So few good white AMERICAN players in the NBA lately?

[noypi]

I'm with you Bob - I think we both see Love as a bit more than a taller, girthier JJ Redick.....

This argument seems silly to me - it's funny how some people can see some players as being severly limited somehow because they are are only elite at SOME things (ignoring how hard it is to be elite at ANYTHING - let alone just SOME things) - and not elite at the things THEY want them to be elite at (it seems, in this case, is maybe desiring one to be more athletic and a better back to the basket/low post player). It reminds me of the people that try to somehow reason Shaq wasn't elite because he couldn't hit a jumper or a free throw. I can't believe how many times I've heard that argument in the past.

love neither has the inside game nor is he adept at facing up his defender and taking it to the basket ala amare. as for shaq, he is obviously elite because the guy was unstoppable during his prime. Love is a super role player who is playing for the worst team in the nba currently.

It got argued less after he won a championship - just how Euros are no longer "soft" now that Pau & Dirk got their championships. I guess only white Americans are soft now after reading this thread.....

white american players are soft. just look at the type of white guards europe is producing lately compared to the US. the euros are more fearless in taking it to the hoop.

Like I sarcastically commented before - Dirk seems to be more of a glorified role player than Love even by that earlier argument. At least love is more proficient at scoring near the hoop, drawing fouls, much better rebounder, and a much better outlet passer. I'm in no way saying Dirk is a role player btw, or that Love is better (they are DIFFERENT), I'm just saying anyone can reason anything if they try hard enough.....

Dirk is not a role player. he's a go to guy. that's the difference between him and love.

[Mike G]

I happened upon a little study I did a few years ago, charting the decline of white Americans in the NBA; for simplicity, this only tracks better-than-average players, rather arbitrarily defined.

Now I've applied a rudimentary version of eWins (equivalent wins created) to these above-avg white Americans, totaled them for every 5th year, and averaged per teams in the league(s).

Code: Select all

year   eWins    G  tms  eW/tm*   white Americans w >9 eWins
1952   149.4   66   10   14.9   Mikan, Arizin, Cousy, Foust
1957   123.2   72    8   15.4   Pettit, Schayes, Johnston, Arizin, Yardley
1962   111.3   80    9   12.4   Pettit, West, Guerin, Hagan, Howell, Heinsohn
1967    68.1   81   10    6.8   Barry, Lucas, West
1972** 220.0   82   28    7.9   West, BillyC, Issel, Havlicek, Lucas, Goodrich, Barry, Cowens
1977   194.4   82   22    8.8   Walton, Adams, Issel, BJones, Maravich, Westphal, Barry, RudyT
1982   148.7   82   23    6.5   Bird, Sikma, Issel
1987   109.4   82   23    4.8   Bird, McHale, Laimbeer, Chambers, Kiki
1992   101.4   82   27    3.8   Stockton, Mullin, Hornacek
1997    83.6   82   29    2.9   Stockton, Gugliotta, Laettner
2002    59.1   82   29    2.0   Stockton

*  adjusted to 82 game equivalent
** includes ABA

You might consider the total above-avg eWins to be more significant, or the per-team number.
The drought of 1966-67 is just a statistical blip. There were a number of white players just below the above-avg cutoff, and several of these actually qualified in the hyper-expanded 1972 leagues.
In '72, the issue is complicated by the ABA. I've already made adjustments for lesser competition, so there weren't really 28 'equivalent to NBA' teams that year. Per NBA team, there were 12.9 eW; but 5 of the top 25 guys were in the ABA.

[EvanZ]

I would include Nash (assuming he'd make your list). I know he's Canadian and all, but he played for Santa Clara.

[Mike G]

Well, he didn't grow up learning the game in the USA. That's the problem. White American kids don't grow up with the passion to become great basketball players. Of several million born every year who are physically capable, very few think it's a worthwhile pursuit.

The NBA every year boasts one or zero white American players of the caliber in the list above. Delete all but one of those players from those years, and you have a diminished NBA.

[Statman]

Well, he didn't grow up learning the game in the USA. That's the problem. White American kids don't grow up with the passion to become great basketball players. Of several million born every year who are physically capable, very few think it's a worthwhile pursuit.

The NBA every year boasts one or zero white American players of the caliber in the list above. Delete all but one of those players from those years, and you have a diminished NBA.

True - but the recent decline (last 15 years or maybe more) of white Americans hasn't really hurt the NBA I'd say - since there have been more than enough international players coming in their stead.

Like I said - doesn't bother me in the slightest - especially since there seem to be good players coming from various corners of the earth.

BTW - if my sons made the NBA - they'd be considered in a much smaller demographic in the NBA - the Asian American (Jeremy Lin) demographic (they are half Chinese, half a hodge podge of Euro). I wonder if we should be lamenting the lack of Asian & Hispanic Americans in the NBA in relation to their international counter parts?

[Mike G]

Like I said - doesn't bother me in the slightest - especially since there seem to be good players coming from various corners of the earth.

Analogous might be supposing one would not be bothered by college ball in the present time, since there are players good enough to start, everywhere you look. Games are just as likely to be close now as they were in the '80s, when you'd sometimes see 4-5 future NBA All-Stars on the court at one time.

In Shakespeare's time, no women were allowed on stage. If that custom hadn't expired, we wouldn't have missed not-seeing Hepburn or Streep in many great roles. Some movies would still seem better than others, some would still win more Oscars than others ... Best Actor in a Female Role?

Because some of us remember when Bird, McHale, and Walton made the Celtics unbeatable; Stockton and Hornacek made Utah the best in the West; Havlicek and Cowens led teams to 2 titles; it's harder to imagine not appreciating the fact these players existed.

they do not spend you much money.

True dat.

[jkeelerz]

i cant imagine it to be anything but a matter that applies to the physical make up of the players. typically, white americans are shorter and less athletic than their african-american counterparts..

[noypi]

here's a theory...
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/06/disp ... -data.html

Of more interest, though, is where these nine players are from. Aside from Connaughton, the others are:

- Cody Zeller, from Washington, Indiana (0.5% black) -- signed with Indiana
- Kyle Wiltjer, from Portland, Oregon (6.4% black -- very low for a major city) -- signed with Kentucky
- Alex Murphy, from Southborough, Massachusetts (0.9% black) -- signed with Duke
- Marshall Plumlee, from Warsaw, Indiana (2.0% black) -- signed with Duke (*Rivals lists him as being from North Carolina, but he goes to a prep school there; he's actually from Indiana)
- Hunter Mickelson, from Jonesboro, Arkansas (15.7% black) -- signed with Arkansas
- Josh Oglesby, from Cedar Rapids, Iowa (4.6% black) -- signed with Iowa
- Paul Jesperson, from Merrill, Wisconsin (0.2% black) -- signed with Virginia
- Jarrod Uthoff, from Cedar Rapids, Iowa -- signed with Wisconsin

What immediately jumps out, of course, is that all of them (except Mickelson) are from some very, very white places. (I looked up Mickelson's high school, Jonesboro Westside, and it turns out that his school is 97% white and only 1% black. Mickelson is also 6'10".)

And, this isn't a one-year blip. Jimmer Fredette, the white college star of 2011, is from Glens Falls, New York (which is 2.3% black.) Aside from Fredette, there's one other white American player projected to go in the first round of the draft -- Duke's Kyle Singler, who's from Medford, Oregon (0.6% black.) Thinking back to 2006, you had two really good white players in college: Adam Morrison, from Spokane, Washington (2.1% black), and J.J. Redick, from Roanoke, Virginia (26.7% black -- but Redick went to a high school that was 91% white.) Mike Miller of the Miami Heat is from Mitchell, South Dakota (0.4% black.) And, of course, Larry Bird is from French Lick, Indiana (7.5% black.) (David Lee, who averaged 16.5 ppg for the Warriors this season, seems to be the exception that proves the rule. Lee is from St. Louis.)

My theory is that athletic white kids growing up around a bunch of black kids are actively discouraged from playing basketball. When I was in high school, I noticed that other high schools which were around 15-20% black often had one or two white guys on the end of the bench. Schools that were 30% or more black often had all-black teams. I had a friend in college who went to a high school that was 60% black, and he told me that his high school basketball coach wouldn't even let white guys try out. And yeah, I know that it's all about the AAU circuit these days -- but if you can't even make your high school team (or you're on the end of the bench), why would you even bother trying out for an AAU team?

On the other hand, high school basketball coaches in places like Iowa probably have the same prejudices about white players, but they might have only one or two black males in the entire school to work with, so naturally they're going to have to take on some white players. So, if you take a white high school freshman who's 6'2" (presumably, he might grow to 6'6" or 6'7" by his senior year), and put him in Memphis, Tennessee, he's probably not even going to bother with basketball. On the other hand, if he's going to high school in Iowa, he might try out for the basketball team, figure out that he's pretty good at it, and decide to pursue the sport.

So what's happened to the white American star is, basically, he probably decides in high school that he's not going to bother with basketball and go play football or baseball. Still, white kids from relatively homogeneous areas of the country at the very least get a chance to prove that they're good at basketball -- which white kids in more diverse areas basically don't. The problem is, of course, that most of the remaining areas of the country that are homogeneous are sparsely populated.

While it's true that a lot of basketball recruiting takes place very early, most college programs below the Big Six conferences (the BCS conferences in football) don't really fill their scholarships for the coming year until the spring before the freshmen enter college. So while a "late bloomer" probably won't get a scholarship offer from a powerhouse program, they might still be able to catch on with a mid-major program and make a name for themselves there.

[Mike G]

.. My theory is that athletic white kids growing up around a bunch of black kids are actively discouraged from playing basketball. .. I had a friend in college who went to a high school that was 60% black, and he told me that his high school basketball coach wouldn't even let white guys try out. ..

Is that your entire body of evidence that some kids are actively discouraged from playing?
Some friend in college said so?
What coach doesn't want the best players on his team? What players don't?

Unless things have deteriorated greatly, kids who don't even know whether they're good at basketball don't presume to make the high school team and then expect to be turned into players. You start dribbling, passing, shooting, and rebounding many years before that.

On the other hand, if he's going to high school in Iowa, he might try out for the basketball team, figure out that he's pretty good at it, and decide to pursue the sport.

Sounds like a bad TV movie. This never happens in real life.
If your college friend was denied a spot on the HS team, it wasn't because of his skin color.

[noypi]

Is that your entire body of evidence that some kids are actively discouraged from playing?
Some friend in college said so?
What coach doesn't want the best players on his team? What players don't?

Unless things have deteriorated greatly, kids who don't even know whether they're good at basketball don't presume to make the high school team and then expect to be turned into players. You start dribbling, passing, shooting, and rebounding many years before that.

personally, i blame the american coaches at the pro, college and H.S. level for not teaching the game properly to young white (and black) american players. if you cant run and jump, you need to master the fundamentals to make up for that deficiency. sadly, most white american players are relegated to spot up shooting when(if) the reach the pros.

[agentkirb]

I actually think noypi nailed it. Now, I don't think it's as blatantly racist as high schools not allowing white people to play. But it might just be that black high school kids, they are going to be on average more naturally gifted than their white counter parts at that age. And I'm just talking about the black kids that play sports. I'm not making a statement about the two races in general necessarily. In a big city high school you might see a few black high school kids that are already over 6 foot and they are athletic enough to be good at the game (and they probably played it enough as kids to be interested). And you'd probably see as many white guys too, but the ones that are tall aren't as fast... the ones that are short and fast never grow to be NBA height anyway. I mean think of a guy like Lebron James... he's like 6'8? He has the height and the speed, it's probably rare to see that in high school if you are a white guy.

Look at white American players in the NBA now... they are pros not because of shear athleticism alone, they have the skills that they worked on in high school and college. That's not to say that black people only have athleticism, but they have skills because they worked on them in high school and college as well. When they were first trying out in high school they didn't, but they still had the athleticism to get by. And think about the usual reason draft busts don't work out and it really paints a picture of what is going on. I'll pick on the Rockets because they are my team... they have like 4 guys that are probably considered busts from the 2009 draft lottery: Thabeet, Hill, Flynn and Terrance Williams. And the same sorts of things are said about those busts... "oh, he's tall enough, but he just didn't learn the basketball IQ or the physical skills (post up game, defense, etc)" or "he's fast/quick enough, but his jump shot isn't as good... or he can't pass or play defense". And when you consider that Hill didn't even know how to play basketball until he was like 17... there is a lot of people that rely on athleticism and a lot of teams get burned when they pick a tall or athletic guy and he just collects a pay check for 2-3 years until he gets cut. If you are a white guy though... you pretty much have to already have those skills to get drafted.

And for the people that were trying to compare Europe to white Americans... IIRC there aren't as many black kids in Europe so the theory accounts for that as well. But also the European leagues tend to be a lot more physical... that might just be the culture over there.

[wilq]

Quick question: is there a database somewhere which contains information about players' race?
Or where could someone gather it without using pictures?

[alanwattsblues]

This thread reeks of nostalgia. I don't know how anyone can say that overall fundamentals have declined.

The truth is that the players of today's NBA are the greatest basketball players in the history of the universe in almost every single regard - they are stronger, taller, more explosive, shoot better, pass better, handle the ball tighter, and play better defense and smarter team basketball (despite isolation play sometimes being more optimal/frequent).

The caviat may be that there may be some truth to certain styles of posting up being a little worse/infrequent, but this is because rule changes have put even more of a premium on driving and explosiveness than there was before. I daresay shooting percentage on post-ups has gone up, even if posting up means something different today (the LBJ/wade style of post up rather than the kareem/george mikan style).

The players (black and white) of yesteryear would almost unanimously be scrubbed out of today's league, even some of the superstars. The talent pool is just too huge now because too many people around the world know and care about the game of basketball.

Obviously basketball plays a prominent role in black culture, but white people love to play basketball, too, and are on average more advantaged socioeconomically.

The reason that there are more black players in the nba is because, especially in the nba's style of basketball, basketball is a game where other than the obvious necessity of length/wingspan, explosiveness is by far the most important skill a player can have, and people of west african descent are on average more explosive than whites, asians, east africans, hispanics, et al.

Obviously not every west african person is explosive and there are many non-west-africans that are extremely explosive, but this is why there are so many "black" players "dominating" sports where explosiveness matters (football, basketball). Sprinting is purely about explosiveness with only a very small skill component, and it is dominated by individuals of west african descent from a wide variety of countries.

The black and white players in the nba combine length with a high genetic potential for explosiveness and highly practiced, sublime skills to be the greatest basketball players around. You have to have at least an elite level of all three of those things to be a pro basketballer, and black players have access to the explosiveness part more often than white players do... hence, there are more black players than white players.

Also, I agree with an earlier post that there are more white foreign players in the NBA because there are simply more white people in the rest of the world than there is in america.

[Mike G]

The truth is that the players of today's NBA are the greatest basketball players in the history of the universe in almost every single regard - they are stronger, taller, more explosive, shoot better, pass better, handle the ball tighter, and play better defense and smarter team basketball...

This was also true 20 years ago, 30 years ago, etc.
And Larry Bird was for a few years the best player in the world. A few years earlier, Walton was.
Rick Barry would have won MVP, if it weren't vs Kareem in his prime, just doing plenty of everything.
Dirk doesn't "explode" on anyone, but he can be MVP.

[alanwattsblues]

The truth is that the players of today's NBA are the greatest basketball players in the history of the universe in almost every single regard - they are stronger, taller, more explosive, shoot better, pass better, handle the ball tighter, and play better defense and smarter team basketball...

This was also true 20 years ago, 30 years ago, etc.
And Larry Bird was for a few years the best player in the world. A few years earlier, Walton was.
Rick Barry would have won MVP, if it weren't vs Kareem in his prime, just doing plenty of everything.
Dirk doesn't "explode" on anyone, but he can be MVP.

I'm a huge Larry Bird fan, but there's no way in hell he wins an MVP award in today's NBA. He was quite long (actually comparable to today's PFs), a gifted passer, and an extraordinary shooter, but today's ridiculously athletic fours would blow by Larry constantly (judging by the fact that Larry got roasted by yesterday's threes).

It's true that Dirk's most important skills are his length (most important skill in basketball) and his shooting ability, and that he's certainly no Derrick Rose or Russell Westbrook, but Dirk is actually insanely explosive, and it's his very underrated ability to drive that allows him to take advantage of his fantastic shooting ability.