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OTL: White Americans in the NBA

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by bigpern23, Dec 6, 2009.

  1. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    Part of that also is the need to learn self-defense in poor areas. You would have poor kids needing to learn to fight so they wouldn't get robbed of their few possessions. They would fight so well, someone would point them out to a gym, and the rest would be history.
     
  2. Crash

    Crash Active Member

    FWIW, I don't think personal instruction and 1-on-1 training have nearly as much impact in basketball as they do in other sports. You can kind-of ad lib a lot in basketball. You don't learn how to dribble with one-on-one instruction. You learn how to dribble by playing the game -- learning not to cross in front of a guy, learning how to protect the ball, dribble in traffic, etc. If you have a halfway decent mentor, he/she can teach you pretty good form on a jump shot, and once you get used to doing it enough, you can hit plenty of shots with that form. You learn to play defense by playing defense.

    There really isn't a great secret to anything in basketball. It's about as straightforward of a game as you can get, and those who are most talented tend to prevail if they want to work hard enough.
     
  3. cyclingwriter

    cyclingwriter Active Member

    Facinating subject and discussion. I think the hunger/no fall back plan is an issue, but someone brought up the son of the former players going into the sport. That is a relatively new trend and has to do with money and fame. Very few baseball stars of the "golden eras" sent their kids to play the sport. Same with football. Ty Cobb sending one of his sons to Princeton to get away from being an athlete. The sons of Mantle, Williams et al flirted with the sport, but it was never serious. There is a reason there are no father/son hall of famers in football and I am petty sure none in baseball to date. It just wasn't worth it. But now if you are a baseball player and see the kind of money a guy gets, you sure as hell are going to try and get your kid in the game. It's easy money.

    And yes I know that hockey is filled with numerous great father/son combos.
     
  4. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    A shitload in NASCAR as well.

    I think there are more in the NFL than we realize.
     
  5. dreunc1542

    dreunc1542 Active Member

    My favorite quote of my great-uncle's, who was brothers with a couple Olympic boxers and went on to become a Hall of Fame boxer himself, was "You either had to stay in or fight. We went out."
     
  6. Bodie_Broadus

    Bodie_Broadus Active Member

    Or RB for Oregon ;)
     
  7. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    I'll have to go through the TiVo and check that out.

    It is something that I see, as a youth basketball coach. My son is a second grader who is unusually tall (already on pace to be 6'8"). We have a couple of minority kids on our team and -even at age 7 - their bodies just 'flow' so much better for the game of basketball -- even though we all are in the same school district, with a fairly similar socio-economic/income demographic.

    The two "non-white" kids run circles around everybody else, even though all of the kids have been playing basketball for the same amount of years and the same amount of time each month.

    For whatever reason, these two kids are much more aggressive on the court than the rest of our team. They get more steals, are fearless when it comes to chasing rebounds and are the only ones who can create their own shots.
     
  8. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    1) exmedia, how exactly is your son "on pace" to be 6-8? How is this "pace" calculated?

    2) At least in my warm-weather area, basketball season has fallen to a distant third because of time. Fall is for soccer/football and goes until almost Thanksgiving. Baseball starts in February and can last through July. So with the holidays in there too, most parents just decide to take a break and not sign their kids up for anything so they can have some peaceful Saturdays and squeeze in a family vacation.

    Now, it's also true that I can look at my kids' gene pool and reasonably conclude that basketball may not be their ideal sport to enjoy even as far as high school, much less have any future beyond that point. Maybe other parents are playing the odds. But when I was growing up in a cold-weather place, hoops started in early November and went through March, which was fine because football/soccer were done in October and baseball couldn't start until April.
     
  9. sgreenwell

    sgreenwell Well-Known Member

    When I was 8 or 9, they noted how much I had grown to that point, and I'm guessing based on that they said I would be 6'2" or so. Not sure if that's how they still do it. For the record, I ended up 5'9", which is why I remember the false hope of that doctor so well. *sigh*
     
  10. Crash

    Crash Active Member

    I remember going to basketball tryouts in middle school and seeing a sixth-grader dunk. That's when I realized that I better concentrate on baseball.
     
  11. Small Town Guy

    Small Town Guy Well-Known Member

    Not necessarily, Crash. A lot of 6-2 dominating 8th graders become 6-2 seniors who never get off the bench once other kids grow. There are those of course who do dominate but I've seen more who become pretty average, once they're no longer the biggest ogre on the court. Our eighth grade football team had a 6-0 kid with a beard who was fast, lean and mean and had to have been the most dominant junior high runner in the upper Midwest. He didn't grow an inch and was an average d-lineman in high school.

    On the other hand, the best player ever from my high school was an awesome 7th grader who dunked in a 7th grade game and the ball nearly knocked out a poor kid from the other team under the basket. The other team stood up on the bench and cheered. He did go on to become a great player. And, come to think of it, he came from a poor family, although a farm family. But in our town all you had to do for fun really was play ball and go to the Dairy Queen.
     
  12. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    We had his bones measures at his 3rd birthday and, since then, he has held at the 99% in height for age. I'm 6'5" and Mrs. exmedia is 6'1"..
     
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