from truehoop: a story about everyone’s favorite underwhelming australian former number 1 NBA draft pick, andrew bogut, ran in an australian newspaper yesterday. truehoop’s analysis of the newspaper article focuses on some bogut remarks about NBA culture. basically, bogut seems to buy into the notion that nba culture is destructive and that NBA players have their priorities mixed up. or as i read it, andrew bogut hates black people.

i really don’t think i need to get into the idea that much of the criticism of the nba, particularly, criticism about the nba culture being too “hip-hop” is just code for “it’s too black”. but i thought i’d try and break down some of bogut’s quotes. the first one is pretty telling i think:

The public’s image of NBA players is true. A lot of them get caught up in the hype and do video clips with rappers and all that crap. They want bling bling all over themselves and drive fast cars. But that’s just the way the culture is in America – if you’ve got it flaunt it and if you don’t, you can’t.

First, he uses the word “public” to describe how people think of the NBA, which i think is a very misused word. after all, basketball is one of the biggest sports among the african american community, and i would venture to say a majority of african americans don’t really have a problem with the image of the NBA. my point is that when people say the public is sick of the NBA lifestyle, what they’re really saying is “us white people are sick of the NBA lifestyle”. i’m sure that there are some black people who don’t like the fact that hip-hop culture and basketball culture seem to overlap so much. however, i’m pretty comfortable saying that white people have a bigger problem with it than black people. the second point about this quote stems from the point i just made in that i can only think of one or two nba players that have actually appeared in a “video clip with rappers and all that crap”. ¹ if andrew bogut was in my sociological methods class, i would have given him a D for this very sloppily reasoned hypothesized relationship. Seriously, the only way he can come to this conclusion is because he sees his black teammates listening to rap music and dressing like rappers, and therefore they must try to appear in their videos. like i said, D, probably a D-

the last part of this particular quote struck me as odd as well. if anything, i’d say that the culture of america is much more conservative than he thinks and that the culture is actually the exact opposite, and more in line with the protestant work ethic, which actually suggests that americans are more about not flaunting. i’m not saying that americans aren’t flashier than other nations, but i think you’d have to have a pretty narrow vision of the US to say this. what i find especially perplexing is how he extrapolates the flashy lifestyle of the NBA star to an entire nation. that’d be like me saying all english people are drunken louts because of oasis and robbie williams. anyways, another passage from the article:

He bought some nice wheels recently and he collects old cars. His father was in the motor trade and recalls how, as a youngster, he and his father would give the thumbs up to people driving cool cars.

“But that’s where it stops for me,” he says. “I’m not into jewellery.² I’ve got some earrings but they’re not too expensive. There are guys who drop a hundred grand for a chain. The public’s got it right – a lot of NBA stars are arrogant and like to spend lots of money and have lots of girlfriends and all that…”

yeah, sorry andrew, but a lot of people think that collecting classic cars is just as stupid as wearing gold chains. i wonder if he knows how hypocritical he sounded when he said that. i’m pretty sure that what he pays for earrings are a lot more than what i paid for mine. but even more to the point, criticizing what a group of people spend their disposable income is patently racist. i actually came to this realization because of the extremely goofy PBS show antiques roadshow. i told one of my friends, that the reason why everyone on that show is white, is because you’d never find a brown person dumb enough to pay 5 grand for a birdcage from 1887. but she pointed out to me that every culture has something stupid that they spend money on. some asians and latinos are known in southern california for spending money to trick out their cars, some white people buy antiques and pay over 100 bucks to see a show on broadway, and some black people like to buy big gold mr t. chains. what’s the freakin’ difference?

anyways, this post is long enough, so i won’t get into any more specific quotes. i just needed to say for the gazillionth time, that whenever you hear someone criticizing nba culture, you can almost be sure that they’re actually criticizing black culture.

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1. obviously, i’m not counting players who star in their own video. [↩]
2. notice the stupid australian spelling of the word jewelry [↩]
3. how do we sleep while our beds are burning? [↩]