Sometimes I be sitting around thinking about how the NBA has seemingly turned its back on quality players like Dwight Howard, Hassan Whiteside and DeAndre Drummond. The argument is supposed to be that, despite easily averaging double-doubles when given enough playing time, they are too slow and cumbersome for "today's NBA". My opinion is that if you average a double-double of anything combination of mainstream stats in the NBA (except for turnovers), then no one in their right mind should be trying to say that you don't belong in the league. Like this is something that has been bothering me for a long time, why it seemed like the media and some other entities just suddenly turned on these centers.
Then recently, while peeping out a Steph Curry documentary, I remembered this joke I once came across once on a comedy site. The writer was writing about the 1960s' NBA or some shit and made this crack about 'before you had to be at least 6'6" and Black' to play in the league. It was actually a pretty funny joke, the way he presented it. And it's also true in a way, that all of these athletic Black NBA players were on the verge of almost making White counterparts obsolete.
In fact circa the turn the century, i.e. the first decade of the 21st century, White-American NBA players were all but extinct. In the last 25 or so years, to my (limited) remembrance there's only been one White-American all-star, that being Gordon Hayward. He's a still a fine player but, you know, obviously couldn't endure the continuous rigors of the NBA . All of the other recent White allstars have been from Europe. So it's like if the Dream Team hadn't graced the Olympics in 1992 - the event which is credited with making basketball a truly-international phenomenon - then who knows how the league will look these days, if Europeans hadn't gotten interested like that.
And you know, niggas be hatin, and by niggas I mean racists. You can never underestimate the pettiness of a true racist. For instance just yesterday, according to the news, some racist dude in Florida killed three innocent Black people before taking his own life - a total and complete waste of life, including his own.
So it's like White Americans were on the verge of being phased out of the NBA, with basketball being a game that they invented, in a manner of speaking. And you couldn't really say anything about it because at the end of the day, teams want to win. The one thing Whites could unanimously do better than any other race, when it comes to basketball, is shoot. But it started to reach a point where it was hard to rationalize having someone on the squad who could just shoot but not do much else.
Then, enter Steph Curry. One thing I learned from the storyline of Underrated was that Steph was doing all of that crazy shit on the court, i.e. consistently making shots that no one else in their right mind would even take, well before hooking up with Klay. Lebron himself took the time out to come and personally watch Steph play in college, along with Rich Paul, as if they wanted to sign him, which goes to show that LBJ really does have a high basketball IQ.
HOW STEPH REVOLUTIONIZED THE NBA
Steph revolutionized the NBA, because he took the focus from the inside (of the paint), where it has traditionally been, to the outside. Now all of the sudden every team could rationalize having at least one player on their roster who can shoot and do nothing else. Back in the old days, it was only contenders who tended to take those kinds of risks, i.e. squads with defenses that are good enough to make up for regularly playing someone who can only shoot.
So now, in an NBA that focuses more, if not primarily on jump-shooting in the name of hopefully beating Steph and the Warriors, it's like White players have found a place again. Even some of these European MVP types, they wouldn't have had it as easy back in the days when coaches actually demanded players to exhibit some consistent level of defensive efficiency, like the Thibodeau types who would even bench Evan Fournier.
CONCLUSION
A few years back I was walking down the street in Odumase, which is like this obscure community in the Eastern Region of Ghana. And I seen this dude that looked just like Steph Curry. When I say he looked just like Steph, I mean that he looks more like Steph than even Seth does. I was even tempted to ask dude for a picture, just so I could show the peeps back home like 'yo, I ran into this guy in Africa that looks just like Steph Curry' - an indigenous African, not someone who is mixed which, even for an 'educated' person like myself, was shocking. Before that, I never even imagined that there was like a tribe of Steph Currys out in the world somewhere.
Do I believe there's some kind of skin-color component behind being able to shoot a basketball better? Well, the best shooters in NBA history are people like Steve Kerr, Reggie Miller, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, and this is besides the fact that Whiteboys in general tend to shoot better. That's something I've learned from personal experience, not just watching the NBA. So yes, I can logically hypothesize that (lighter) skin tone has someone to do with being to shoot a basketball.
That said, I know that Steph Curry isn't White. But the way he has come and shot the lights off year after year after year has reminded people that yes, a team can be successful without a big, imposing Black guy in the middle and/or super-athletic Black guys on the perimeter - a realization I'm sure has made a lot of people happy. He reminded the world that White people, i.e. jump shooters, actually have a place in NBA basketball. So don't be surprised if into the foreseeable you see even more of the bigger (Black) guys being phased out for White shooters, like European centers, even if the latter can't particularly play defense.
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