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.
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The NBA Is Dead

The NBA is over, as a serious sport. Oh, it can continue to decline, slowly but surely, but two events cement its end as anything other than a rap-fashion showcase. The first is Khloe Kardashian and Lamar Odom's reality show on MTV, and the second is La La Vazquez and Carmelo Anthony's reality show on VH1. [Note: until reading about this in the Wall Street Journal I was unaware of the existence of La La Vazquez.]


The two reality shows, appealing to tween girls (MTV's audience) and teen-young adult women (VH1's audience) pretty much cement the end of the NBA as a sport. As a platform for junk reality, fashion, and NBA-related rap thuggery, well that is a different matter. But the male-oriented aspects of basketball have either long died out (team work, coaching, selflessness) or are actively dying (athleticism, performance) in a cult of rap celebrity and posturing.

Yes, the NFL has had its reality shows: Hard Knocks (relating the tales of guys struggling to make the team during training camp, each season with a different team featured) comes to mind. But the focus is not on female-centered glamor, glitz, spending, and conspicuous consumption and fame. Football itself remains a game (though thuggery and a dominance of Black rap-influenced players threatens this) of teamwork, discipline, and coaching. For all the Superbowl hype, the influx of the Jessica Simpsons, and Giselle Bundchens and the like has been resented and mocked by fans. It remains a male preserve (though one threatened by over-thuggery and slipping into rap thug celebration).

With the NBA likely to slowly, but steadily decline in ratings, middle class White enthusiasm, and therefore, money, there are opportunities for other sports to gain a foothold. Hockey, never really capturing the imagination of White Middle class America, has an opportunity should the NFL go into a lockout and the NBA continue its rap-celebrity descent into irrelevance. The game of Hockey after all relies on strength, skill, teamwork, and endurance. It is played by mostly Middle class White guys (though the prevalence of foreigners is a problem) and has a fairly large league. Hockey season mostly overlaps that of the NBA, and partially that of the NFL. Rugby, and its appeal to teamwork and toughness, has possibilities as well.

But no sport can maintain a male audience while catering to female desires for "reality"-inspired tales of princesses and princes, able to whisk them away to a fantasy of Cinderella and the ball. The NBA has already trod down this road, and is unlikely to retrace it. The NBA is dead. Long live any other sport.
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NBA Groupies and the Death of the Possible Dream

GQ has a fascinating article on NBA groupies. Fascinating on several levels, not the least of which is the rather shocking point that the women interviewed are all lower middle class/blue collar Black women with "respectable" jobs and their preference is not so much for NBA players but Rap hanger-on thugs. But far more shocking is the matching death of a "possible dream" of slightly better upward mobility. The women profiled, don't even have any vague plans to better themselves or their children even slightly.


A few things are predictable.

There are the fights at the front desk—"no, we ain't payin' no $400 a night; no, that ain't what you said on the telephone!"—between large pissed-off women and the cowering staff bearing nametags, chocolate-chip cookies, and a list of special additions to the in-room dining menu (buffalo wings and jalapeño poppers). On All-Star weekend, guests of the Doubletree are asked to sign a "no-party policy" form ("If we learn that a party is in progress…we will reserve the right…to IMMEDIATELY evict the occupants"). At the lobby bar, an enormous sign has been erected: welcome nba all-star fans. A few feet beside it, a plaque: firearms are prohibited on these premises.

The women are Black blue-collar/lower middle class:

Renee, the bubbly, vivacious one, used to patrol housing projects in Queens but just got promoted. Now she works with kids as a youth officer. She's also the single mother of a 9-year-old girl. Danielle—the "proud to be extra-large" girl whose penchant for talking has earned her the nickname Diesel ("for the diesel heavy gas," says Renee, "because when she starts running she never stops")—is a New York City subway conductor. Vellesha, another extra-large woman, drives a bus. And has the don't-fuck-with-me-or-I'll-smack-your-white-ass attitude we've come to appreciate in New York City bus drivers. They call her Snacks, for obvious reasons. Then there's Chermaine, the baby of the litter at 23, pretty, slender, and terribly shy (until she puts on a bustier). She works as a 911 operator.

They have their rules:

If one of them should deign to bring a man ("or a nice thug," says Renee) back to the room, the others cool their heels in the hotel-lobby bar until she's finished. And if it takes all night? "It never takes all night," says Danielle. "We're from New York City. We're not here to cuddle."

And if they go to his hotel room? "Doesn't happen," says Vellesha. "Unless we see his driver's license first and get his license-plate number. We ain't stupid."

Renee, the cop, imposed the license-plate rule. No one goes off with just any old dude unless the other three have seen his credentials.

There are rules as well for being on the road and interacting with NBA people:

1. Pony up. "You gotta pay to play," says one Fly Girl I meet over drinks at Dave & Buster's in Houston who does not wish to be identified. Paying to play means spending a small fortune on the appropriate accoutrements: designer clothes, shoes, bags, and hair extensions from the right salon. You want a look that says, "I'm available, but I ain't cheap." Even if you are.

2. Be good-looking (but not too skinny). "You can't cross over to Fly Girl unless you got it goin' on," says Brenda. "But a lot of black men like them fat. I can't tell you how many times I've heard guys say, 'I don't want to be hittin' no bone.'"

3. Travel in pairs. "One girl is not a big deal now," Brenda says. "But two women working them over?" Much preferred.

4. Reserve a table at the Four Seasons, unofficial crib of the NBA. "Dear God," one high-level Four Seasons employee told me, "you can't imagine what it's like when the lobby is filled with these…hooker-looking women." But to really have a chance at an encounter there, you can't arrive en masse. "Spring for dinner in the main dining room," Brenda says. "Be there waiting with a girlfriend who is equally fine, for when the players walk in." (Memo to wannabe Groupies: It's always the visiting team that's looking to get laid. The home team often has wives or children lurking around, cramping their style. Also: Players rarely use the front entrance of the hotel; to make contact, wait by the side door.)

Curiously, the women profiled are not there primarily for the NBA players, but the hangers on and the Rap stars and would-be stars. The preference for thugs is very, very strong:

In fact, they're not even here for the players!

On the ride back to the hotel, I ask them if they're interested in the game this weekend. The game? They don't go to the games. Their favorite team? Who cares! It's not like they'd throw Allen Iverson out of the rack, but they're really here for the rappers. Or the rappers' assistants. Or the rappers' bodyguards. Or the rappers' bodyguards' assistants. Real thugs. Good thugs.

This is the deep, dark secret of the NBA. The first sport to embrace hip-hop has essentially been hijacked by hip-hop. What keeps the girls coming back is not the sport, for Lord's sake. It's the proximity to their guys, their peeps. NBA All-Star weekend is like the Hip-Hop Summit, with a lot more cocktails.

The players the women love the most are the thugs. The ones who have a thuggish attitude, and penchant for out-of-control behavior. Interestingly, the women assert that NBA players (nearly all Black) are now less likely to marry White women, due to social pressure from their mothers/family back home. Though they acknowledge that the players generally prefer the "superbabe" types such as Eva Longoria.

But what is interesting is how tough and brutal the women's lives are, and yet they express a continued preference for thugs and dangerous bad boys. The cop has to deal with depressing crime among children when she returns, the 911 Operator a man who murdered his own infant, the subway driver with suicides. One would expect a preference for "softer" more supportive men, and one who could contribute their own income to family formation.

Yet, the woman show a great deal of pride on being independent, on paying their own way, and pursuing the sexy, "thug" bad boy. Who they find exciting and compelling. Sex is very public, with not much privacy or discretion. For some of the women, in their thirties, the spending on sex-related items (clothes, expensive trips, expensive lodging and meals and club attendance, with valet parking alone running often to over $200) seems almost designed to prevent accumulation of capital and moving up to a higher social status/earnings rung. Money is not invested in children, or property, or anything else that might generate wealth or power or status. It is spent in a hook-up environment that seems to last well into the thirties.

And mind you, these are all respectable women with blue collar to lower middle class jobs. Police officers earn respectable amounts of money in New York City. So too do bus drivers, subway operators, and the like. Yet culturally, the women remain mired in a ghetto mindset. Low future time orientation, little effort to save money, little time spent on moving upwards. The daydreams that do exist about moving upwards all center around a baby by an NBA player and child support. Something the women themselves acknowledge is unlikely in the extreme.

What is depressing about this profile, which is fairly interesting reading, is the death of the possible. It is certainly possible for a police officer to move upwards. So too, a NYC subway operator. There is no studying for exams, no desire to march upwards in civil service, or side operations like buying distressed property, that might be fixed up and provide an income. It seems an arrival in the blue collar lower middle class is an effort that proved exhausting, and no further attempt to move upward is made.

Hypergamy, unrestrained tends to stratify upward mobility. By killing the "possible dream" in favor of sex as long as possible with thug bad boys. As exciting and dangerous as it might be for the women, they would be better off by investing time and money for advancement, given that they have a short shelf life of attractiveness.

This article is of interest, not the least of which is the reality that White British Chavs have followed the same cultural path, and that White middle class women are (more slowly) on the same path. Currently, the upper middle class and middle class puts more emphasis on credentialism and education, than the Blue Collar Black (and White and Hispanic) sections of America. But the same thing, an unlimited expression of hypergamy and desire for fairly brutal dominance, has its own cultural way among White and Hispanic girls. Every bit of Gossip Girl, or Twilight, or other such desire for dominance and hierarchy leads inevitably towards a preference for thuggery. Simply because thuggery is the only way most men can compete. Only a few men can be ungodly good looking, famous, and powerful, but any man can pack a Glock in a night club and threaten to start shooting. This is generally why most societies that are successful limit the expression of hypergamy and push women into "respectable" choices of men who are not bad boy thugs, no matter how exciting the latter may be.

It certainly will take a good deal longer for the White population to arrive to where the Black Blue Collar population has arrived (arguably the Hispanic population by measure of illegitimacy and crime rates has already arrived, at least in part), but Whites will get there eventually. The payoff in mating success by men to appeal to women's hypergamy pretty much guarantees it in the end.

After all, what is holding back White women from embracing thugs? The fear of looking bad, mostly, among their peer group. Not much else. That's a thin reed to base civilization on, since it depends on an utter ruthlessness and power among White female peer groups to exclude and punish women who prefer thugs. Particularly since thuggery is a way for Joe Average to finally, become attractive to Jane Average, and compete with Alpha males. This sort of mating pattern had become habitual in the British borders, and much of Northern (and even Southern) Ireland. Violence and chaos tends to produce very, very short-term mating habits, based on sexual attraction and nothing else, with little long term investment.

A shift in the ability of White female peer groups to enforce anti-thug views can easily lead to rapid (and catastrophic) social declines for Whites to the level of the Blue Collar Black community. The Death of the Possible Dream may come soon enough to the White population, with catastrophic results.
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