- Feb 17, 2013
- 3,870
- 853
Official NBA 2012-2013 Season Thread
- Thread in 'Sports & Training' Thread starter Started by Spectacular23,
- Start date
- Status
- Jul 3, 2012
- 12,744
- 2,371
Id rather have Iggy than MWP....come to LA fam 
- Nov 5, 2007
- 19,391
- 899
Wow at the disrespect yall giving Jrue. He should be #1 on everyone's list
big j 33
Supporter
- May 31, 2006
- 36,043
- 16,801
Russ needs to stop being lazy on defense.. He has the tools, but gets caught sleeping too often.
- Jul 18, 2012
- 20,396
- 14,184
- Jul 3, 2012
- 12,744
- 2,371
KYRIE IRVING AND THE DEATH OF THE GHETTO SUPERSTAR
While Black America debates whether or not we are “post” anything—black/bougie/modern/racial—what’s not up for discussion is whether or not we are post-ghetto. That answer is a resounding “HELL NO.” That debate isn’t even on the table, it’s not cooking in the kitchen, the groceries haven’t even been bought yet.
We’re six million miles from W.E.B. DuBois and the popularity of the “Talented Tenth” concept. The assertion that “the Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its ‘exceptional men’,” was shortsighted. It’s not reasonably possible that a nation of millions should be led by a contingent of well-heeled, moneyed folks (though considering how many people bow down to celebrity culture in this era, that kind of already happened, but let’s save that for another column).
Because DuBois promoted cognitive development over vocational skills, detractors like Booker T. Washington claimed that he was setting up African-Americans for generations of failure and a perpetual second-class citizenry. It wasn’t tangible; people argued that we aren’t gonna “out degree” mainstream America, so we had better learn how to fix the plumbing and install the air conditioners. But DuBois knew better and saw it as a way to lead the misguided out of small-mindedness and combine the cumulative resources of the Jim-Crow-dominated black communities of the early 20th Century. Creating a leadership class consisting of the best the community has to offer made sense, even if it wasn’t perfect.
The problem is, we basically did the opposite.
* * * * * * * * * *
One of the most unfortunate legacies of the Crack Era is that it conditioned two or three generations after it to honor the drug game. And more pointedly, to honor the best-case and worst-case scenarios brought forth from it. Young heads might not recall the ’80s (consider yourselves lucky), but it came with the force of a natural disaster. Reagonomics, AIDS and men wearing mascara were bad enough.Then Crack hit. It upheaved whole neighborhoods and took lives with no regard for culture or circumstance. And it went on for years. Imagine Hurricane Sandy dropping by once a month for eight years. Imagine raising kids in that environment. Imagine being a kid growing up in that situation. The scar tissue goes deep.
The era was full of terror and glamour. Terror being the callous loss of black life and the way addiction fractured the structure of poor and working class family units. The glamour came in the way that drug dealers started producing extreme materialism. People had been hustling forever, so that wasn’t new. And there were always a few guys jeweled up with mink coats, next level rides and pretty women on their arms. But not like this. Project kids were becoming overnight celebrities and hustlers became millionaires.
For young impressionable minds, even if it was known how they secured these goods, this was awe-inspiring. We all wanted a slice of the devil’s pie. How can anyone blame us? So ghetto culture, chock full of intoxicating tales of “they’ll never take me alive” and “ I gotta feed my kids” soliloquies of chaos, became the most regarded celebration of blackness. Even outside of the ghetto.
College kids who had never seen the inner city except via the words of Tom Brokaw, became enraptured by it. The popularity made anything that the hustlers valued (cars, clothes, women, music, basketball, etc.) trendy.
Basketball had already been a mainstay in inner-city communities for decades, but when the hood blew up, it took b-ball with it, and everything else: the slang, the clothes (baggy pants was originally a prison look) and the rep. Being from the streets became, in many circles, the ultimate example of your bonafides. Project guys with low SAT scores became the thing. He became a hero, or an anti-hero; either way, he was exalted. And the hood got the reupholster treatment.
College basketball specialized in recruiting these kinds of players, especially as guards. They were typically quick, steely and hungry. Guys like Stephon Marbury, Tim Hardaway and Allen Iverson became the standard. We shunned black guys from the ’burbs, said their styles weren’t rugged enough. We wanted dudes from the Southside of Chicago, Bed-Stuy, East Oakland, and West Baltimore. Players with nothing to lose. We wanted dudes who married this basketball sh*t; these suburb n*ggas were just engaged.
Shoe companies went through every athlete’s bio in a lu****l search of a weed arrest or any sort of brush with the law. Magazines displayed black men with scowls and tats inside their pages and sold it as authenticity. This feeling had a name; they called it “street cred.”
It stayed that way for decades, but now, there are *****s in the armor. It’s changing, and now we’re on the verge of a paradigm shift. Why? Because the nastiest guard (not the best, but the “nastiest”) in the NBA is a prep school kid from the tony suburbs of Jersey who went to Duke.
* * * * * * * * * *
West Orange is a small city in Essex County, approximately a half-hour outside of New York City. To say it’s a normal suburb makes it sound too perfect. Too idyllic. We aren’t goin’ there. But numbers don’t lie, and man, the numbers associated with West Orange are amazing. The median household income is $88,884, the average price of a house is over $402,000, and in 2011, there was one reported murder. Kyrie Irving spent his freshman and sophomore years at nearby Montclair Kimberley Academy (before transferring to national power St. Patrick’s Academy, in Elizabeth). The tuition for ninth through twelfth graders at Montclair is $ 32,000 a year. They don’t have a principal; they have a headmaster. You get the point.
Kyrie’s father, Dred, played college ball at Boston University and after a stint playing overseas (Kyrie was born in Australia), came back to the states and began a career as a bond broker on Wall Street. Theirs was a life of good living (although sadly, Kyrie’s mother passed when he was four years old) and privilege, but Mr. Irving, knowing Kyrie needed to diversify his competition, made sure to trek him around inner-city courts around the Tri-State area.
Kyrie is Carlton Banks with a handle, but his game is littered with the accoutrements of a guy who played at the Rucker. There hasn’t been any backlash, at all, in regards to Irving’s story. Nobody’s calling him an Uncle Tom like they did to Grant Hill. Nobody is saying his style is fraudulent. At least not yet.
He’s not the first person to make this jump. In this regard, he’s a descendant of Kobe Bryant who made the jump from Philly’s Main Line uber-suburbs, but brought with him a style straight from the Sonny Hill League. The difference between Kobe’s mid-90s ascension and what’s going on with Kyrie today is that there’s an audience for this transformation. Remember, people hated on Kobe, said he was a poser, that he wasn’t “black enough” and all of those warped, slender descriptions that people create when someone’s behavior doesn’t fit into their assumed definition of black identity politics. As a community, we’ve lamented about these descriptions for years and held umpteen community outreach seminars hoping to unearth a way to change the direction.
Kyrie is as, if not more, polished a player as Kobe was at the same age (but he has much better shot.) It’s the flair he plays with that makes him stand out. Right now, he’s picked up the baton from Brandon Jennings and Chris Paul––he has the sickest handle in the NBA . It’s beyond filthy. During last weekend’s All-Star festivities, he turned himself into a household name. Casual fans are now aware and his bandwagon, which was steadily adding new passengers, will become standing-room only. They saw him break Brandon Knight’s tibia bone on Friday and caught him stuntin’ in the All-Star on Sunday.
Undoubtedly, someone will discover that he’s not cut from the same cloth as everyone else. Will they assail him because he didn’t grow up on W.I.C.? If they do, they’ll have to go after a bunch of other guys, too.
A couple of years ago, a friend of mine said the problem with the NBA is there are too many middle-class ballplayers. But that hardly matters. There have always been guys from “circles” and “lanes,” even while it was the dudes from “avenues” and “streets” who controlled the narrative. But in recent years, we’ve seen a change from that type of glorification. Players like Steph Curry, Blake Griffin and Chris Paul didn’t come up from some hardscrabble existence. They grew up with their fathers around and never had to skip any meals. To my knowledge, they’ve never had their ghetto pass revoked because, frankly, they never needed it anyway. These guys are amongst the most popular players in the game and nobody gives a crap about their credibility. For years, guys from nice neighborhoods had to feel ashamed, some even hid this fact and created fake scenarios filled with rats and roaches. The fallacy of associating black male authenticity with inner-city blues is a trap for suckers and punks. Basketball has seemingly turned the page on this mentality. If only mainstream hip-hop could do the same.
Kyrie’s success will be the latest test. If he can come out of this unscathed, then we might be on to something great. If the crabs drag him back down into their bucket, then it’s more proof that we haven’t yet learned from our mistakes. The inner-city isn’t a place to be embarrassed about, it’s a geographical construct. The mistake is allowing it to become a mental construct, where we somehow punish players who don’t have that history. Finally, that seems to be changing. Used to be that we only wanted players with a certain kind of story, but now, we accept them without the hardship background as an attachment. We’re getting away from penalizing guys and assuming they are soft because they come from money. This archaic notion is on the way out. This deserves a slow clap, so let’s give ’em one.
While Black America debates whether or not we are “post” anything—black/bougie/modern/racial—what’s not up for discussion is whether or not we are post-ghetto. That answer is a resounding “HELL NO.” That debate isn’t even on the table, it’s not cooking in the kitchen, the groceries haven’t even been bought yet.
We’re six million miles from W.E.B. DuBois and the popularity of the “Talented Tenth” concept. The assertion that “the Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its ‘exceptional men’,” was shortsighted. It’s not reasonably possible that a nation of millions should be led by a contingent of well-heeled, moneyed folks (though considering how many people bow down to celebrity culture in this era, that kind of already happened, but let’s save that for another column).
Because DuBois promoted cognitive development over vocational skills, detractors like Booker T. Washington claimed that he was setting up African-Americans for generations of failure and a perpetual second-class citizenry. It wasn’t tangible; people argued that we aren’t gonna “out degree” mainstream America, so we had better learn how to fix the plumbing and install the air conditioners. But DuBois knew better and saw it as a way to lead the misguided out of small-mindedness and combine the cumulative resources of the Jim-Crow-dominated black communities of the early 20th Century. Creating a leadership class consisting of the best the community has to offer made sense, even if it wasn’t perfect.
The problem is, we basically did the opposite.
* * * * * * * * * *
One of the most unfortunate legacies of the Crack Era is that it conditioned two or three generations after it to honor the drug game. And more pointedly, to honor the best-case and worst-case scenarios brought forth from it. Young heads might not recall the ’80s (consider yourselves lucky), but it came with the force of a natural disaster. Reagonomics, AIDS and men wearing mascara were bad enough.Then Crack hit. It upheaved whole neighborhoods and took lives with no regard for culture or circumstance. And it went on for years. Imagine Hurricane Sandy dropping by once a month for eight years. Imagine raising kids in that environment. Imagine being a kid growing up in that situation. The scar tissue goes deep.
The era was full of terror and glamour. Terror being the callous loss of black life and the way addiction fractured the structure of poor and working class family units. The glamour came in the way that drug dealers started producing extreme materialism. People had been hustling forever, so that wasn’t new. And there were always a few guys jeweled up with mink coats, next level rides and pretty women on their arms. But not like this. Project kids were becoming overnight celebrities and hustlers became millionaires.
For young impressionable minds, even if it was known how they secured these goods, this was awe-inspiring. We all wanted a slice of the devil’s pie. How can anyone blame us? So ghetto culture, chock full of intoxicating tales of “they’ll never take me alive” and “ I gotta feed my kids” soliloquies of chaos, became the most regarded celebration of blackness. Even outside of the ghetto.
College kids who had never seen the inner city except via the words of Tom Brokaw, became enraptured by it. The popularity made anything that the hustlers valued (cars, clothes, women, music, basketball, etc.) trendy.
Basketball had already been a mainstay in inner-city communities for decades, but when the hood blew up, it took b-ball with it, and everything else: the slang, the clothes (baggy pants was originally a prison look) and the rep. Being from the streets became, in many circles, the ultimate example of your bonafides. Project guys with low SAT scores became the thing. He became a hero, or an anti-hero; either way, he was exalted. And the hood got the reupholster treatment.
College basketball specialized in recruiting these kinds of players, especially as guards. They were typically quick, steely and hungry. Guys like Stephon Marbury, Tim Hardaway and Allen Iverson became the standard. We shunned black guys from the ’burbs, said their styles weren’t rugged enough. We wanted dudes from the Southside of Chicago, Bed-Stuy, East Oakland, and West Baltimore. Players with nothing to lose. We wanted dudes who married this basketball sh*t; these suburb n*ggas were just engaged.
Shoe companies went through every athlete’s bio in a lu****l search of a weed arrest or any sort of brush with the law. Magazines displayed black men with scowls and tats inside their pages and sold it as authenticity. This feeling had a name; they called it “street cred.”
It stayed that way for decades, but now, there are *****s in the armor. It’s changing, and now we’re on the verge of a paradigm shift. Why? Because the nastiest guard (not the best, but the “nastiest”) in the NBA is a prep school kid from the tony suburbs of Jersey who went to Duke.
* * * * * * * * * *
West Orange is a small city in Essex County, approximately a half-hour outside of New York City. To say it’s a normal suburb makes it sound too perfect. Too idyllic. We aren’t goin’ there. But numbers don’t lie, and man, the numbers associated with West Orange are amazing. The median household income is $88,884, the average price of a house is over $402,000, and in 2011, there was one reported murder. Kyrie Irving spent his freshman and sophomore years at nearby Montclair Kimberley Academy (before transferring to national power St. Patrick’s Academy, in Elizabeth). The tuition for ninth through twelfth graders at Montclair is $ 32,000 a year. They don’t have a principal; they have a headmaster. You get the point.
Kyrie’s father, Dred, played college ball at Boston University and after a stint playing overseas (Kyrie was born in Australia), came back to the states and began a career as a bond broker on Wall Street. Theirs was a life of good living (although sadly, Kyrie’s mother passed when he was four years old) and privilege, but Mr. Irving, knowing Kyrie needed to diversify his competition, made sure to trek him around inner-city courts around the Tri-State area.
Kyrie is Carlton Banks with a handle, but his game is littered with the accoutrements of a guy who played at the Rucker. There hasn’t been any backlash, at all, in regards to Irving’s story. Nobody’s calling him an Uncle Tom like they did to Grant Hill. Nobody is saying his style is fraudulent. At least not yet.
He’s not the first person to make this jump. In this regard, he’s a descendant of Kobe Bryant who made the jump from Philly’s Main Line uber-suburbs, but brought with him a style straight from the Sonny Hill League. The difference between Kobe’s mid-90s ascension and what’s going on with Kyrie today is that there’s an audience for this transformation. Remember, people hated on Kobe, said he was a poser, that he wasn’t “black enough” and all of those warped, slender descriptions that people create when someone’s behavior doesn’t fit into their assumed definition of black identity politics. As a community, we’ve lamented about these descriptions for years and held umpteen community outreach seminars hoping to unearth a way to change the direction.
Kyrie is as, if not more, polished a player as Kobe was at the same age (but he has much better shot.) It’s the flair he plays with that makes him stand out. Right now, he’s picked up the baton from Brandon Jennings and Chris Paul––he has the sickest handle in the NBA . It’s beyond filthy. During last weekend’s All-Star festivities, he turned himself into a household name. Casual fans are now aware and his bandwagon, which was steadily adding new passengers, will become standing-room only. They saw him break Brandon Knight’s tibia bone on Friday and caught him stuntin’ in the All-Star on Sunday.
Undoubtedly, someone will discover that he’s not cut from the same cloth as everyone else. Will they assail him because he didn’t grow up on W.I.C.? If they do, they’ll have to go after a bunch of other guys, too.
A couple of years ago, a friend of mine said the problem with the NBA is there are too many middle-class ballplayers. But that hardly matters. There have always been guys from “circles” and “lanes,” even while it was the dudes from “avenues” and “streets” who controlled the narrative. But in recent years, we’ve seen a change from that type of glorification. Players like Steph Curry, Blake Griffin and Chris Paul didn’t come up from some hardscrabble existence. They grew up with their fathers around and never had to skip any meals. To my knowledge, they’ve never had their ghetto pass revoked because, frankly, they never needed it anyway. These guys are amongst the most popular players in the game and nobody gives a crap about their credibility. For years, guys from nice neighborhoods had to feel ashamed, some even hid this fact and created fake scenarios filled with rats and roaches. The fallacy of associating black male authenticity with inner-city blues is a trap for suckers and punks. Basketball has seemingly turned the page on this mentality. If only mainstream hip-hop could do the same.
Kyrie’s success will be the latest test. If he can come out of this unscathed, then we might be on to something great. If the crabs drag him back down into their bucket, then it’s more proof that we haven’t yet learned from our mistakes. The inner-city isn’t a place to be embarrassed about, it’s a geographical construct. The mistake is allowing it to become a mental construct, where we somehow punish players who don’t have that history. Finally, that seems to be changing. Used to be that we only wanted players with a certain kind of story, but now, we accept them without the hardship background as an attachment. We’re getting away from penalizing guys and assuming they are soft because they come from money. This archaic notion is on the way out. This deserves a slow clap, so let’s give ’em one.
antidope
Supporter
- Jan 2, 2012
- 63,514
- 68,039
Stop it, this is nowhere near close. This needs to end. I dont really want to turn this into a Patriots bashing fest because that isnt fair to them, but the what the Spurs have been doing recently isnt anywhere comparable to what the Patriots have been doing. The fact that they both used to win but dont anymore isnt enough to make this comparison. The Spurs havent had anything that can be considered a true choke job outside of the Memphis series, whereas every year when the season starts the Patriots are the odds on favorite to win and yet they never do and lose to subpar teams.
The Spurs arent popular/marketable? Its no longer 2005 man, they didnt get into the top 10 most profitbale teams by not being popular and filling seats. They play an exciting brand of basketball that anyone can get into. I'm not having any luck fidning viewership stats by team but I doubt we're last, a team like the Bobcats or the Pistons is last, not a team that is competiting for the ship year after year.
I'm from South Orange NJ, I didnt hear about him till he transferred to St. Pats but after seeing him and hearing he was going to Duke I became a fan. Theyre kinda overblowing how nice it was out there, but thats how averages work I guess cause there are
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- Aug 6, 2001
- 12,885
- 2,739
So...Kyrie is the Carlton Banks of the NBA.
- Nov 11, 2007
- 17,687
- 24,133
Why would it? The Spurs lost their focus when it was announced that Bron and Wade wouldn't play. The same thing happened in the other Spurs-Heat game when the Spurs damn near beat Miami without Duncan, Parker, Ginobili, and Green.
- May 22, 2005
- 3,713
- 1,465
Man seeing Kevin Ware injury, I have to say I hope Derrick Rose and others recovering should only come back when they are ready to play. Miss a season if you have to for the long run.
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- Feb 17, 2013
- 3,870
- 853
man, that was such a tragic accident.. It's hard just looking at the video
You think that's in every player's mind? I know when I play, it crosses my mind sometimes that I can just break my leg, buckle my knee, break my wrist, etc.
- Jul 18, 2012
- 20,396
- 14,184
The mental aspect of the rehab is probably more taxing than the physical. Learning to re-trust your body is a hurdle that a lot of people don't consider when discussing the injuries these guys have suffered.
Man, just going down the stairs at work today I was thinking about what would happen if the bone just went thru my leg :x
I can't even fathom what Ware went through and his road ahead.
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- Sep 25, 2004
- 8,932
- 3,515
nba upgraded taj gibson's foul on lebron to a flagrant 
just as im becoming more of a fan of lbj, dude's whining is :x
just as im becoming more of a fan of lbj, dude's whining is :x
- Jul 31, 2008
- 12,209
- 277
"Man, just going down the stairs at work today I was thinking about what would happen if the bone just went thru my leg."
Seriously...I'm walking around the office with so much unnecessary caution.
Seriously...I'm walking around the office with so much unnecessary caution.
- Feb 10, 2003
- 22,262
- 11,072
- Mar 1, 2011
- 6,375
- 3,694
- Jul 3, 2012
- 12,744
- 2,371
- Apr 12, 2008
- 15,661
- 4,793
adfs;ljs;lkshags;lfgld;hfsdjust dont copy your avi, you might break something
Weak as hell man. All that singing by Raymone paid off...smh.nba upgraded taj gibson's foul on lebron to a flagrant
The silence from most of his ***** squad on here speaks volumes. I'm sleep though...
Last edited:
- Jan 2, 2010
- 82,790
- 118,316
nba upgraded taj gibson's foul on lebron to a flagrant
just as im becoming more of a fan of lbj, dude's whining is :x
Days later
Lebron stop the crying my dude.
- Feb 16, 2006
- 20,261
- 2,188
LeBron James and Kevin Durant were named Players of the Month for March
*LeBron has won every Eastern Conference Player of the Month award this season
*LeBron has won every Eastern Conference Player of the Month award this season
Last edited:
- Nov 4, 2003
- 29,630
- 1,863
Guess the baby got his bottle. Shame on the nba for caving
jumpmanfromdabay
Banned
- Jan 25, 2008
- 25,730
- 2,900
What does upgrading the foul to flagrant do?
They gave David Lee a Flagrant after the game was over and they didn't call it a foul during the game
They gave David Lee a Flagrant after the game was over and they didn't call it a foul during the game
- Jun 17, 2006
- 44,214
- 2,544
I don't want Boston seeing New York in the first round. I wish Boston could move up to fourth to play Atlanta in the first round.
- Oct 24, 2010
- 94,425
- 33,489
- Nov 5, 2007
- 19,391
- 899
We went over this flagrant upgrade the other day. Yall crying more than Lebron
- Status
