Stumbling upon one taboo truth
Much of what LaVar Ball says is a bit crazy, but was he right on race?
In his fevered quest to become an honorary Kardashian, we can all agree that LaVar Ball has a bad case of Idiot Mouth. But just because Ball says something doesn’t mean it’s total hooey.
His most recent blast: “Realistically you can’t win no championship with three white guys because the foot speed is too slow,” Ball said in rehashing UCLA’s demise in the NCAA Tournament.
The reaction has been pretty much the same as when he Ball said he could beat Michael Jordan one-on-one, or his son, Lonzo, is better than Steph Curry.
There the idiot goes again!
I hate to defend Ball’s clown show, but I like it when anybody does a cannonball into the pool of political correctness.
Let’s face it, a large percentage of white guys couldn’t outrun a walrus. A lot of us are dorks. Ball was peddling in stereotypes, but that doesn’t mean his statement was incorrect.
“It’s both racist and accurate at the same time,” Jon Entine said.
He’s the founder of the Science Literacy Project, a foundation that focuses on genetics and media. Entine has written seven books on the subject, including “Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports And Why We Are Afraid To Talk About It.”
Ball isn’t afraid to talk about anything, especially if he thinks it’ll make him or his three hoop-prodigy sons look good. His egomania prevents him from realizing how the bombast has the opposite effect.
To Ball, any attention is good attention. Trifling with the taboo subject of race was guaranteed to get some.
There was a lot of the predictable, “If a white guy had said something like that about black players, he’d have been crucified.” Then there were the equally predictable gasps of horror from the PC crowd.
Polite society hates to acknowledge that all men (and women) are not created equal. You could stand an Inuit tribesman from the Arctic Circle next to a Dinka tribesman from sub-Saharan Africa and some people would insist they would have an equal chance of one day starting at center for the Lakers.
The Twittersphere fired back at Ball with photos of the 1992 Dream Team, which had bona fide white guys Larry Bird, John Stockton, Chris Mullin and Christian Laettner.
I’d take my chances now with a lineup featuring Gordon Heyward, Kevin Love, Marc Gasol and a 2011 version of Dirk Nowitzki.
But in the real world you don’t get to cherrypick the creme-de-la-creme when constructing a team. You pick from the pool of available talent, and that talent is predominately black.
The last team to win an NCAA championship with three white starters was Duke in 1991. The last one with four white starters was California in 1959.
Dwight Eisenhower was president in 1959. The NBA was 74.4 percent black and 18.3 percent white in the 2015-16 season. That in a country that is 74.2 percent white and 12.2 percent black.
A lot of factors explain the statistical discrepancy because a lot of factors go into the making of a great basketball player — desire, opportunity, upbringing, work ethic, intuition, performance under pressure.
But does genetics have anything to do with it?
Don’t ask.
“Racial differences are the third rail,” Entine said, “and we are in an era of hyperpolitical correctness.”
It’s perilous to say white men can’t jump and black men can. The assumption is you mean white men get by on hustle and smarts, while black men are physically superior but dumb.
There are plenty of dumb, talented white players and plenty of black players rely on hustle and smarts. But no matter how much you stress that, the disapproving gasps will come.
Once the backlash set in, Ball said his words were twisted. He said he loves the white guys on UCLA’s team.
I don’t question that, but my guess is he still thinks if you have too many of them you’ll never win a title.
As wrong as that sounds, history says Ball is right.