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Official 2020 NBA Offseason - First Half Season Schedule Out

Official 2019-20 NBA Season: Collins tests positive for HGH - Out 25 games

TownieDeac said:
Why who cares?
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Because that’s a very large population of US boys who aren’t developing into elite basketball players.
 
The NBA wants to draw the top talent from all over the globe and they're not getting the historical pool of talent at home. It's not a problem for women. There are plenty of elite US white women basketball players.
 
It is an issue similar to what baseball is facing with the lack of African American players. At the beginning of this past season, there were three (3) total African Americans on NL West rosters, and 11 MLB teams did not have one single African American player. I guess maybe it evens out across the two sports, but I think it does impact the current marketability of both sports to the entire country. From a visual standpoint both sports "look" very integrated, but when you remove the foreign component the American delegations in each sport are extremely skewed along racial lines.
 
Think the comparison to African-American participation to baseball is apropos. Generalizing is always dangerous, but when kids are young and picking sports to play, in the US, basketball is perceived more as a black sport, while baseball, soccer and niche sports like tennis and lacrosse are perceived as white sports, which has some impact where athletes focus their attention when they specialize. Could be wrong, but in Europe don't think there is as much of a racial association with particular sports.
 
Section2mankini said:
Random thought. There's not a single white American NBA player in the top 50. All of the top white players are European. Who's the best American? Maybe Redick? Is he even top 100?
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Who cares? If there were white guys who are good enough they'd be there.
 
Pilchard said:
Think the comparison to African-American participation to baseball is apropos. Generalizing is always dangerous, but when kids are young and picking sports to play, in the US, basketball is perceived more as a black sport, while baseball, soccer and niche sports like tennis and lacrosse are perceived as white sports, which has some impact where athletes focus their attention when they specialize. Could be wrong, but in Europe don't think there is as much of a racial association with particular sports.
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Basketball costs less than baseball to play. Further, inner cities don't often have the space for fields. On top of that, there are virtually no full scholarships for baseball. The scholarships that do exist are most often chopped among a number of players. In baseball, you don't make much if you aren't in the top few rounds of the draft. Plus, even the top players have to spend years in the minors making subsistence money.

MLB has to spend much more than they are to reach out to black kids and families.
 
still wish kyler had picked baseball over football
 
RJKarl said:
Who cares? If there were white guys who are good enough they'd be there.
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On its face, you are correct. But deeper, it is because the white kids aren't continuing to play basketball and go play other sports. And the NBA's ultimate product suffers if it doesn't ultimately end up with the best players in the world, whether they are currently playing basketball or not. As an example, the NBA had a vested interest in Sage Surratt continuing to play basketball, or at a minimum playing both football and basketball, to see if he would get good enough to be an NBA star. When a kid stops playing in high school or earlier to go play another sport and doesn't realize his potential in basketball, the NBA is the ultimate loser.
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
On its face, you are correct. But deeper, it is because the white kids aren't continuing to play basketball and go play other sports. And the NBA's ultimate product suffers if it doesn't ultimately end up with the best players in the world, whether they are currently playing basketball or not. As an example, the NBA had a vested interest in Sage Surratt continuing to play basketball, or at a minimum playing both football and basketball, to see if he would get good enough to be an NBA star. When a kid stops playing in high school or earlier to go play another sport and doesn't realize his potential in basketball, the NBA is the ultimate loser.
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If a white kid is good enough, he'll play. You make more money and sooner in bball than any other sport.

The NBA's product doesn't suffer at all because there aren't as many white kids from the US.
 
RJKarl said:
If a white kid is good enough, he'll play. You make more money and sooner in bball than any other sport.

The NBA's product doesn't suffer at all because there aren't as many white kids from the US.
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The kid who stops playing basketball in 5th or 8th grade or even high school isn't thinking about money when he does it. He is thinking about how he can spend his time playing sports with his friends and having fun doing it. That can be well before he hits puberty and has growth spurts and who the hell knows what kind of player he would have become.

And you don't think the NBA's marketing partners would be salivating over a US-born Doncic?? I don't think I've ever seen him in a commercial for anything. If he was from California had gone to Duke or Kentucky dude would be all over your TV.
 
Every show company is looking for the next great, white bball player and are scouting them in fifth grade. If you don't think Nike, UA, adidas aren't talking with families of white kids to play for their AAU teams, you don't understand the market.

The sport that loses white American the most is soccer. That's the sport white American kids leave in droves.
 
White kids leave basketball before AAU, or after playing in a few AAU tournaments. It is the reason they leave, not the reason they stay. A lot of white parents don't want to spend their weekends hanging around AAU tournaments, not exactly their scene.

It is very similar to black kids leaving before or shortly after travel baseball. So many kids play travel ball that, given the money and time spent on it, the parents of the travel kids aren't going to also put the kids back in Little League to play with the kids picking daisies in the outfield. So you get a huge gap in the talent between travel and rec. You've not going to get good in rec playing against pitchers bouncing the ball to the plate and batters who can't hit. And as you mention the travel aspect can get pretty expensive, so the travel tournaments weed out a lot of players simply by cost.
 
how many guys have been fired fewer than 25 games into the season twice?
 
The Knicks offer the gig to a pretzel vendor stationed in front of MSG. He turner them down.
 
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