Locker room talk: rolling basketball thread

IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
So this new guy who is seven foot four, how good is he gonna be? I saw him dunk, he was stood on about the halfway line and his super long arm stretched out downward and put it in the hole. Seemed a bit unfair really.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
I been trying to watch basketball - well, highlights thereof - but it pisses me off that no-one seems to be able to agree on the rules. Every single one has half the people insisting it was a travel/carry etc and the other half swearing blind that anyone who thinks that has clearly never played the game. And then they start wanging on about pivot foot and all this shite, my eyes glaze over, all that really boring stuff watching the clips in slow-mo to say precisely what foot touched the ground when, seems completely against the spirit of the game. It's totally anti-fun, but then what's the alternative, fuck the rules altogether?
 
linebaugh

linebaugh

Well-known member
The travelling discourse in basketball is interesting. It feels racial but I cant exactly a make compelling argument for that
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
linebaugh said:
The travelling discourse in basketball is interesting. It feels racial but I cant exactly a make compelling argument for that
Click to expand...
it's racial in two, related senses. first, in the sense that almost every element of American culture has some kind of racial subtext (or just text) lurking under the surface. that is especially pronounced in basketball obviously, a sport not only dominated at the professional level by black players but also largely black in culture in a way the NFL simply is not. this tension has underpinned the NBA since the 70s - how to market a majority black league to a majority white audience - manifested in various ways: Bird vs Magic, the Fab Five and the early 90s dispute about the length/bagginess of shorts, Allen Iverson, Malice at the Palace, etc. that tension has definitely subsided in the last ~20 years, probably due mostly to shifts in the larger culture beyond the NBA's control, as well league efforts to make the league more palatable for a suburban/middle American audience (the dress code, cracking down on fighting, etc) and generational turnover making sportswriting more diverse i.e. less crusty old white guys talking about playing the "right way" kind of thing. it is still present tho and occasionally rears its head in things like MVP discourse which has definitely had a racial subtext the last couple years even tho Jokic isn't American.

the second, more specific way it's racial is that it touches on styles of play introduced by and associated with black players. the same thing happened with the slam dunk, which was banned in college basketball for a decade as a direct response to black players - most notably Kareem - entering the sport in large numbers as segregation broke down. another example is the late 90s discourse around Allen Iverson's crossover and whether or not it was palming. compare that to the league's treatment of the Eurostep, which is not specifically associated with black players in the same way.

like most things, the actual history of basketball is more complicated than white players throw chest passes and taking set shots, and black players crossing dudes over and dunking - look no further than Bob Cousy and Pistol Pete Maravich - but the whole point of this kind of discourse is that it flattens out historical complexity into stereotypes and narratives that reflect current attitudes about race. the original "flashy black athlete and his troubled relationship with society" was Jack Johnson, and boxers - Ali, Tyson, etc - held that title until black players began to dominate the NBA and NFL in the 70s and 80s (and boxing shortly thereafter both dwindled to niche popularity and became significantly more diverse). this is where the infamous MJ "Republicans buy shoes too" quote comes from - he was able to successfully thread the needle of oncourt coolness and offcourt squareness that others were not. LeBron has taken that to another level - i.e. without needing to compromise his beliefs (I'm trying to avoid words like Uncle Tom here) - aided greatly by those shifts in the culture I mentioned. that is to say, the LeBron would have had to fight much harder to carve out the same space in the 90s, which is not to take anything away from him. really, Allen Iverson and other late 90s/early 00s figures, especially Rasheed Wallace, walked so that the generation that came after them could run.

anyway, thank you for coming to my TED talk about the racial subtext of traveling discourse
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
important to note that one of those cultural shifts is NBA fandom itself becoming more diverse, both racially and globally. domestically it's like a number of things where as the U.S. becomes more diverse, the primacy of the white/black binary weakens or at least is complicated, while still being undeniably present ofc. and internationally while racism is obviously a universal phenomenon, its specific American terms don't quite translate to Europe or China or wherever, so racial subtexts don't have the same meaning for foreign fans. more generally this one of the ways in which non-Americans often fail to really grasp American culture unless they've had some first-hand experience of it, rather than simply consuming its products - so peopl
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
tbh I find this kind of thing much more interesting than arguing about who's going to win the Western Conference this year or whatever

basketball is many things, but one of them is a pretty fascinating lens thru which to view the evolution of American race relations. there are like a hundred angles at which it intersects history as well as the sotto voce id of attitudes about race. it can, unsurprisingly, get pretty weird. for example, dudes who are racist but simultaneously idealize specific black athletes, is definitely a thing that exists.
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
Nothing screams male privilege like basketball travelling complaints. The women in netball are pretty much rooted to the spot when they have the ball. I haven't heard any of them complaining. Amirite sisters?
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Couple of great and insteresting answers there Padraig, but you didn't particularly talk about travelling so much as the sport as a whole.
Although maybe you did and I just don't know the terminology, I have a. feeling that this "crossover" you mention below is a type of dribbling move so is possibly related right?

padraig (u.s.) said:
another example is the late 90s discourse around Allen Iverson's crossover and whether or not it was palming. compare that to the league's treatment of the Eurostep, which is not specifically associated with black players in the same way.
Click to expand...

So, correct me if I'm misunderstanding this totally, I think what you are alluding to, or implying or whatever, is - an idea about which I was completely ignorant - something about there being separate paths into basketball for preppy white kids from good schools, and talented black kids from the ghettos who played a more "street" version of the game - that much of course is obvious, but I think that over and above that you're saying that the games in those separate paths were played with a different style and, cos of the emphasis of how fouls are called, effectively a different game.

The ghetto game has more of an emphasis on dribbling and tricking people and looking cool, whereas the preppy one might be more about passing and teamwork and three-pointers etc etc and then the people controlling the NBA can kinda choose the direction of the sport's evolution (that's both in terms of rules, but also in terms of its demographics) by deciding how much of the flash dribbling stuff that is close to the line of legality is going to be allowed - in other words how effective "black" moves are going to be, and so how good ghetto players can be at the game, and thus how many of them make it to the top level (how many play in the NBA) and ultimately to what extent they succeed and perhaps become megastars in that league.

Wow, that is a huge revelation to me... really very interesting stuff.

Can someone explain Iverson's crossover and what was controversial about it?
What's the Euro Step? Is it a new controversial move that despite being debatable in itself is not dragged into this debate cos it came from Europe rather than the inner citiy?
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Luka only missed 8 shots & threw 16 FTs to Embiid's 23. He was 25/33 whereas Embiid was 24/41. Luka is the 4th player in NBA history to score 73+ points & the first ever to score 70+ on 75% or higher from the field. 73 pts & only missing 8 shots is crazy. Even Kobe's 81 was 28/46
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
’d bet your boyfriends life, you couldn’t guard Luka from making a basket on his worst day, and your best, with Luka having one arm behind his back for an entire game… I’d bet everything you wouldn’t affect a single point. Universal truth unlike your regurgitation of word vomit above
 
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