The Utah Jazz Throwing Games to get ANOTHER White player

[TomShane]

I mean, come on. It's no secret that Frank Layden likes his white ballplayers, but this is ridiculous. They're down by just about 40 to the Timberwolves, and they're fielding a team with 4 white dudes on the floor at the same time. I mean, really. Is getting Andrew Bogut worth embarrassing yourself? Can they quit the charade and have David Stern do someting to stop Ku Klux Layden? Pathetic.

[The Gun Of Bavaria]

Who watches the NBA?

[The Troll]

Who watches the NBA?

Yeah, seriously.

It's baseball season, and TomShane is watching Utah Jazz games.

[TomShane]

Yeah, seriously.

It's baseball season, and TomShane is watching Utah Jazz games.

1) I have DirecTV.

2) I'm a loser who shuns women.

[Panzer Division Marduk]

Who watches the NBA?

Why are we even in this forum?

[The Troll]

[Panzer Division Marduk]

MY EYES! AAAAAAGH!

[Maxman]

(2) I'm a loser who shuns women.

Yeah you shun them. That is how it shakes out alright. Uh, Tom want to go out tonight? Not tonight baby, I am watching the Jazz.

[R44]

I can't believe I'm replying in a NBA thread

Unless the Jazz can find more "Karl Malone types" (who fall in love with Salt Lake City), they almost have to have more white players...

Can't blame them too much.....They pushed so hard for both PG Andre Miller and PF Elton Brand---I mean pushed real hard, but neither wanted to live in Salt Lake.

Also, they went out and signed Boozer who is black....I believe their #1 pick, Humphries, is also black, albeit very light skinned....Snyder was another #1 pick in 2004, he's black.

That's the reality of the NBA in Salt Lake, black players don't want to play there and they must make do with players that will play there.

Look, white players would love to play for the Knicks (Van Horn, Sczerbiak), but Isiah wants no part them--look at the Marbury and Van Horn deals (he traded the rights to like 6 white players a week after he got the job)...

At the very least, he's no different than Layden

[TomShane]

I can't believe I'm replying in a NBA thread

Unless the Jazz can find more "Karl Malone types" (who fall in love with Salt Lake City), they almost have to have more white players...

Can't blame them too much.....They pushed so hard for both PG Andre Miller and PF Elton Brand---I mean pushed real hard, but neither wanted to live in Salt Lake.

Also, they went out and signed Boozer who is black....I believe their #1 pick, Humphries, is also black, albeit very light skinned....Snyder was another #1 pick in 2004, he's black.

That's the reality of the NBA in Salt Lake, black players don't want to play there and they must make do with players that will play there.

Look, white players would love to play for the Knicks (Van Horn, Sczerbiak), but Isiah wants no part them--look at the Marbury and Van Horn deals (he traded the rights to like 6 white players a week after he got the job)...

At the very least, he's no different than Layden

Which is bizarre (about Isiah) coinsidering that the 80's Pistons would have won absolutely nothing without Bill Laimbeer. I don't know if Isiah has it out for the white player so much as he does for "soft" i.e. non-urban types. He digs the ghetto-ness of his bad-boys and thinks it translates into hunger on the floor. It doesn't. The white dudes he traded--VanHorn and Maciej Lampe--are both incredibly INCREDIBLY soft, almost to the degree that it's embarrassing to watch them play even now.

And I totally agree with you about having to have white guys in Utah. Phoenix is alot like that too--there will never NOT be a white starter in Phoenix. But, Layden is totally overkill with his need to draft white guys. Racist or not, it's just not going to work up there. Now, I don't think Layden has a racist agenda, per se, but I do think he has this idea that his customer base won't tolerate an Allen Iverson-type with a "thug" image and tattoos coming into his arena. It's just unfortunate because he has Jerry Sloan--one of the great coaches in the history of the NBA--and he sticks him with these stiffs. Boozer, from Alaska and Duke, is a little bot of a different guy and fits the Layden mold. If he wants 'gentleman ballplayers' he won't win jack, and this throwing of games to nab Bogut is almost despicable. I hope he gets the 2nd pick and has to make a decision on Marvin Williams, who is not a very well-spoken, sophisticated kid, or if he sticks to his guns and drafts the model citizen, but incredibly less talented Chris Paul, or pisses everyone off and drafts the 7'3" Lithuanian kid.

Here's a good article, btw, from Mike Wilbon on the white-black basketball player issue.

Basketball Has Few Shades of Gray

By Michael Wilbon

Friday, March 26, 2004; Page D01

There is no comprehensive conversation about basketball that doesn't include race. Not only is the subject not taboo, talking about is encouraged. It's talked about at every workplace, every barber shop, every playground in America by blacks and whites, whoever pays attention to basketball, whoever loves it, whoever is fascinated by it.

Race doesn't need to be injected into the daily discourse -- and usually it isn't -- but it's bound to come up, especially during March, which is about the only time we now see white American basketball players on the national stage.

The PC Police might as well leave basketball and find someplace else to hang around because race is fair game in basketball. Sometimes it's the only place race can be discussed in detail, with passion even, without people feeling squeamish. There's a reason nobody much objected to the movie title, "White Men Can't Jump." It's not that there aren't any white men who can jump; it's that we all understand the reference, we accept the conversation as legitimate.

And that brings me to the Vanderbilt basketball team, a team that won 23 games this season, including its first two in the NCAA tournament. They didn't get into the news for reaching the Sweet 16 as much as they did for being the subject of a throwaway line by my friend and colleague Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe. During a conversation with Tony Kornheiser on the radio, Ryan, who is white, said Vanderbilt had "too many white guys" to beat Western Michigan. Of course, Vandy won that game and won its next game against favored North Carolina State, too.

Before you know it, at least one newspaper in Tennessee had called out Ryan. USA Today had called out Ryan. It's the kind of comment you hear every day around the water cooler, every day on the playground and in the gym. Often it's a sentiment uttered by white guys. Everybody laughs, hardly ever does anyone seem offended, and the band plays on.

Except this time, some folks in and around Vanderbilt took exception.

"Before the tournament, the critics were saying we were soft, and we had too many white boys on the team," Vanderbilt star Matt Freije said before Thursday night's game here against U-Conn. "I think we've shown that we're not soft and we don't have too many white boys."

Freije, a 6-foot-10 center-forward, is Vandy's best player. I'll bet money out of my own pocket he'll play in the NBA next year, though he didn't look like a pro last night, missing 15 of 18 shots as his team was popped pretty good by the Huskies. By virtue of growing up in America, Freije surely had heard this sort of comment before. Maybe hearing it for the 1,000th time irked him. Or more likely, it was a convenient device for an underdog looking for an edge.

The great irony here -- and I don't know whether Ryan knew this -- is that Vanderbilt started three black players against U-Conn. I didn't see any birth certificates, but I'll trust my eyesight to tell me that Mario Moore, Corey Smith and Russell Lakey are all black. Does the final score of the U-Conn. game mean Vandy had too many black players?

Complicating the matter even further is that at about the same time, filmmaker Spike Lee said of Celtics icon Larry Bird during ABC's "NBA Hangtime," "Listen to the white media and it is like nobody has ever played basketball before."

I've been friends with Lee long enough to know two things: He loves tweaking the heavyweights in mainstream sportswriting (which is good), most of whom are white. And above all else Lee is a New Yorker who cannot bow to anything Boston (which is fairly normal). And if he can get a rise out of white folks by challenging the status of Bird, well, he won't pass it up. Having disagreed with him a few dozen times on this very topic in various cities, it's still one of Lee's favorites. It's possible I'm hallucinating, but I could swear the last time I had a long conversation in person with Lee he was wearing a Bird throwback jersey.

Anyway, Byron Scott, the former Lakers guard who played against Bird, said of Lee's comments: "I don't care if you talk white, black, green. [bird] was great. Period. End of story."

I remember Chris Mullin, the former Dream Teamer and white star of St. John's and Golden State, telling me a story years ago. Mullin so frequently played with black players on predominantly black playgrounds and gymnasium floors in and around New York that he once saw another white player show up and asked, "What's the white kid doing here?"

Kevin Grevey, the former Kentucky star and a member of the Washington Bullets' 1978 championship team, was here broadcasting the Vanderbilt game.

"I always considered the source," Grevey said. "There weren't too many times I took a basketball to the court as a kid and didn't hear white boy this or white boy that. I'd want to leave the court having proven this white boy was a pretty good player. As I got older, it depended on the approach. If I thought it was malicious, it would fire me up as a player. But if it came from a comedian or somebody who was joking, it didn't bother me at all. I was listening to the radio when Bob said it. I know Bob, and I certainly thought he was joking."

I told Grevey I believe we ought to thank basketball for giving us one forum where people can stretch the limits of what's appropriate conversation, be rebuked, and nobody's the worse for wear. He agreed and said such discussions are usually healthy.

Ryan, who covered Bird's entire career, was joking. Lee was poking at guys like Ryan for lavishly praising Bird. So is there too much praise for white players or too much criticism? And is it possible that an occasional controversy is just the thing to cause much-needed self-examination?

Note: Matt Frieje is getting kicked around the CBA trying to cling on to a job.