everyone that was on the team they rooted for. My father didn't go to Madison Square Garden and yell and scream and shout for the Knicks to beat the Celtics because he was feeling some kind of guilt for being a white man in America. He did it because the Knicks were useless against Bird and because his greatness on the court makes you want to beat him because that's something really worth puffing out your chest about. And not in the Texas Western beating Kentucky kind of a way but in the we just beat the best and can really be proud of that way.
So why do people hate Redick? Well, I don't think that college basketball fans in Chapel Hill, College Park and elsewhere are crazy about getting their asses kicked by anyone but when someone does it as consistently and as cold-bloodedly as Redick does, you absolutely loathe them. Like Christian Laettner, people got tired of watching Redick twist his choirboy looks into a whiny tantrum on the court. Nothing is worse than watching a player on a more talented team, blessed with more than a little talent all his own, continually gripe about the treatment they're getting from the opposing team. The self-serving profiles in magazines and trumpeting of poetry didn't help Redick either but I think it's a lot more about the former two reasons.
In a more general sense, I think people really dislike Duke. They dislike the slobbering praise given to Coack K by Billy Packer and Dick Vitale, I think they object to the American Express commercials that are basically 30-second recruiting spots and I think that they despise the holier-than-thou Duke attitude that has grown and grown over the last two decades.
Date
Wed 10/04/06, 9:58 am EST
