Posted on 08/18/2004 2:05:55 PM PDT by gopwinsin04
Once the black game moved indoors and became more organized, the pressure to establish bona fides increases.
If you're not scoring beaucoup points, if your picture isn't in the papers, if you don't have a trophy (right away) then you ain't the man, and you ain't nothing.
Being second best in the black community is just as bad as being last. And if a teammate hits nine shots in a row, the black attitude is...'Screw him, Now it's my turn to get it on.'
If young black players usually cherish untrammeled creativity, white hooplings mostly value team oriented concepts. 'White basketball means passing the heck out of the ball,' says Dawkins.
White guys are willing to do something when someone else has the ball--setting picks, boxing out, cutting in to clear a space for a teammate, making the pass that leads to an assist pass.
In white basketball, there is more a sense of dicipline, of running set plays, and only taking wide open shots. If a guy gets hot, he will get the ball until he cools off.
Why is white basketball so structured and team oriented?
'Because the white culture places more of a premium on winning,' Dawkins believes, 'and less on self-indulgent preening and cheast beating.'
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.foxsports.com ...
That's weird. I just reread what you posted and had a very interesting thought but I'll keep it to myself :-) Tiger Woods is my adopted brother. My mother says so even though he doesn't know it yet.
It should have stayed amateur. I thought the Olympics was supposed to AMATEUR! LOL You know it's anything but... it's all pro level athletes.
I must agree. As a spurs fan I must say that I miss Kerr. I loved how he change the whole game 6 against the Mavs during the Spurs 2003 run.
I don't think anybody would call rugby boring.
You're right hehe
1962 Celtics : Sam Jones , Tom Heinsohn , Bill Russell , John Havlicek , Bob Cousy , Frank Ramsey , Thomas Sanders , K.C. Jones ...
THIS was a basketball TEAM ... and they played BASKETBALL , not the ringside circus with overpaid hoods we see today .
As a Mavs fan, I must request that we never, ever again speak of that game. =P
I will never understand the appeal of watching cars go around a track. It's great if others do, but not me.
That said, you are absolutely right about drivers.
Never been a NASCAR fan myself, either. Just don't find it appealing.
Good essay..let me add a few..you omitted the fact that cocaine almost destroyed the league..the players' dealers were in the locker rooms...I remember the debate ragingi the NY papers as whether or not the Knicks would dare to start an all black five..
I disagree with that. Basketball is a lot less rough than it was in the 70's, 80's., and early '90s.
Ever see the famous clothesline McHale put on Kurt Rambis in the '84 Finals? It's absolutely vicious, and definitely dangerous. So then they fought, and nobody got thrown out, and the game went on. Today, something like that, even in the Finals, would be multi-game suspensions for everyone. The media would pee their pants over it. Back then, it was a hard foul. Late '80's Pistons, anyone? Charles Oakley?
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page3/story?page=boyd/040818
You don't remember Jack Sikma or Elvin Hayes very well. That 1977 series was nothing but backdowns, with no offensive fouls called. Barkely came WAY after that.
young black men look to hip-hop and the NBA as their way out of impoverished circumstances,
*** That's pretty sad.
That '70 Sonics team was the first one I really followed...Sikma, Gus Johnson, Paul Silas, Dennis Johnson, and Downtown Freddie Brown!
That should be, that '79 team.
Yah, as a Suns fan, I hated them. We darn near had them in 77: it was 3:2 with the sixth game in Phx. and we had two shots to win the game at the end, and Walter Davis missed at least one of them (can't recall who else missed). That Sonics team was just too powerful---not necessarily good, but strong. Shelton just threw our guys around like rag dolls.
Ok. Knew it was in there somewhere. So it was Celtics 76, Blazers 77, Bullets 78 and Sonics 79?
The championship Knicks were the best TEAM ever..the game was beautiful to watch, the classic city game..the players NEVER stopped moving....I was a junior at NYU whenBradley came back to play for the KNICKS in 1967 in the OLD Garden.......in mid season...Holtzman put him in mid first quarter...when he dtood up to take off his warm-ups, 19,000 went wild..he scored his first NBA basket..jumper from the corner, off a break, with the assist, a bounce pass, coming from Cazzie Russell...which was great, because perhaps the greatest college game every was the ECAC Holdiay festival, at the Garden, when Bradley and 4 nobodies from princetown almost beat Cazzie and Michigan, ranked #2 then, I believe..Bradley scored 50+ I think..
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