Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven
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| Sunny Days in Heaven Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven |
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Friday, May 03, 2002 No millionaires in Heaven In talking about the Kings Mavericks b-ball series about to start, I should have mentioned the international flavor to these two teams. The Sac Bee made up for my oversight this morning with an article about it. Nine players from the two teams - enough to field a fine all star team to compete with anyone, are foreign born; although Shawn Bradley is an American who was born in Germany, raised in Utah. The other players are Tariq Abdul-Wahad from France (who was drafted and played for the Kings a few years ago), Dirk Nowitzki from Germany; Wang Zhizhi (pronounced Wong zhoo zhoo according to announcers I've heard) from China; Eduardo Najera from Mexico; and Steve Nash, born in South Africa but raised in Canada. These are Dallas players. The Kings have Valde Divac and Peja Stojakovic from Yugoslavia (renamed to Serbia and Montenegro recently I believe) and Hedo Turkoglu from Turkey. I've mentioned to some others in passing that the time is fast approaching when the U.S. will no longer dominate the Olympics and other international tourneys in basketball. The players above could certainly give any American team a run for its money. Whether any one nation in Europe can yet field an entire team of all stars will take awhile yet (but is not that far off). I would guess that the U.S has one more relatively easy Olympics ahead and that will be it. The world will have caught up. Basketball is becoming that universal a game. (It's cheap, takes almost no equipment, and is easy to learn - throw ball and hope it falls through the hole.) I must also say as a light colored person (pale man often called white), that it is refreshing to see the game being restocked by pale Europeans who are playing with an intensity, hunger, drive, professionalism, and dignity that I enjoy. (I hate, despise, loathe celebrations and ludicrous dances of triumph, swagger, trash talk, and lack of sportsmanship. Remember the sick preening of American track men in Sydney. It doesn't get much worse and revolting as that.) Plus, there was a little too much racism and resentment in Dennis Rodman saying what many black players thought - that Larry Bird was only given so much praise because he was white. There was also Shaq's comments about "white boys" like Jason Williams (White Chocolate, his nickname). Blacks talking about other men as "boys" and acting as if they were lucky to be good enough for a few of them to play in the "black game" got to be a bit much also. So maybe we'll get a new movie out of this - White Men Can So Jump. posted by Mark Butterworth | 12:59 PM | |
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