Basketball Great Compares College Hoops to Slavery; ‘Journalist’ Agrees

newsbusters.org ^ | 3/19/2018 | Jay Maxson

[rktman]

“They [the NCAA] just got a contract from CBS (and TNT), $8.8 billion, and if you are making that, I think you have to share some revenue. You can’t expect people to continue to work for nothing on a false hope of, well this is about education, we are getting you an education, we will feed you. It sounds a little like 400 years ago, like slavery. Stay in your hut. Stay in that little house. We’ll give you some food. You do all of the work. All of it. And I am telling you that I will take care of you."

[Seaplaner]

I agree with your most excellent post.

Basketball takes awful advantage of players, as it gives them false hope of making the pros.

An acquaintance of mine is a teacher in California (major, major progressive liberal, of course). She related to me a couple of times that a high percentage ("all of them" in her words) of middle and high school African American boys are somehow convinced that they do not need to study or learn, as they will be professional basketball players.

She continued that these are kids that can't even make J.V. reserves.

The NCAA and NBA must know of this massively shared pipe dream. Yet they do nothing.

Oh, and alleged black leaders? Where are they on this topic?

.

[kabar]

Of course the NBA doesn’t want that. They like the system just the way it is. It allows them the luxury of not running a minor league program, and let’s the college weed out the pretenders.

The NBA G League is the National Basketball Association's official minor league basketball organization. The league was known as the National Basketball Development League (NBDL) from 2001 to 2005, and the NBA Development League (NBA D-League) from 2005 until 2017.[1] The league started with eight teams until NBA commissioner David Stern announced a plan to expand the NBA D-League to fifteen teams and develop it into a true minor league farm system, with each NBA D-League team affiliated with one or more NBA teams in March 2005. At the conclusion of the 2013–14 NBA season, 33% of NBA players had spent time in the NBA D-League, up from 23% in 2011. As of the 2017–18 season, the league consists of 26 teams, all of which are either single-affiliated or owned by an NBA team.

For the 2017–18 season, the league rebranded to become the NBA G League as part of a multi-year partnership with Gatorade.

[dfwgator]

How dumb do you have to be to not realize that only a small percentage of college basketball players will make it to the pros.

[kabar]

Post 62

[simpson96]

More brilliance from Obama/Hillary voters...

[rbmillerjr]

It’s very simple, just go pro.

If you’re not good enough...STFU and get your degree for free while you play.

[kabar]

NBA G League players generally do not sign contracts with the individual teams, but with the league itself. G League team rosters consist of a total of 12 players, 10 (or fewer) being G League players and two (or more) NBA players. The rosters are made up in a number of ways: the previous years’ players, players taken in the G League draft, allocation players (meaning players who are assigned to a team with which they have a local connection, such as a University of Texas player being assigned to the Austin Spurs) and NBA team assignments. Each team also has local tryouts, and one player from the tryouts is assigned to the team.

The minimum age to play in the G League is 18, unlike the NBA which requires players to be 19 years old and one year out of high school in order to sign an NBA contract or be eligible for the draft.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

I thought the purpose of college was to educate a person so that they could be a productive citizen. The results of their education would lead to better jobs, more money, and a work ethic that would later help them serve their community with money for worthwhile projects, to help teach the younger children the value of hard work, and to serve as role models for these children to follow.

I was on a conference winning college team (3 years Varsity - tied for 5th in the NCAA’s in 1966 in fencing, plus 3 All Americans, two two-timers and a Lieutenant Geoff Hamm, KIA Vietnam, 1967 - my buddy and mentor).

Our team was composed of both “Officers and Gentlemen”, from the coaches to the fencers to the manager/fencer. That was the code we had to follow as team members, representatives of our college, and in the sport itself (which had a great code of honor and conduct).

And we all got college educations plus the education of self-discipline, group cooperation, and the value of lots of practice and sweat to become good.

Then we went out into the world.

PS: I got an MVP award from Jesse Owens. Talk about a “high”. A real gentleman. Not like these bitter race-baiting fools of today (not even most of today’s professional players but enough to piss in the punch and destroy it).

By the way, Jesse Owens offered his Jewish team-mates in the 1936 Olympics, who had been banned from participating by Hitler, to not participate in solidarity with them.

They told him to “Go out and win. Beat that Nazi bastard” (Marty Glickman).

You know the rest.

Jesse was a class act as was the rest of that winning relay team.

Not enough men like him today in professional sports though we do have some pretty good men and women who don’t bitch and moan.

[redgolum]

Then a great many “good” atheletes would flush out of school.

I went to Iowa State. They used to have rather strict educational requirements to play ball. Then, about the time I went to school, someone decided to find some good players.

One of the guys I met in college was Troy Davis. Fine man. Stupid. He dated a gal I knew. Troy was just about illiterate, and had been pushed through school since about grade 2 because he was a fine athlete.

The coaches used him, and thousands like him. Troy had no business at a university. Heck, he probably wouldn’t have graduated high school if he wasn’t such a good football player. But he did have a few years in the NFL.

Most kids in his situation don’t make it that far.

[MMaschin]

Do you understand the work involved in preforming at the Div. 1 level? Conditioning and film study?

Sure they get scholarships but that's mostly a sham because the degrees they earn are virtually useless.

In the meantime they generate billions for everybody else. It's not fair. They are being used.

And that's the plain truth of it.

My daughter was a swimmer at a D1 school. She would spend one semester barely getting by academically, because of her swim requirements, and the other semester working her butt off to get her grades back up.

Yes, they demanded she honor her swimming commitments, and yes she had to work incredibly hard to get her degree, but she did get her degree. She then went on to get her PharmD. She's now a resident doctor of pharmacy at a large hospital.

She was a 'student athlete' - the problem is that schools are giving athletic scholarships to athletes who are not students. They created academic requirements, but they are a joke. Hold athletes to the same academic standards as the general student population, and the problem will be solved.

[dfwgator]

Then a great many “good” atheletes would flush out of school.

Oh, well. I would also say that High Schools also need to clean up their act as well. They are just as complicit.

[xkaydet65]

True, but I just read a defense of mandatory union dues in a letter to Newsday as I was having coffee. The letter writer’s main point was the same as yours. If you do not like the situation...walk away.

[redgolum]

Yep, and “Travel” teams, parents, and a host of others.

Most kids will not get scholarships. Most of those that do will not play pro. I get blasted because I haven’t started my 9 year in softball because “How will you pay for college?”

My daughter will hopefully get an academic scholarship, and learn something useful. She doesn’t want to play ball, she likes track and ballet. However, my wife and get told repeatedly that we are bad parents for not forcing her to do sports she doesn’t like in the hopes she might be good enough for a scholarship

[kabar]

By the way, Jesse Owens offered his Jewish team-mates in the 1936 Olympics, who had been banned from participating by Hitler, to not participate in solidarity with them.

Adolf Hilter, who had effectively become Germany’s dictator in 1933, had instituted an “Aryans-only” policy throughout all German athletic organizations, sparking global outrage, especially among American athletes. Only one German-Jewish athlete was permitted to play in the games—fencer Helene Mayer—because only her father was Jewish. Even her position wasn’t guaranteed; TIME reported in 1935 that Charles Hitchcock Sherrill, a U.S. member of the International Olympic Committee, had traveled to Germany prior to the Olympics to ensure Mayer would receive her rightful spot on the team.

Some athletes and Olympics organizers in the United States and Europe considered pulling out of the Olympics altogether to compete elsewhere. The debate on whether to pull out on the American end was particularly heated, as the boycott began with the U.S. team. Avery Brundage, then the president of the American Olympic Committee, opposed a boycott, arguing that “the Olympic Games belong to the athletes and not to the politicians.”

Some academics, including Burstin, now believe that Brundage was complicit in the Nazi’s anti-Semitism in the Olympics, and that he even attempted to paint American Jews as unpatriotic and misguided for supporting a boycott. Meanwhile, the Nazis, seeing the negative reaction to what was supposed to be a great moment for Germany, temporarily took down anti-Jewish propaganda and did what they could to clean up Germany’s image prior to the games. In the end, the U.S. would send several Jewish athletes to the games, and many journalists covered the games with a degree of positivity, with TIME reporting in 1936 that most newspapers focused on “the ceremonious procession” of the Olympics’ first modern Torch Relay rather than “other doings in Berlin.”

Many Jewish athletes who either competed in the Olympics prior to 1936 or the 1936 Olympics itself would die in concentration camps during the Holocaust. Among them were Ilja Szraibman, a Polish swimmer and Roman Kantor, a Polish fencer, both of whom competed in 1936 and later died in Majdanek. Notably, Alfred Nakache, a French swimmer who competed in the 1936 games, would also compete in the 1948 Olympic Games in London after surviving Auschwitz.

Though Hitler’s attempt to see Aryan athletes triumph was not a complete success—most famously due to the medal sweep brought by U.S. track star Jesse Owens—German athletes did walk away with the most Olympic medals.

They told him to “Go out and win. Beat that Nazi bastard” (Marty Glickman).

A controversial move at the Games was the benching of two American Jewish runners, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller. Both had trained for the 4x100-meter relay, but on the day before the event, they were replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, the team's two fastest sprinters. Various reasons were given for the change. The coaches claimed they needed their fastest runners to win the race. Glickman has said that Coach Dean Cromwell and Avery Brundage were motivated by antisemitism and the desire to spare the Führer the embarrassing sight of two American Jews on the winning podium. Stoller did not believe antisemitism was involved, but the 21-year-old described the incident in his diary as the "most humiliating episode" in his life.

Here Glickman (left) and Stoller train aboard the ship Manhattan on their way to Berlin. July 1936. —USHMM #21725/Courtesy of Marty Glickman

This August 9, 1936, photograph shows the U.S. 4x100-meter relay team. Their time of 39.8 seconds set a world record that held for 20 years. From left to right: Jesse Owens, Ralph Metcalfe, Foy Draper, and Frank Wykoff. Both Draper and Wyckoff trained under Dean Cromwell at the University of Southern California, leading some observers to believe that favoritism was involved in the selection of the runners. Stoller agreed. He had beaten Draper in practice heats in Berlin.

[dfwgator]

Another story that says a lot about Jesse Owens....

Luz Long

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luz_Long

[bagman]

I rather suspect that the stars in the Big Time Programs are being compensated, both under the table and with cushy summer jobs.

At an unnamed basketball power many years ago, a star basketball center had a summer job which required him to sit in an air-conditioned room at a Bluegrass horse farm and make sure that no one stole the television set in the room. It was a rough summer for him.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Kabar. Thanks for this great roundup about the 1936 Olympics and the US team.

John Woodward, another black team runner, told us that Glickman (and/or Stoller) was actually faster than him and most of the other US runners.

This was at a Holocaust conference on the Olympics with Glickman and a German-Jewish woman (believe she was a high-jumper who was not allowed to compete). I talked to Woodward and listened to him, Glickman and the woman speak (I cannot find her name on the program).

Incredible stories about the American running team. Great men of character.

[deport]

Interesting comparison, but I don't know how accurate:

SOURCE

[kabar]

It says a lot more about the character and sportsmanship of Luz Long.

[jmaroneps37]

Spencer Haywood feels cheated that he wasn’t mistreated in college and the NBA so he merely invents a grievance to complain about. A true pos.