Miss Hill really outdid herself this time..thanks ESPN..thanks for the gift...

I don't have a strong feeling about Jemele Hill one way or the other. I'm actually baffled by why she gets so much attention on this board. But I've read enough of her stuff to know that the idea that she's a one-trick pony who writes about race all the time is flat out wrong. Like Rhoden, people on here seem to think she's obsessed with race because those are the only columns they ever notice. Check her archives. Before this, her previous columns had been on the fan who caught Bonds' record-breaking HR, Michael Phelps, Erin Andrews, the average fan getting priced out of going to games, the HS hoops kid who's going to play in Europe, Michelle Wie, the NBA's Western Conference being overrated, etc. But then she writes something that does have to do with race and suddenly she's obsessed. Very unfair.

And the column in question is fine. Not horrible, not great. She took a stance and supported it, maybe not as well as she could have. People may strongly disagree with her opinion, but that doesn't make it a bad column. Could it have been better? Of course. But the harshness of the criticism is unwarranted.

 

Her arguments more often than not have the structural integrity of moist cardboard. And that probably hits a deeper nerve with people where something as delicate as race is concerned.

Do it right or don't do it at all.

 

"It didn't matter that the U.S. hockey team was far more disrespectful when they destroyed their rooms in the Olympic athlete's village following elimination in the 1998 Olympic tournament in Nagano. Our basketball team became the enemy."

Um the hockey team broke a couple of cheap chairs that reportedly collapsed when they sat in them. They did not destroy their rooms (I believe it was even isolated to one maybe two two rooms, not the entire team accommodations, but whatever) and yes they were vilified for it. They certainly did not get off scott free and the fact that she remembered it enough to throw it into her shitty column proves that point.

 

I would have loved to see AI on this team. As polarizing as he may be, he is one of maybe five players in the NBA that I would pay money to go see. He gives his all on the court every night.

 

Someone at ESPN The Magazine needs to copy edit Ms. Hill's work. It was riddled with poor sentence structure and a grammatical error or two among other things.
Three or four graphs in the middle of the column were quite choppy to say the least.

 

Oh no, you haven't.

 

Watching the sphere sail into the night can be a beautiful experience.