Larry Bird was criticized for being white but not as heavily back in the day.
The athletes thought that Bird couldn’t play when he started, until he started upping them at their own game.
Bird was famous for taunting the other team for disrespecting him if he wasn't being covered by "a brother".
Go on youtube and watch interviews with some of his teammates......Cornbread Maxwell in particular said "we didn't think a white boy could play as good as a brother".
Magic said the same.
Heck, in high school I ran into it.
Now, imagine the uproar if a movie came out entitled, "Black men can't swim".
And he was an ordinary American.
Dončić and Jokić are both in the league but they're from Slovenia and Serbia and I don't think Americans can relate to them.
I posted this story to my Facebook, suggesting among many other things that Caitlin was in effect the female Larry Bird.-—took awhile but to the man, his competitors had to admit they were in awe of him and he was every bit as good as any of them, and actually better in a lot of ways: they also admired his trash-talking skills, just another part of his complete arsenal. I have been watching some YouTube stuff lately and I agree with that assessment.But it’s A’ja Wilson who is specifically playing the race card, in a way that Bird’s competitors never did.Think of her as another “Child of Obama” carrying forward the putrid, intentionally counter-productive “legacy” of grievance, so inelegantly practiced by Michelle.If Ms. Wilson had made as big a splash as Caitlin,SHE would have gotten the hoopla Caitlin got, and the contract-—(Ms. Wilson DID get a signature shoe named after her and some endorsements,but some of that seems to be the work of attack dogs masquerading as journalists snarling for it from her corner. But both she and her supporters lack the subtlety of mind to consider that maybe Caitlin got some of the attention FIRST AND FOREMOST because of her skills and the numbers/stats she racked up, but ALSO owing to her being SO GOOD as a white player in the newer venue of the WNBA==which as far as I can see is as dominated by black females as the regular NBA is dominated by black males. Obviously I am asking too much to expect any of them to see the subtle irony of that. In any event, what this creep Wilson has done is set the table for a very tense match-up when these two teams meet one another. It’s gonna be ugly, ugly, ugly, and it’s already ugly enough,