- 7,361
- 28,937
- Joined
- Dec 8, 1999
Idc what your polls are saying, or what kinda poll it is, because I can guarantee you that everyone on here who is around minorities or people of color or whatever you wanna call it will tell you the same. This "Whole" ghetto basketball thing is coming from ONE journalist, who when you translate the article correctly clearly used the word ghetto in his title for lack of a better word. Racism is alive, but you're without a doubt magnifying it, when in this case it is minuscule.
Oh, okay. So, empirical data are worthless, but hearsay and conjecture? That's something you can rely on.
Really, "everyone on here who is around minorities... will tell you the same?" So... what does that mean if my experience differs? If LDJ's experience differs? If 0cks' experience differs? Your minority friends "or whatever you wanna call it" are the only ones who count? See, that's why poll data can be useful. It's not just raw speculation. You just go ahead and keep dismissing it, though.
I can tell you're a real expert on the subject from insight like this:
in the inner city a lot of people refer to their neighborhood as their "hood" for short.
I'm not even gonna touch this silly "you can play aggressive ball unless you've been in the hood" nonsense. That's just pure stereotype.
See what you are getting at but back in 2007 the team that played Dallas did become America's darlings.
They were underdogs, but let's not go nuts. The Warriors were never lionized the way Dallas has been, as though it's "good vs. evil."
Dallas was really only the underdog in the eyes of those who didn't really watch the games and whose reasoning amounted to "3 superstars > 1." I certainly expected Dallas to win, as did most of the basketball fans I know. Charles Barkley wasn't surprised and he was one of many analysts who picked Dallas heading in.
It wasn't a major upset. If nothing else, people expected it to be close.
The Miami Heat's big 3 scored the second biggest percentage of a team's points in NBA history. I don't think any of them are selfish players but its ridiculous to try argue they as much a "team" as the Mavs.
I understand that you're trying to maximize the amount of credit your team receives for winning the Finals and you don't want anything to detract from that, but come on.
You're talking about THREE players. Usually, when people argue about how selfish somebody is, they talk about one guy hogging the ball - not three. That's damn near the entire starting lineup. So, what you're really saying is that Miami doesn't have a bench and they get no scoring from the center position. Well.... duh. But let me ask you this: since when does "playing like a team" require balanced scoring? MJ scored a greater percentage of the Bulls' points in the playoffs than LeBron James did for Miami. I think most fans would agree that the 95-96 Chicago Bulls were still a pretty good TEAM. It's not to their detriment that their players understood their roles. Is it impossible for Dennis Rodman to be part of a great TEAM? What about Ben Wallace? Is it impossible to have a great "team" if you have 3 guys carrying most of the scoring burden?
The COMPLAINT about Miami is that, unlike Dallas, they couldn't decide who to go to down the stretch, that one of their "Big 3" didn't assert themselves and DEMAND the ball. Those selfish bastards.
Dallas deserves credit for assembling a stacked roster. Hey, that's why they won. Many of their bench players could start - and have started - on other squads. Deep/balanced scoring doesn't necessarily epitomize "team play," however. Sacrifice, certainly, is part of the common definition. Everyone needs to work together to be greater in tandem than the "sum of their parts." Team USA generally has the deepest roster on the planet, and they even have balanced scoring... but they don't play together as a cohesive unit, which has become their Achilles' heel.
All of this, of course, is beside the point.
People want to give Dallas ALL the credit and Miami NO credit for team play, despite the noteworthy fact that just 2 games (2 quarters, arguably) separated them in the NBA Finals. Yet, for whatever reason, each team has been twisted into a caricature: one supremely flattering; the other supremely unflattering. And I think it's worth asking why that is.