Media Racist With Hansbrough Lovefest?

Thank you, and the phrase Freeman used in the title for this piece (why I used it) and something that gets mentioned in just about every recent Hansbrough piece and NC game I've seen. I think its a dumb nickname too. I didn't put much thought into the thread title, and will gladly amend it to appease those so rankled over it.

 

The race card in this case is absolute hogwash.

Bias toward Hansbrough being a junior as opposed to Beasley being a freshman? Not so much.

The fact Hansbrough plays at North Carolina? Ding ding ding, we have a winner!

I'm not going to say Hansbrough isn't a good player. He definitely is from what I've seen of him the last two years in particular (since I started covering an ACC team regularly). Is he as great as some people are saying? I can't answer that.

He may be the next Eric Montross. But if my memory serves, Vince Carter wasn't a superstar at North Carolina and became one in the NBA. They used to say the only person who could hold Michael Jordan under 20 points per game was Dean Smith. Anything's possible.

 

Hansbrough is much more athletic and versatile than Montross ever was. Frankly, I don't think you need to have a bias in order to consider him the better player than Beasley this season. The difference in stats is negligible, especially considering that Beasley is basically asked to be a one-man show. Certainly Beasley is a more versatile offensive player than Hansbrough, but that's only one of the criteria for player of the year. Hansbrough has shown the ability to take over a game on offense in his own way, and he has made huge defensive plays as well for the No. 1 team in the country. I would have voted for him without reservation.

 

Oh, plenty of black basketball players have been called tough and intelligent, and Ralph Sampson and Larry Johnson, to name two off the top of my head, were considered the face of college basketball. Beasley is not even the biggest college basketball focus in his own state. And who are Durant and Oden? They played last season? Wow, nobody ever said anything about them. :

I don't think Freeman is playing the race card. I think he's playing the Wetzel card, just trying to stir up shit.

 

But to give credit where due, there was this gem:

"Vitale is predisposed to hyperbole (I know: that's like saying water is predisposed to being wet)."

 

I am OK with the Psycho-T nickname, if only because the guy is a little off.
Last year, after the infamous Gerald Henderson incident, Marcus Ginyard was asked if he had ever seen Hansbrough that mad. A couple of times, he said. It was asked what happened next – his eyes got wide, he shook his head and muttered, 'We don't want to talk about that.'

 

The racism is the black guy, whether it be Isiah or Freeman, saying white guys can't play basketball.

 

Not a bad column — witty, off-beat — but seems to try a bit too hard.

I'm a big Beasley guy and a big Psycho T guy, so I'm just loving this.

For the record: Beasley was the better individual player (POY), Hansbrough was the best star on a team (MV_

Unfortunately in CBB, the POY is often offered to the MVP.

 

Most Valuable Player should be interpreted as the guy who would help ANY team the most.

The distinction between a player of the year and MVP is ludacris.

 

Regarding Freeman's lede:

"When Dick Vitale basically declared during this weekend's Duke-North Carolina broadcast that Tyler Hansbrough displayed the most desire of any player he has seen in all the years he has been covering college basketball, for a moment -- a fleeting one -- I thought I was smoking crack again."

He thought he was smoking crack again? When did he initially smoke crack?

Unless he did overcome a drug problem, and I'll feel like a real asshat if that's the case, that strikes me as a lazy lede to an ill-informed piece.

 

Outing alert: IJAG, at least for one post, is me.

 

If you continued reading, Freeman didn't exactly pick himself up after slipping and falling to the canvas.