In the NBA, ZIP Code Matters

['15 Deac]

Not to be too much of a dick, but I would recommend reading the article and/or looking into the study first...

Not to be too much of a sensitive prick that can't take criticism, but it won't change my perspective or the insight I offered on economic analysis... So that's why I didn't read it...

 

[CumberlandDeac]

The author will answer questions here: http://regressing.deadspin.com/why-...source=deadspin_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

 

[Strickland33]

Not to be too much of a sensitive prick that can't take criticism, but it won't change my perspective or the insight I offered on economic analysis... So that's why I didn't read it...

The reason that I made the comment about economic analysis is that the dude draws all kinds of tenuous, and admittedly speculative, connections with suspect methodology (using, for instance, at least four indicators of "place" based on the graphics provided and article itself) and an even more suspect logical argument. It's unclear if there is a peer-reviewed studied, or more cohesive research design - it was published as an op-ed, after all - and that would go a long way to making these findings more explanatory.

In general, though, I still would recommend reading the study before drawing conclusions on the basis of the writer's biography. Just because he's an economist training at Harvard doesn't mean that his theories are without flaw. I don't see the virtue of commenting without reading, especially because it would take you 5 minutes top to skim the article itself.

I recommended the piece because it advances an interesting hypothesis that rejects a lot of the assumptions made by a lot of the NBA's critics (not to mention the "culture club," in general), not on the basis of its research design or the validity of its findings.

 

[Strickland33]

The NY Times article has gotten me interested in looking at the cited research, and I came across the following. For anybody who is interested, there is an article called "Human Nature and Race" by Peter Wade, from the June 2004 Anthropological Theory that talks about the interrelation of social constructionist and biological notions of race that uses urban basketball players as an example. It serves as an interesting counterpart to the NY Times piece, IMO. Though it strikes me as extremely controversial (and I'm not as familiar with the Anthropology lit as I am with other social sciences), Wade's argument is very nuanced and he does a good job of backgrounding his claims within the race as a social construction/biological construction debates.

I can't upload it due to size constraints and there is a paywall, but here's what I've been able to copy/paste from Sagepub:

Abstract:

Most scholars argue that ‘race’ has no relation to human nature. A minority contend that it does. I argue that ‘race’ is a cultural category which can become an embodied part of the human experience. This embodiment helps account for the power of the idea of race.

Despite the extensive work on embodiment and performance, there is rather little explo-
ration of themes of race and embodiment and I believe this is an interesting and fruitful
area for investigation.

Some examples of the kind of approach I have in mind will help here. One study in
the USA tackled the issue of why so many professional basketball players are black. One
argument says that, as black men are discriminated against in the wider job market, they
opt instead for sport. However, this study looked at how black men and white men grew
up with basketball. Black men tended to play on crowded inner-city courts where
competition for space was fierce and certain skills were selected for – dribbling, shooting
under pressure and so on. Excellence in such skills was rewarded with more playing time
on the court, creating a cycle of reinforcement. White men more often played on courts
where the main problem was actually getting a full team together. They could develop
skills individually, but often outside the normal game environment. Thus there was a
tendency for black and white men to actually develop different bodies: the skills they
had were learnt, but they were also ingrained into their neuronal circuits as body tech-
niques (L. Harrison, 1995). The point is that black men in this example are not ‘by
nature’ good basketball players, if by ‘nature’ we mean a set of genetic predispositions.

But, in these circumstances, they stand a good chance of becoming good basketball
players – a chance also influenced, of course, by a great many other factors – in a way
that is drummed into their bodies as unconscious skill, as a ‘second nature’.

Such skills can be drummed into other, non-black bodies, but the social context makes it more
likely that it will be black men whose bodies acquire them. The skills are durable, but
they are not necessarily permanent. The process at work here is a biological process, as
it concerns the development of the body (including the brain), but it is not a genetic
process and, of course, the characteristics acquired by these sportsmen cannot be passed
on genetically.

The social effect of this biocultural process is that it is very easy to think
in naturalizing terms about the link between blackness and sporting ability. The idea of
race is reinforced by and reinforces the process by which the social realities of sporting
experience become ingrained into the body

Footnotes 11 & 12:

11 See Wade (2002: 118–19) for a discussion of the idea of ‘second nature’.
12 The brain also changes its structure according to environmental stimulus. Neurobi-
ologist Eric Kandel argues that social experience can alter gene expression and the
anatomical structure of the brain (Kandel, 1998).

Relevant citations:
Harrison, Louis (1995) ‘African Americans: Race as a Self-Schema Affecting Physical Activity Choices’, Quest 47: 7–18.
Kandel, Eric R. (1998) ‘A New Intellectual Framework for Psychiatry’, American Journal of Psychiatry 155(4): 457–69.
Wade, Peter (2002) Race, Nature and Culture: An Anthropological Perspective. Londonluto Press.

 

[sailordeac]

If middleclass Blacks and Whites have a better shot at making the NBA than underclass Blacks and Whites, then why isn't our recruiting better?

 

[RangersboysWFBB]

If middleclass Blacks and Whites have a better shot at making the NBA than underclass Blacks and Whites, then why isn't our recruiting better?

In General Ive been wanting to post a massive post about this. Honestly, in the black community (LIE- in the...lower middle, middle, upper middle, and upper class black community of duly educated black friends that I have...as a black man...community) we have talked ad naseum about the difference in culture when it comes to bball and fball and the ridiculous label the nba carries as "tatoo'ed thugs." In my opinion, and I stress it is "solely my opinion" (unlike Steven A Smith my license to speak for 6 million people of color has not arrived) I think a lot of issues of race and discord actually boil down to socio economic factors.

 

[RangersboysWFBB]

so I didn't really answer, or even address, your rhetorical question. the answer is we should be able to since duke, georgetown, and even harvard are more competitive than us. Leadership just sucks.