Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Why No One Cares About the NBA Lockout

The NBA is in lockout. The players have called for decertification, having rejected the owners latest offer of a 50-50 split of revenues, down from the 57 percent split the players retained in the last contract, but up from the owners initial offer of 47%. David Stern is ready to cancel the entire season. And fans ... don't care. The comments section on the WSJ story on the lockout and loss of the season are littered with responses of "I'll watch Hockey" and "who cares." This was entirely foreseeable. The basic conflict is between owners who are viewing the books (the NBA claims not unreasonably that 22 out of 30 teams lose money) and players who see no reason to continue on as before.


The reason is fans. White fans. Who are ebbing away from the NBA. Buzz Bissinger (author, Friday Night Lights) saw this one coming, sort of. He noted the White fans have no one to root for:

I don’t think talking about any of this makes me a racist. I believe it makes me a realist. White fans want white superstars, or in the case of the NBA, at least one white American superstar. Unless the ghosts of Bird and John Havlicek and Jerry West return to the floor, that isn’t going to happen. And since it isn’t going to happen, the NBA will continue to struggle with an identity crisis that no one wants to publicly acknowledge.

Nor is there any way to change the reality since black players are better, stronger, faster, and have more basketball intelligence than any of their white counterparts. If anything, the percentage of white American players will continue to fall. The league is not going to move to the absurdity of a quota system. So maybe the best thing for whites to do, including myself, is accept the fact there will be no white hope, drop the work-ethic fallacy, and revel in a game that is embedded more than ever with beauty and grace and strength and acrobatics.


Except White fans cannot be guilted into "follow the NBA and put money in owners pockets or you'll be called a racist." That is effective one-on-one where White guys comply or lose opportunities with girls, jobs, and socialization. But it fails miserably where there is no penalty for not watching the NBA, not going to games, and not buying merchandise.

Whites do not really care to follow sports where they cannot identify with the players. Or let us narrow that down, White men (the sports fan base) do not care to follow sports that are nearly all Black and have all the superstars Black. Which endorse and follow the Black rap/hip-hop model. The owners cannot force the White fans to give them money. This is what the lockout is all about.

The entire sports complex is running out of money. The NHL had a season long lockout in 2004-5. The NFL had a Summer long lockout that killed the exhibition season. Money is starting to get tight. Cable rights fees are no longer able to sustain year-on increases because cable TV and sports are discretionary items for cash-strapped men. And sports featuring nearly all-Black leagues have little appeal. Yes, most White fans will agree that the Black athletes are superior to White ones. They just don't care that much. Not enough to keep paying cable or satellite TV fees to watch them. Even less to pay to see them in person, or buy their merchandise. The "Los Dodgers" have been forced into a sale, the root cause of which is that Fox which bought them in the first place was desperate to dump them to a charlatan. Who proved incapable of running the team and used it as a piggy bank as the demographic wave transforming LA made the stadium into a Mexican gang-ridden war zone.

The NBA has about $4 billion in revenue. The problem is that vastly inflated player salaries were predicated on: 1. The NBA making money in China which never happened; 2. Increasing money extracted from TNT and NBC (which never happened); and 3. Increasing arena admissions/revenue and merchandising money, which never happened. Costs are spiraling out of control and the NBA's "all-in" bet on 100% Rap and Black has been a poor one.

The NBA is basically stuck with a Black rap player base. Bissinger is correct, Black players at the extreme of performance are simply better. The best players will always be, nearly all but not exclusively Black. Which in turn is a major factor in White fan apathy. No one really cares, if there is not a nightly parade of huge Black men lumbering down the court, traveling, and dunking the ball and then beating their chest like rappers (the move was copied from Rap videos). White male fans just cannot identify. Besides Bissinger is wrong, while the NBA players have amazing physiques that demonstrate a rigorous diet and demanding workouts, most players coast through the season, and often the playoffs, Expending minimal effort in defense, no team play, and little sense of hustle. They coast on their talent and gym work, not skill and dedication. Shaq's abysmal free throw percentage is indicative of generally poor preparation for anything other than general fitness. Many other active players have similar bad stats for free throws, rebounds, defense, hustle and so on.

Besides, they're Black. Which means, a culture and identity far removed and alien (and also supremely uninteresting) to most White fans. They don't hate. They just don't care. Ordinary White guys in their own lives cannot boast and brag. They can't beat their chest when they do something they are expected, day in and out, to accomplish. They can't pose, mock opponents, and preen. The behavior and culture of Black athletes is as foreign and uninteresting to them as say, Eskimos or Mongolians. Black athletes aside from being a different skin color (it is natural and universal to prefer people of one's own race, a point made in Brown v. Board of Education in point of fact, regarding the "un-natural" desire of Black girls to play with White dolls, and the considerable effort of Bratz and Barbie to provide Black and Hispanic dolls), their behavior on-field and on-court is something White guys find distasteful. The virtues that White guys prize (because it is what they are expected to do): show up every day, work hard, don't complain, achieve and act like you always expected to do so, grace under pressure aka "don't choke," just are not there for almost all Black athletes.

White athletes who "act Black" generally find a chilly reception among fans. Tom Brady, known for arrogance, bling, glamorous wives/girlfriends, funny hairstyles, has not been embraced nationally the way say, Peyton Manning (Mr. Aw-Shucks who mocks himself) or Drew Brees or Aaron Rodgers has. And the man won three Superbowls. That's only one less than Joe Montana! Tom Brady is not just an excellent, but outstanding Quarterback, and White fans generally don't like him.

White fans give their love, and affection, to teams and players who embody their values and encapsulate their fantasy of what they'd like to be, if they were only stronger, taller, faster, and younger. Sports is a voluntary thing, no player, team, or league is owed a fan's money or time. Those that don't deliver, can get dropped. In favor of Call of Duty, or the latest movie, or an old one (on Netflix or Amazon), or an e-book, or a thousand different things.

The NBA is just going to have to live with its decision to go all-Black. A lot less money. The NFL would do well to pay attention. Though likely it won't. Quite likely, the season will be done. The owners will draft the college kids leaving school, a few retirees, club players, and foreign ones, and call it "your NBA!" Games will start next season, and players, not having a lot of money to fall back on, will dribble in. Taking a lot less money (which likely was the owners intention anyway).

The main beneficiary (ala Hugh Hewitt, you know who this benefits?) will be the outsider sports: MMA, Hockey, Soccer, and Rugby. Of them all, Hockey having the most games on (Versus and local hockey team affiliates) now will stand to gain the most. The sport is not that hard to pick up, is very fast paced (more so than Basketball), scoring is lower (so every goal counts), the players nearly all White, and team play paramount. Next in line will be the MMA, featuring mostly White athletes, lots of excitement, and a new higher profile on Fox having moved from Spike TV. Soccer of course has a SWPL connection, but has many teams like the English Premier League with a number of White players. Rugby is dominated by burly White guys with a smattering of Samoans. While the French soccer team is nearly all Black/North African, the Rugby team is all White. It is similar to American Football, but without pads or unlimited substitutions. Rugby is hampered by the division (confusing for outsiders and newcomers) between Rugby Union (for the upper classes), Rugby League (for the working classes, professionals), Australian Rules Football, Rugby Sevens, and so on. Plus, TV coverage is spotty and mostly limited to pay channels (limiting sampling).

Hockey seems the main winner, it is the easiest to watch on TV for most fans. Followed by the MMA.

Professional and amateur sports have a value in society. Given that so few other bonding institutions exist, to allow pride in one's culture and community, as Church attendance has fallen off a cliff, and voluntary associations like the Kiwanis and Elks Lodges have aged into irrelevance (no new members), professional sports are all that's left for many White Americans. Steve Sailer makes the argument that PC and Multiculturalism have made pride in White America something that can never be overtly expressed, lest the elites and PC enforcers punish you. Thus sports and professional sports figure into the only identities that are allowed to be expressed any more. You cannot be proud to be, say a White American from Chicago, but you can root for the Bears. That's a poor trade-off, and one that is not ultimately sustainable because eventually an all-Black Chicago Bears team turns off even the most avid White supporter, eager to express any identity at all. The growth of Hockey in places like Phoenix, Tampa Bay, Atlanta, and San Jose not to mention Anaheim which are not historic Hockey hotbeds reflects a search for a permissible White identity.

Either one of two things will happen. Either Whites will abandon any overt expression of any identity at all and retreat into cyberworld, a Facebook, Angry Birds, Call of Duty, Zynga Games driven existence, as the elites maintain total and complete control, or Whites will start to rebel as they did before, against elite opinion on how to act and live their lives.

And we know how Prohibition turned out.

68 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I am getting sick of football, and don't care at all about basket-ball. Allen Iverson with his tatoo's and ghetto thug personality was the beginning of the end for my b-ball fandom. (I used to like the LA-Lakers of the Magic/Worthy/Kareem/Rambus era). But I don't give a damn now.

And I will start watching more Hockey this summer. (I like Ovechkin and the Capitals.) But why no mention of NASCAR? This season has been exciting and the Sprint Cup is coming down to the final race, and the two competitors are two hard-charging bad-asses, Carl Edwards & Tony Stewart.

I plan to watch more NASCAR, less football and no basketball.

This past World Series was great, the best in years BTW.

Anonymous said...

The USA will sooon be a Nation of Colour so what white people think won't matter.

Basketball is HUGE worldwide.

Anonymous said...

There is one way the Black leagues can stay in business: sell tickets to the most dedicated fans of black athletes (white sportswriters & sportscasters and other SWPls/DWLs) for a trip to the post-game showers so they can get down on their knees and suck off as many black guys as they want.

Guaranteed income. For a while. :)

Robert the Wise said...

"Anonymous said...

The USA will sooon be a Nation of Colour so what white people think won't matter.

Basketball is HUGE worldwide."

Unfortunately, Nations of Color have no money, so they can't pay the salaries of black athletes or the operating costs of the teams. That's why these black teams are folding even now. Boo Hoo.

Whiskey said...

Anon, the NBA tried for more than 15 years to push into China. Abortive attempts to create an NBA development league, exhibition games in China, came to naught.

NBA themed merchandise is widely sold and is popular in China. Nearly all of it is counterfeit. The Chinese will follow Yao Ming, but are not interested in development leagues, Stern could never get approval. The Chinese remain ... Chinese. They are uninterested in most things not Chinese. Which is true for most peoples.

Basketball is NOT huge worldwide. There are minor, poorly paying leagues in Europe and Israel, the NBA, a Canadian League, and that's it. SOCCER is the global, mega-billions sport. Beckham was lured to the LA Galaxy by huge amounts of money, there is nothing comparable (Kobe or LeBron or Dwayne Wade being lured to Europe by even more money) in Basketball.

For a simple reason: most of China, Asia, Latin America, the ME, are too short to play it, professionally! [Africans have no money, so they don't count.]

little dynamo said...

No one really cares, if there is not a nightly parade of huge Black men lumbering down the court, traveling, and dunking the ball and then beating their chest like rappers (the move was copied from Rap videos). White male fans just cannot identify.


more than that: i hate it

watching a defensive end make a sack, then sprint away from his congratulating team-mates so he can dance and preen and gloat privately in the middle of the field fills me with loathing

it's the antithesis of sport, a gesture that transmits the subtext "cultural death"

as for rap "music," it sucks dogdick so much i can't even begin to say... "songs" that sound like they're written in 20 minutes, what bullshit

good honest essay

JohnnyRebel said...

As I stated on niggermania.com,I heartily congratulate the strong,proud Black warriors for making this brave stand against the greedy owners!You go,er,boyzz!Dont give in!! I find it noteworthy and funny that the union big shots are of course,BLACK,but now that theyre going to court they bring in David Boies(sp?) and some hotshot jew Jeffrey Kessler. They aint that dumb,theyre not going to court wiff a black lawyer!!!!

red said...

NFL's going the way of the NBA. Around the half the coaches are black now and the quality of the play calling and team work is really bad. I watched a lot of football in the 80s and 90s and these teams have better players but their execution is horrible and not enjoyable to watch.

Anonymous said...

A lock in with Newcastle Brown Ale would be preferable.

Anonymous said...

lumbering down the court, traveling, and dunking the ball and then beating their chest like rappers (the move was copied from Rap videos).

Take it to the NBA and explain why they are losing audience to properly refereed sports.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

Nor is there any way to change the reality since black players are better, stronger, faster, and have more basketball intelligence than any of their white counterparts.

Couldn't disagree more. Black athletes are ridiculously fast-twitch loaded. The rules (and the rule-calling) favor this because, among other things, that's what TV wants: short displays of raw physicality with no finesse or future time-orientation, then break for commercial.

Put an NBA forward in a fluid game where he's not allowed just to stop dribbling and charge the basket and see how well he does. Put an NFL tailback on a rugby pitch and watch him collapse after five minutes.

Whites are much better total athletes.

Anonymous said...

The future will show thqat you racists will be wring inevery way.

Everyone loves basketball

White owmen LOVE black men.

Axe Head said...

I looked here and was surprised at the comment hostility toward the players, it's right in line with what Whiskey said here. Sure there's the usual charge of "greed" thrown at both sides, but a lot of mocking of NBA players--inability to save money, tatoos, having lots of children and women, bling, pimped-out cars, etc.

The affection of NBA fans is fragile, based on historical loyalty to team, not to players they love.

Anonymous said...

Not sure if I am misunderstanding, but just wanted to say that Australian Rules Football is not a variety of Rugby. Amomg many differences, there is no offside rule.

David Collard

Cowboy said...

Ron Artest leads his gang up into the stands and beats up a fan. In front of the fan's son. It was the wrong fan, too. Ron Artest is named Defensive Player of the Year that year.

Thugs, meet Straw and Camel's Back.

We still have March Madness, they still play basketball in college. They'll actually call traveling!

We also have the Harlem Globe-Trotters, a pointedly all-black, showboating team, but one that proves there's a positive way to do this.

But forget the NBA. I hope they never play another season.

mr. witherspoon said...

There are a lot of white wrestlers in the MMA world, but there's only 1 non-latino, non-Brazilian white guy who holds a UFC title (Georges St. Pierre), and in 10 years it wouldn't be a surprise if there were none.

I think MMA has a lot of cross-over potential with women, though, with whom the UFC is surprisingly popular due to its showcasing elite athletes with perfect bodies being incredibly violent and kind of gay.

Anonymous said...

>>as for rap "music," it sucks dogdick so much i can't even begin to say... "songs" that sound like they're written in 20 minutes, what bullshit<<

20 minutes is long enough to write a song. Eddie Vedder wrote Elderly Woman Behind a Store Counter in 20 minutes. And that is a pretty damn good song with some memorable imagery.

Mr. witherspoon said...

Wait, make that two. Forgot about Frankie Edgar. But the point still stands.

Anonymous said...

(Cliff Arroyo)

I don't think it's too many black players per se, it's too many black players going ghetto and behaving without a shred of class or dignity leading to a downward race to the bottom.

No one outside the ghetto wants to pay money to watched a bunch of low-classed dysfunctional ghetto behavior, let alone a bunch of overpaid athletes indulge in ghetto behavior.

I remember that in the early days of Motown Berry Gordy had an in house 'charm school' (attendance mandatory) so that the performers' public behavior wouldn't alienate mainstream audiences.

The NFL and NBA should really look into reviving that idea.

I live in Europe and the NBA is not 'huge' here. It was in the mid 90's but not now. Draw your own conclusions.

No Show said...

White athletes who "act Black" generally find a chilly reception among fans. Tom Brady, known for arrogance, bling, glamorous wives/girlfriends, funny hairstyles, has not been embraced nationally the way say, Peyton Manning (Mr. Aw-Shucks who mocks himself) or Drew Brees or Aaron Rodgers has. And the man won three Superbowls. That's only one less than Joe Montana! Tom Brady is not just an excellent, but outstanding Quarterback, and White fans generally don't like him.

No. Tom Brady is Ultra White. From High School to his current status.

If he is hated it's probably not unlike why the stereotype of the wealthy jock snob is in the movies that pander to the guys who haven't gotten over their high school insecurities.

It's why the Duke lacrosse team rape hoax was believed - class envy among White Americans.

Anonymous said...

Where is the proof that the nba is losing popularity? No one cares about the lockout because for all intents and purposes, the nba season doesn't really start until Jan. or Feb. It's still football season. Whites have been whining forever about how much you hate the nba. Stop crying and stop watching. And the nba players are no more criminal or thuggish than all the white boys spreading democracy all over the world. Nba players don't save money? As if whites do? Have you not been paying attention? America is broke. Europe is broke. The great white nations are broke.

Anonymous said...

"lumbering down the court, traveling, and dunking the ball and then beating their chest like rappers (the move was copied from Rap videos)."

The traveling problem has been around since Jordan, at least thats when I noticed it. The few I talked it over with glossed over the issue though. Jordan et al. could do no wrong. I quit paying attention to the NBA a bit before the MLB in the mid 90s when in high school. I went to hockey and football. These days I don't care much for pro sports at all.

DaFarmerY'all said...

Re Anon,"white owmen love black men." Cant argue with that. Damn those owmen. "White nations are broke," We went broke providing mortgages--at the deamnd of the NRC(Nigger Ruling Class) to niggers/mexicans whodidnt have a chance of ever repaying them. Imagine there was a bill before Congress demanding the following:Every African-American shall be allowed a line of credit up to $500,000 to be used for mortgages,car loans,and personal loans,regardless of his/her financial status. Those High Niggers would scream and shout like raped apes to pass this bill and call nayone who opposed it,"Da rayciss!!" Point:You're a burden. A big one.

jhbowden said...

Whiskey's right for the completely wrong reasons on this one.

The NBA hasn't been thuggish in recent years, quite the opposite. If anything, it has become too corporate and too family friendly.

For example, back in the day, Chicago Stadium used to be a loud as hell, since working dudes would go to the games after work to get rowdy. But now, with sky-high ticket prices, yuppies go there, and take their wives and children, and act like the event is a damn golf tournament.

Also, to keep the high-end crowd happy, the league has instituted all sorts of touchy-feely fouls to make the game much, much less physical. In the 80s and early 90s, there were a lot of epic, very physical series, Bulls-Pistons, Bulls-Knicks, etc. -- that simply would not be possible today under the tight rules. The game is now like ballet, and there is really no use for big men, since they aren't allowed to body anyone. And the rules are so tight they can only be called subjectively.

Racewise, Dirk Nowitski won a championship last year, so I'm not sure why whites would be bummed out about this. And team play showed some improvements -- Miami had outstanding interior defense, and the execution of Thibodeau's defensive schema in Chicago is beautiful to watch. The complaints about Shaq and Iverson don't even make sense, since those geezers aren't even in the league anymore.

If the game declines, it will be because of lack of interest in latinos, not whites. Last season was the most fun basketball fans have had in years.

Rich said...

I'm white and I enjoy the NBA.

Whiskey said...

Dirk Nowicki (sp?) is a German guy, not a White American. While it is true that Americans have half-embraced big German guys with big muscles and heavy accents (one was even disastrously Governor here) for the most part that has not been the case.

White fans demand White stars. American ones. That has been the achilles heel of MLS. There's enough American hockey stars (like Sid Crosby) that Hockey can probably grow. The NBA has obviously a tough time financially --

Otherwise the opportunity cost of making money would have the owners settle. Lockouts happen when the owners feel they have to get concessions to survive. Most of the owners seem to be losing money hence the lockout. Going all Black costs money.

Yes there are White fans who like the NBA. But clearly, not enough. Or the games would be on NBC in prime-time, or Fox, with bidding wars, etc. and even pricier tickets. Demand is not there, in aggregate.

Astute Commenters said...

Glad you're back, Whiskey. Love hearing from someone who actually says something, instead of meandering around. Even when I don't agree with you, you're refreshing.

I'm especially glad you wrote on this topic, because the lack of discussion of the NBA lockout has surprised me. Like the NHL lockout of a few years back, it seems like they're giving a labor dispute, and nobody's showing up.

The best take I've heard so far is that they're all sandbagging until Jan, when they'll play a shortened season. The league teams may minimize losses that way.

When you wrote, Sports is a voluntary thing, no player, team, or league is owed a fan's money or time. Those that don't deliver, can get dropped. In favor of Call of Duty,... you were more accurate than maybe you knew, in light of this.

Call of Duty: MW3 Breaks Every Sales Record Known to Man.

From the article, Not only has MW3 made more money than Avatar or Titanic did in five days, it's breaking all kinds of records for use on Xbox Live and PSN.

This trailer for the game seems tailored to your specs for popularity. CoD: The Vet & The Noob. Must be watched to be fully appreciated. It appeals to the very demographic the NBA has rejected.

P.S. It's gotten so that the only ads worth watching seem to be for video games, too. First for Dead Space, now this.

Anonymous said...

"There's enough American hockey stars (like Sid Crosby) that Hockey can probably grow."

Sidney Crosby is Canadian, not American.

Dybbyk said...

The last time I caught a bit of basketball was last season's NBA final, clicking to a clip of Dirk Nowitzski making a game-winning layup. Sure enough, just like any other baggy-short thug he's taking four full dribble-less steps to the basket and not getting a whistle for it.

Anonymous said...

are blacks really better then whites? how come a country like germany can produce top players when the populace doesnt give a chit about basketball, and in the USA whites are discouraged to compete, wrongfully thinking they cant compete, so that keeps white talent out of basketball....and yet, the numbers of whites continues to grow in the NBA, mostly white Europeans.

Hopefully an awakening is going on amongst all fans, the reality that watching sports is a waste of a life, and they just stop being loser couch potatoes following stupid athletes, like teen girls follow the drama of celebrity news.

Anonymous said...

Mr witherspoon-- the UFC is rigged, Chael Sonnen has said it, the best fighters dont rise to the top, Dana white chooses who he wants, thats how you get a fraud like negroe anderson silva on top. the best MMA fighters by far are white...in every weight class.

Anonymous said...

The demographics are changing

the white mans time is OVER

Anonymous said...

"The USA will soon be a Nation of Colour so what white people think won't matter."

You better hope that it always matters, because as soon as it doesn't this country is going to turn into a third world hellhole. Parts of it already have. The parts where what white people think doesn't matter.

My favorite black people are the ones that live apart from their black neighborhoods, in white neighborhoods, but insist on championing the interests of their race. You can't stand your race enough to live amongst them, in the thick of it, and yet you love the first world style amenities that white culture brings.

Any comfort that you have is because of white culture and what the white man thinks, idiot. There isn't a single, solitary liveable (by first world standards) black community in this country that numbers over 5,000 people. The number is probably much less but I'm being generous. If the white man were to drop out of society you'd be fucked because you'd have to rely only on yourselves. If you don't believe me, then move to North Philadelphia and try to "overcome" based on your own merit and that of your people. You even have the hiring advantage in that city, so no financial excuses. Go ahead and prove to me that "what the white man thinks doesn't matter" by changing black communities to be respectable and safe places to live.

Whiskey said...

A "people of color" America will resemble something between Rwanda, and South Africa. A degenerate kleptocracy incapable of doing much but sell off assets to foreigners and dole out Big Man patronage.

You might ask, why has Africa, Latin America, Oceania, and really every place but NW Europe and Japan/Korea/China been such an abject failure?

I stand corrected on Crosby, I had thought he was from MN. And yes good points on the Modern Warfare sales records. They are astonishing. Games are sopping up any male entertainment dollars.

Sports in the Anglosphere form an important institution for bonding, and have since the playing of the "town game" (basically baseball) and "the Boston Game" (basically football) in the New England colonies (and before that earlier versions in East Anglia). They allow communities and particularly men to bond together and form high-trust social networks. Something that is vital for people who must do complex and specialized work to produce wealth and food. In today's America, sports are about it for that institution, religion/church, political parties, and nearly everything else having been washed away in atomizing, mass-media "acid."

Anonymous said...

Not directly applicable, but I think the folks around here will like it. I recently came across this brilliant bit of explanation in Balzac's novel "Cousin Bette." It explains much.

In this alone, perhaps, lies the difference between natural and civilized man. The savage has only impulse; the civilized man has impulses and ideas. And in the savage the brain retains, as we may say, but few impressions, it is wholly at the mercy of the feeling that rushes in upon it; while in the civilized man, ideas sink into the heart and change it; he has a thousand interests and many feelings, where the savage has but one at a time. This is the cause of the transient ascendency of a child over its parents, which ceases as soon as it is satisfied; in the man who is still one with nature, this contrast is constant.

Anonymous said...

Well I will at least congratulate you for being mostly honest about your racism. I see the same sentiment all the time on message boards but most ppl lack the balls to say how they really feel.

What I do find funny is the hockey fans thinking that people don't watch hockey because of basketball. No one cares about hockey because its dull to watch. Does all the encouraged fighting in hockey qualify as thug behavior? The moral white values? Stop making excuses. Your point was already made when you said white folk want white folk to relate to.

Everyone still loves Brady. I love MMA and have no trouble watching it and basketball and have done so the last 4 years. Will be watching tonights card for sure.

Its the casual fans that are turned off. They couldn't care less about actual basketball. They are more focused on tatoos and millionaires they think will rob them.

Shawn said...

The problem with hockey is that it's players are shrouded behind a mask & therefore the game lacks the intimacy you get from a sport like basketball. Though football does not seem to suffer this way.

With so many fast Blacks out there I am sure that the NHL could get a lot better athletes. Of course, as you note with basketball, better rapper athletes can hurt a league.

Anonymous said...

Hockey players don't wear masks, you can clearly see their faces.

Sea said...

The problem with hockey is that southerner never plays it when they're young. It is exposure to something at an early age that provides an outlet in adulthood. Those who aren't exposed to classical music, books, or just about anything will not retain those interests in adulthood.

I'm in Louisiana and tried to get into hockey as a kid, but guess what? There was no place to play it. No place for my friends to play it either.

There's nothing wrong with the game. It's just like any game. It requires learning the rules and the skills.

whorefinder said...

Another great Whiskey article. You're a on a roll. Two points:
1. I don't think Brady-hate is from any "bling"-esque lifestyle or his wife---I don't (admittedly a Pats fan here) see anything bling about Brady (he seems more North California preppie to me) and many superstar athletes have hot wives/gfs and people don't hate them for that.

I think it's basically this: Tom Brady is a handsome, rich, big tall dude--his presence along de-alphas a lot of guys. Throw in the perpetual dominance of the Patriots since he's joined them (i.e. he's not an underdog you can root for to finally overcome a "curse"), and Brady's not getting love.

Plus, unlike Peyton, Brady doesn't seem to want to build either strong local ties (although polite to the N.E. media and always well-spoken, he doesn't do publicity here and lives in NYC in the off-season) or a national-media presence (no national commercials like Peyton or Jeter or Shaq, who sought celebrity). So Brady doesn't have a media machine really pushing his positive points, so the negatives take over. And since the Pats biggest rival in the division in the last decade has been the Jets---beginning with the Bill Parcells/ Bill Belichick feud and Belichick's nasty split from the Jets to coach the Pats---some NY media guys are down on the Pats.

Finally, since Brady emerged at the same time Peyton was coming into his own, a loud minority of football-insiders have very much disparaged Brady's skills v. Peyton. Largely, it stems from the dislike of Bill Belichick, who's a boring interview, plus the whole Belichick-jilting-the-Jets. Thus, this loud minority says Brady's only a "system" quarterback---that he's only successful because of the Pats "Dink and Dunk" offense, and that Peyton, who came out of college with a lot more national accolades and is always termed one of the smartest players in the league, is the true genius-field general. Now, I can coldly admit that I think Peyton edges Brady, but Brady's numbers---he broke Manning's touchdown record!----and his come-from-behind wins, especially in meaningful games more than show that he is one of the top-5 or top-10 quarterbacks of all time (personally, I would put him 4th).

In sum, I think the Brady-hate isn't due to any activity off the field, unless you count his lack of of-the-field publicity.

whorefinder said...

2. Hockey---the NBA lockout is a gift from the heavens to the NHL.

The NHL made a big bet a few years. It walked away from its usual deal with ESPN broadcasting a lot of its games. The NHL figured that ESPN would come crawling back with a better deal once ESPN had to rely solely on the then-smaller audiences for college basketball that ESPN programmed in the winter. However, ESPN had just acquired the NBA's broadcasting rights, and thus it could afford to squeeze hockey out--and get higher ratings (even then, the NBA was beating the NHL soundly). ESPN never came crawling back.

When the NHL left ESPN, its US audience dropped substantially. In retrospect, hockey since the 1980s has made all the wrong moves:

a)like the NBA, it expanded well beyond the available quality talent (in fact its long time commissioner, Gary Bettman, was a David Stern protoge);

b)like the NBA, it put teams in places that couldn't support the team, either financially or emotionally (The NBA in white-asian-hippie-burnout Vancouver? Really? The NHL in black and corrupt Atlanta? Really?).

c) The NHL tried to banish fighting in favor of speedier, flashier, goal-scoring play---which favored Euroweenie, limp-wristed players over homegrown North American players, who played a more boxed-in, rough-and-tumble play. This had the predictably same effects , but less so, of the NBA going all-black---- the audience didn't want to see guys with little in common with them beating their hometown boys while playing a game they didn't like as much as the old style (but hey, at least the Euroweenies were white).

whorefinder said...

d) Domination by teams not in media centers, and lack of good play by perennially popular teams.
MLB rebounded after the ’94 strike with three things: steroids/homeruns, new pretty ball parks, and the Yankees coming back into power. As a Red Sox fan, I hate to say it, but having a New York team winning is a big help to baseball, especially if that team is the Yankees. When winning, the Yankees bring tons of bandwagon fans, merchandise sales, and, just as importantly, a lot of major media hype. A few years ago, arch-political enemies and huge baseball fans Keith Olbermann and Sean Hannity both attended a Yankees World Series game (as they both work and live in New York), sat relatively near each other, and took pictures of each other at the same time with their camera phones and posted them online---a true far-reaching media moment that only a Yankee World Series could bring about. Do you think they would have flown to Atlanta or Milwaukee on a weeknight for a Brewers-Braves World Series game, and then immediately fly back to New York to tape the next day’s show?

However, the stars did not align for the NHL so well since the Great Expansions. Since the Oilers dynasty went kaput, the NHL’s dominant teams have been the Pittsburgh Penguins in the early 1990s; then the Colorado Avalanche, the Detroit Red Wings, and New Jersey Devils. Of those four teams, only one---New Jersey---even existed near a major media center (NYC), but the Devils were at least an hour away from NYC with nothing around them, coupled with extremely boring play---the Trapping Style, a direct result of the NHL’s promotion of run-and-gun, flashy, non-hitting, non-fighting hockey---and the Devils being the perpetual thirdly-liked NY team (after the Rangers and the Islanders) made their wins less dramatic. Detroit is a traditional team, but it’s now Detroit, an impoverished city in a cultural backwater. And Colorado….snooze.

Yes, the Montreal Canadians and New York Rangers (in ’94) had moments of victory, which roused media, but the Leafs, Bruins, Rangers, Blackhawks largely remained boring also-rans. Warmer-weather large city clubs, like LA Kings, became both bad and unfashionable. Smaller-citied Canadian teams (Calgary, Edmonton), and U.S. white-blue-collar, cold weather teams (Buffalo), which were also huge drawing areas for the NHL, didn’t come up big enough to draw back the traditional hockey fans. And Canadian teams (Winnipeg, Quebec) folded or moved south of the border to less fervent fan bases.

Partially, this is due to over-expansion----many good hockey execs and players were hired by unpopular teams, who couldn’t resist the fat pay checks and building a team while in sunny San Jose or pleasant, low-pressure Colorado.

whorefinder said...

e) Finally, Wayne Gretzky.

Lots of lazy sportswriters have made comparisons of Gretzky and Michael Jordan, but the comparison is way off. Jordan was a complete basketball player---he could play defense very well, he could rough it up if he needed to, he could pass, shoot, run the floor, put himself on the line, and lead. Gretzky, meanwhile, was a one dimensional player. He couldn’t check, back check, play defense, skate well (famously, he would always come in dead last in all his team’s skating drills), win a faceoff, or rough it up (he famously only had one fight his whole career). Gretzky was a scorer, plain and simple---something he did extremely well---but it was all he could do.

Gretzky took off a bit as a crossover star—non-hockey fans know who he is and know what he looked like. The NHL bet big on this new type of NHL celebrity, and starting looking the other way when teams allowed “enforcers” to viciously protect the star scorer on teams, figuring the goals would be worth it. Previously, with limited exceptions, no matter who he was, a hockey player was expected to fight his own battles and hit and get dirty. The best hockey comparisons to Jordan were never Gretzky---they were Gordie Howe and Bobby Orr, because those two fought, played defense, got dirty, got in fights, and yet still scored and led.

So hockey changed. Now the idea of a Gretzky going into a scrum was laughable, and to see him get checked actually caused panicked gasps from hockey crowds---the player who checked or pushed him would inevitably be “reviewed by the league.” Other prima donnas showed up to capitalize on this (Jagomir Jagr, etc.)--and a lot were Euroweenies.

But hockey fans never wanted that kind of girly princessy-ness to their players, and they stopped turning out---even Gretzky’s inhuman greatness at scoring/assisting saw empty arenas. And enforcers, with tacit league sanction, felt as if they could do anything in defense of their superstar----which is how Marty McSorely, Gretzky’s friend and long time enforcer, ended up getting charged for assault.

cecilhenry said...

Great article. Spoke to many of my thoughts on race and sports especially the NBA.

Whites have racial interets and that's not racism.

Whiskey said...

Anon how is it racist to prefer people of your own kind? Is it racist for Black guys to like Rap instead of say, Country Music? Is it racist for Black guys to like Basketball instead of NASCAR? Is it racist for Black guys to like Tyler Perry instead of say, Woody Allen films?

No, it is the most natural thing in the world to want to be around people like you, who look like you, talk like you, act like you. And follow sports made up of people like you.

What you're really saying is that White people ALONE of all races cannot take pride in and of themselves, and prefer themselves. White people alone are judged to have "original racial sin" and all others are exempt from the rules of self-loathing placed upon them.

Its no more racist to want to see mostly White players/stars for Whites than it is for Black guys to prefer Tyler Perry to Woody Allen in their Netflix Queue.
--------
Hockey is more of a skill than pure athleticism. Skating, puck handling, shot-making (or blocking) is dependent on skill not being the fastest runner.

Whorefinder good points on the NHL and Gretzky. As a long-time Kings fan it pains me to say you're quite right. The Kings ... sigh. The worst was the Ducks win. The ... DUCKS! Named after a Disney movie.

Caiden said...

Not a comment about the NBA which I don['t care about, but does anyone else find it odd the blacks are happy the the US will be a 'Nation of Colour'?

Looking at black nations in Africa, where they would have had centuries more time to develope they couldn't even build two story structures until after other races taught them how to do it. Even in the US black areas are ghettos, as blacks act like the apes they more closely resemble.

ANd you can find stories of blacks attacking hispanics and asians, so it's hard to imagine those races feeling comfortable living next to section 8 housing monkeys for to long.

Jack said...

Biggest benefit of NBA lockout will be college basketball. Less thuggish players, some white stars, shorter and more exciting games.

Random Paleocon said...

The excellence of many white European players belies the assertion that whites can't compete with blacks. However, the apparent superiority of European whites to American whites is a phenomenon worthy of exploration.

My pet theory is that blacks aren't better per se at basketball than whites, but are more precocious. In the youth ranks, and through high school and college, blacks are earlier to mature and physically superior to whites. Whites quit the sport in frustration.

By contrast, Europeans don't have to compete with blacks, and are therefore able to mature at their own (slower) pace.

Even allowing for the superiority of black PLAYERS, it does not necessarily follow that blacks make for the best TEAMS. All-black US teams have had their hands full in recent years maintaining their superiority over far less "athletic" teams of Lithuanians, Spaniards, Serbs, etc.

College ball? No thanks; it's following closely behind the NBA in fully internalizing the ghetto ethos. I see game after game at the college level that is 5-on-5 all black, yet when one looks at the NCAA tournament, the best teams, the ones still playing on the third weekend, appear to have a disproportionate number of whites, e.g., Duke & Butler.

Anonymous said...

Hello Whiskey!!,

Why are white males not attracted to black women??

Whiskey said...

Random I've noticed in my part of OC the White kids are all either playing street hockey or La Crosse. La Crosse is big in the local high schools, for both girls and boys. Ten years ago you saw White boys playing basketball. Not so any more. Its just become Black, which is a shame.

Anon -- according to Kanazawa, men of all races find Black women the least attractive. No one has so far disproved his findings. He did the full pc grovel, but no one has shown his findings to be false.

Anonymous said...

Hmm Whiskey there are several articles on the internet that dispute his claims. Please tell me your reason why white males are not interested in black women.

Kaz said...

I always hoped to see the normalization of athlete's salaries some time in my life.

Maybe it's coming sooner than I expected..

MuayTyson said...

Mr. Witherspoon,
I can't believe you are so ignorant but I'll try. MMA is not just about the champions in each division but about the depth of each division which is overwhelmingly White.

Let also give you two pieces of wisdom. Brazil is very racially conscious with White Europeans at the top of that society. Junior Dos Santos is almost certainly predominately White. The Gracie family traces it's roots back to Scotland.

Whites do not seem to mind people like Anderson Silva who does not at like a ghetto black from America. In evidence he actually takes care of his sons.

Combat sports in general will only be as popular as MSM allow. Why are not more fans interested in Boxing with the Klitchko brothers as top heavy weights? I would say it has to do with lack of exposure and commercial endorsements.

Anonymous said...

American whites aren't involved in basketball because it's a black ghetto sport now. Few whites want to be around them if given the choice. Since we're brutally punished if we fight the blacks, whites simply withdraw.

Mr. Witherspoon said...

MuayTyson:

Whether we should have separate categories for white/latino and white/Brazilians is a fun discussion we might have some other day.

Regardless, your statement that "the depth of each division which is overwhelmingly White" is flatly false unless perhaps if you count all hispanics (like Velasquez, who calls himself brown) as white.

Check out fight magazine's top 5 rankings for each division:

http://www.fightmagazine.com/mma-rankings/

HW: 2/5 standard white; 3/5 if you include Brazilian JDS.

LHW: Only 1/5 standard white if you include Henderson, who also has Native American blood.

MW: 1/5 standard white if you don't include Belfort; 2/5 if you do.

WW: 2/5 standard white.

LW: 2/5 standard white.

The idea that the top MMA athletes are "overwhelmingly white" is absurd.

Anonymous said...

"Why are white males not attracted to black women??"

Probably for the same reason high status black men aren't attracted to them... they're just not that pretty.

What Is To Be Done said...

If people want to watch basketball they will watch college basketball.

The NBA turned every game into the Harlem Globetrotters: nothing but showboating and general n-word-ishness.

jhbowden said...

The NBA lockout is over! WooHoo!

Anonymous said...

no one cares about the NBA

sestamibi said...

Whiskey, it's "lacrosse". La Crosse is a small town in SW Wisconsin.

Whiskey said...

I stand corrected.

Anonymous said...

The future will show thqat you racists will be wring inevery way.

Everyone loves basketball

White owmen LOVE black men.


My public service announcement for Whiskey's Place:

The quoted commenter is a troll. I don't mind him, but he's definitely a troll. That's why he deliberately misspells things in such an idiosyncratic way; that's his calling card. He's probably a bored white advocate.

Anonymous said...

I forgot to add, he inhabits OneSTDV's blog as well.

Anonymous said...

Oh hey, funny story about black athletes and white wymminz. There's a porn star (which Whiskey once "revealed" to be prostitutes in a hilariously, unintentionally revealing comment at Sailer's) working right now, Brianna Blair, who used to be an NBA cheerleader.

"Interracial" scenes, per IAFD as of today? Zero. Know what that means when you've done 71 scenes? It means she won't do "interracial."

This happens a lot in porn, actually. Not that you'd know this if all you read is Whiskey. I just thought it was funny how even all that up-close conditioning couldn't persuade her to service blacks, even when she turned pro.

Anonymous said...

The NBA sucks a lot of donkey dick and same with the people who watch it. Yea let's continue to idealize worthless self interested individuals because clearly, worrying about sports in today's age is the most important issue to be concerned with. Let's all be pussies and escape the reAlities of the world by watching men bitch and moan over a ball.

worldafterNBA said...

Here, for all the once that are uninformed. First at all I really enjoyed last NBA season because of Dirk. Another thing is NBA is at its end I really don't give a damn if they have a season or not. Blacks are not greater athlete's than any other race. They just are born with a basketball same goes for other sports and other races. In terms of the UFC it will never be dominated by blacks, also most latinos are white especially the the Brazilian UFC athletes. Yeah it might be a problem with white americans but not with whites world wide. Brazilians are good at UFC because its a way for the common man to make it big just as soccer is in brazil which currently sucks there. Another thing is that soccer has been making it huge in the US and it will continue because most of the players world wide are white. But again it is not a race thing even thought I have to admit that Black players look slugish on the soccer field, because it takes endurance, tactics, skills and team effort to win a game, which why France is worst of a team than Bosnia and Herzegovina. Again North africans are not black for those that have been only educated in US geographics. Soccer is going to be a world sport even more than it is now basketball has no future the way its going.

Anonymous said...

i can think of two or three pretty black girls. only fat white girls like black guys, nba is a free throw contest boring

Anonymous said...

nfl qbs 1 good black guy warren moon only 1 with half a brian