this is a basketball thread

How do you feel about Draymond Green's remarks (split about 75/25, I thought, between shocking stupidity and heartfelt insight) at Harvard?

The last two words of that sentence were as unexpected as you can get

this quote is on point: https://twitter.com/MarkG_Medina/status/931225115953688581

this applies to a lot of current phenomenon. by most measures, society is as affluent and peaceful as it has ever been. on the other hand, media saturation has also taken "wokeness" to an all time high and things like structural inequality and "microaggressions" get more focus even thought they're "not as bad as Jim Crow".

tbh, i think nitpicking the comments of a celebrity athlete at a university is pretty stupid and reeks of the "stick to sports!" mentality which is also vaguely racist. the man works out and plays basketball every single day for a living, why should his marks line up directly with the views of the Twitter commentariat? not that you're doing that Zappo, but many others are. people from all walks of life should be able to comment earnestly on social issues. we're all citizens.

in terms of the minor Green-Mark Cuban feud, i think Mark Cuban needs to shut the fuck up. Cuban fired back at Green objecting to the use of the term "owner" by saying that he owns shares like any other company, which is misleading. professional sports in the US are given federal anti-trust exemptions by the government and are not anything like private enterprise. the NBA is a cartel that violates employee free movement and pricing fixing regulations. the federal government has actually created a system where professional athletes are more "owned" than the rest of us who work normal jobs. it's stupid and it should be reformed immediately. NBA owners should stop pretending like they operate in the free market and have "earned" what they have.

I was just disappointed to learn that he thinks the word "owner" was first coined in America, re: slavery.

As for "stick to sports," fuck that shit. Obviously. I'd sell my soul for the Bears to sign Colin Kaepernick so that I could go to every game just to sit for the national anthem and then leave. I was just frustrated while reading his remarks, because I felt like he kept shooting himself in the foot every time he was about to make what I thought would be a sound point.

But if he shot himself badly enough, maybe he'll finally stop kicking people in the brain.  We might all come out ahead, in the end.

zappo wrote:I was just disappointed to learn that he thinks the word "owner" was first coined in America, re: slavery.

Does he think that? I'm kind of interested to see a quote, but at the same time it seems like a minor, irrelevant point.

zappo wrote:I was just frustrated while reading his remarks, because I felt like he kept shooting himself in the foot every time he was about to make what I thought would be a sound point.

Why is the expectation that he makes a "sound point" that will read well on the pages of the New York Times? Why not attempt to contextualize him and his experience, and listen to his emotional reaction to things. That's the real insight he can provide; from his experience.

Well, I think I did do those things.  I guess I often and unfortunately look at discussions as, like sporting events, win/loss games.  Like, how many people did he convince who weren't already liberal savages who agreed in advance with much of what he had to say?  I flinch when I see him undermining some of his own points.

I have a long and intense background in debate, and I just have a lot of trouble turning off that part of myself. Which is particularly insane when, you know, people aren't debating anything. But I dunno. That's an equally, but differently, key part of my own context/experience.

zappo wrote:Well, I think I did do those things.  I guess I often and unfortunately look at discussions as, like sporting events, win/loss games.  Like, how many people did he convince who weren't already liberal savages who agreed in advance with much of what he had to say?  I flinch when I see him undermining some of his own points.

This is how the media culture treats "discussion" and it's poisonous. You've rightly internalized that this is the game being played in the media everyday. You're not wrong to wish that Draymond Green was the perfect vessel to advocate for social justice in America so that he was more effective in "winning hearts and minds". But he's a human being, this is not his expertise, and it's not his responsibility. It's America's celebrity-obsessed culture that gives him a platform and expects him to speak to every issue all the time. What does Kanye West think about reparations? What does Katy Perry have to say about Benghazi? These are the kinds of dumb things that our media culture expects celebrities to speak on.

My general social theory is that the American "winner-take-all" mentality stems from the Electoral College and permeates throughout the rest of our culture. If you win 50%+1 at anything, you get to completely dominate that space. Also a terrible idea.

Anyone else watching the Bulls now

Yes.

I don’t know what tomorrow brings but I’m feeling this game a lot

I never should have made that post

You were drunk with power.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/manute-bol-lied-age-50-played-nba-article-1.3649488

i just realized how similar Lavar Ball and Danny Trejo look

Why was Christian Laettner on The Dream Team and Isaiah Tomas not?

Sometimes I think about that and it really puts me in a bad mood

What if they had the internet back then

I mean, it’s still a world where there is no “OK Computer Verses Nevermind“ threads... yet

But I mean how were people okay with this?

Has anyone here watched the Kevin Durant/Jim Belushi movie?

edit:

Jordan refused to be on the Dream Team if Isiah Thomas was on it

I see here that there was "controversy" over picking Laettner over Shaq.

Why choose either instead of James Worthy or Hakeem Olajuwon?

The idea that they "had to pick" one college player for the team was total bullshit and for some reason I find it just as infuriating as the more plausible and certainly more disturbing rationale that they thought they needed to select another white player. Like, stop pointing fingers at Chris Mullin, he's not the problem here

on the other hand when I'm feeling down I remind myself that I went to like 4 Bulls games between 1995 and 1997, no one can take that away from me

undo wrote:If you had told me Donald trump was going to be president AND that the year we finally decide we're really going to ride Niko hard is also going to be his worst year, I don't know what I'd have felt now do I?