NBA All-Star game: White men can't root

Very interesting read from the Daily Beast.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-02-17/nba-all-star-game-white-men-cant-root/2/

 

"Blah blah blah . . .attempts at sociological examinations . . . same old stereotypical crap about how white fans need white people to root for and they're all racist anyway . . . Hey! I wrote FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS! Remember that? Remember Friday Night Lights?! Well, I wrote that!!!!!!! Hell yes, I did! . . . every sports fan is racist . . . blah blah blah . . . douche juice . . . I love Twitter . . . "

 

Don't forget about defensive specialist JJ Reddick.

 

Can I root for Blake Griffin for half of each game?

 

A lot of these perceptions are so ingrained that I don't really know how to assess them. People do root for the underdog, which is nearly always the scrappy white guy who's the least athletically gifted person in the bunch.

But for Bissinger or anyone else to say the NBA is the same great game it was in the 1980s is intentionally clueless. Call it the racially coded "streetball" or call it a product of ESPN or the star system, but the NBA has turned into a stand-still, one-on-one game. And the players don't try as hard during the regular season as they do in the playoffs. This is also true of hockey, and I personally pay little attention to that either until the playoffs.

 

Or the poster-child for big white stiffs: Shawn Bradley.

 

I'm a fat guy so I can only root for Baron Davis.

 

Schedule's too long.

Again . . . Celtics went into semi-retirement for the longest stretch last year, and still got there. Tickets to most regular-season games are sucker bait for tourists.

 

As long as you root for the American white guys, I don't care.

 

I guess I can only root for Jeremy Lin, Yi Jianlian and Yao Ming. Damn, and I though MJ was Calabasian.

 

You'll always have Joe Alexander, the first Taiwanese NBA player.