Tyler Hansbrough: The Revolution Will Be Televised

By: D.K. Wilson

I was going to stay out of the Tyler Hansbrough-Michael Beasley, ‘who should be player of the year,’ talk. Race talk was inevitable and I was trying to refrain from the conversation. I read all the primary articles - at least the ones most talked about; the words that were supposed to “hit the mark” and put Hansbrough into context vis-à-vis with black players, or the words that defended Hansbrough’s POY worthiness.

Then I watched the North Carolina-Clemson ACC Championship game. If you listened to the broadcast only you would have believed that Hansbrough played on a team of no-name stiffs and Clemson was just a sacrificial lamb served especially for the Chapel Hill faithful.

And Tyler Hansbrough was the game’s conquering gladiator.

Even after the oh-so typical Dick Vitale-led ESPN fawning during that game, I was going to refrain from discussing Hansbrough v. College Basketball.

But, as usual, an ESPN writer just could not stop himself from aiding and abetting in showing us his corporate entity’s true colors - E S-P-I-N - with a pro-Hansbrough commentary that just… made me shiver on so many levels that the call to interject some reality into this argument must be answered.

Let me begin with the god-forsaken and by now, so trite, complaint:

An Internet sports columnist, a good one, by the way, recently questioned the slobbering attention paid to Hansbrough. He wrote on his Web site: “America loves a tough white guy. The media loves Tough Whiteness, too. … And I’m trying to remember the last time a black player was called the face of college basketball.”

Then there is the newspaper sports columnist in Chicago, who had Hansbrough atop his “not-to-like list.” Asked the respected columnist: “When was the last time you heard a broadcaster talk about the work ethic and intensity of a black player?”

Comments like those are sure signs of “programming.” They are the type of weak - by today’s standards - analogies that allow for easy counter arguments. Forty years ago, 30 years ago, 20 years in the rearview even? Sure. I could understand if I read the black guy as athletic and the white guy as hard-working thingy in an old, dog-eared Sports Illustrated.

But today? Do you realize that the counter-argument to that particular black-white comparison has been pondered and rebuttals have been planned for at least 40 years?

So, whoever attempted to lamely refresh this as if they were truly going to cause a ruckus, basically toed the rubber, reached back and threw - dead meat to the plate. And every writer from here to Timbuktu is smacking that steak straight out the park - dead center field smacked out.

What’d Diddy call it (though, now he’s little more than a Play-Doh mogul)?

Oh yeah - “Bitch-Assness.”

Shit has shifted today, baby. The semantics of race have moved seven degrees east and into the 21st century already in planning for the Dog Days of the 22nd, while too many of today’s people are still seven degrees west.

And standstill is a very dangerous place to be.

This black-white comparison actually reaches back, philosophically, to Aristotle when he rambled about the bneatific phyicality of Nubians while averring that white people like him were built only to think.

The Big Aristotle - the Real Aristotle - was the first Larry Bird, was the first Bill Laimbeer, was the first Rick Barry, was the first Senator Dollar Dollar Bill Bradley, was the first Hondo Havlichek, was the first Bill Sharman, was the first Bob Pettit - was the first to think his way through the game.

And then turn around and run game on black people.

That shit is part and parcel of our bi-cultural missed exchange; the one where we can never get each other quite right, so we allow the “dominant” culture to continue to create the rules and change them while we are forever kept busy and caught unawares with last season’s playbook.

You see, Tyler Hansbrough is no different than 2006 POY, J.J. Redick - is he? Who was no different than 2005 POY, Andrew Bogut - was he? Who was no different than Dirk Nowitzki Who was no different than Steve Nash. Who was no different than ——– Steve Nash?

We are at the point now where a black athlete in a major sport cannot receive a major sports award or accolade without prolonged overtures about the virtues of some white athlete. The player of the year this year wasn’t about the player of the year; you know, the best player.

It was about the player who was most valuable to his team. That’s what Jay Bilas and Andy Katz said. And what everybody else on ESPN’s NCAA Hoops commentary honor roll said.

Seven degrees, people, seven degrees.

And then the conversation revolving around Tyler Hansbrough dealt with how he was responsible for allowing back up point guard, Quentin Thomas, “to have success.”

The responsibility did not lie with head coach Roy Williams - but with Tyler Hansbrough because Hansbrough was the only player able enough on the minstrel show that is the North Carolina Tar Heels to comprehend the gravity of the loss of starting PG, Ty Lawson.

See, while Danny Green was doing the Mantan, his buddies were nothing more than Sleep n’ Eats waitin’ fo’ Massa White Hansbrotherman to sho’ nuff guides dem to da promises lan.’

Jigabooin’ on the G-damn sidelines like some negroes straight out of the black face era.

And got us doin’ the Pavlovian herk an’ jerk chasin’ after the essence of Tyler Hansbrough like research monkeys after a 10 day-no-sleep-dope run where the only choices are a crack rock and silence or a slice of banana and Barry Manilow blasted into the cage at an ungodly volume.

As if the UNC center-forward is actually any more than a 21st century Darius Songaila; the Songaila of Wake Forest or the pros.

The conversation surrounding Tyler Hansbrough is seven degrees narrow. And it is like that for a reason. Open it up just a little more, say three degrees, to allow a glimpse at the North Carolina lineup and to include Michael Beasley.

Hansbrough has the luxury of playing on a Tar Heel team that includes four other McDonald’s All-America players (Hansbrough, Wayne Ellington, Bobby Frasor, Danny Green, Ty Lawson) and a 4th-team Parade All-America (Alex Stepheson).

That poor, poor point guard, Quentin Thomas, though not as celebrated as his peers, was no slouch at Oakland Tech in Oakland, California, a hot bed of top college basketball players. In his senior season at Tech, Thomas averaged 18 points, 8 rebounds, and 8 assists per game, was the team MVP and led his team to the state tournament quarterfinals. His sophomore and junior seasons, Thomas led Oakland Tech to the Cal State High School final game.

Is there another team in the nation with that much assembled talent?

Short answer? No.

Is Hansbrough’s job made infinitely easy by this crew of all-stars?

Again - short answer. Yes.

And so, with this cast of luminaries Tyler Hansbrough managed 16 double-doubles this season. Meantime in Manhattan, Kansas, POY runner-up Michael Beasley, a freshman, was surrounded by ———– Bill Walker. And with Walker as a sidekick, the freshman pulled off a whopping 25 double-doubles. Hansbrough averaged 23.0 ppg and 10.4 rpg. Beasley’s numbers were 26.5 and 12.4.

In a key game of the year at Kansas, Beasley incurred two fouls in a 32-second span, 2:06 into the game. The Wildcats forward still manage to score 14 of his team’s 29 first half points. Though K State lost by 14 points, 88-74, Beasley scored 39 points and pulled down 11 rebounds.

But ESPN’s Dana O’Neil said of the POY:

But the player of the year isn’t the guy with the most prodigious talent. It is the player who lives the cliche, who puts a team on his back and carries it to greatness. This year that player is Tyler Hansbrough.

A new criteria for the player of the year is that he must “live the cliche.”

So, playing on a team without a consistent back court, a first-year head coach, and being forced to play the season without the team’s returning leading scorer and team-steadying senior (David Hoskins), breaking the NCAA freshman record for double-doubles, scoring 30 points 12 times and 40 points three times during a 31-game season while playing center, power forward, small forward, and guard/forward and leading your team to 21 wins is not enough to secure the NCAA men’s basketball player of the year award?

That is not putting a team on your back and carrying them through the season?

Here are the other lies told by ESPINnners:

Andy Katz:

Tyler Hansbrough has been the most consistent star player on an elite team this season

.

Hubert Davis:

Tyler Hansbrough is the only player in the country who plays hard all the time, on both ends of the floor and on every possession in games, practice, shootarounds and pickup ball. Offensively, he has developed a turnaround jump shot and a face-up game that now allows him to knock down a 17-foot jumper on a consistent basis. He’s impossible to guard one-on-one, and it’s hard to double team him because he likes and seeks contact, which allows him to get to the free-throw line and get his opponents in foul trouble. He could have gone pro after his freshman season, and I want to applaud a kid that stayed in school to continue his development on and off the court. He is what college basketball is all about

.

Now the POY is based on hyperbole (also notice Davis pulls out another version of O’Neil’s “live the cliche” remark)?

He is what college basketball is all about.

Fran Fraschilla introduces new criteria for POY:

To me, a national player of the year candidate should be the main reason a team is an elite team

.

I remind you - not the best player of the year, but the player of the year must be what basketball is all about, must live the cliche, and should be the main reason a team is an elite team. Since the first two statements are devoid of meaning, Fraschilla’s “the main reason a team is an elite team” criteria can only be applied to Beasley.

Let’s simplify this even further. Switch the two players. Put Hansbrough with K State and put Beasley with UNC. Marinate on that for about… that long. Twenty-one wins for the Wildcats? Not on your life. Conversely, though, with Beasley, the Tar Heels might well be undefeated right now. As versatile as Beasley is, Maryland could not have successfully double-teamed him like they did in their upset of UNC. And no one on Duke’s team could have come close to guarding Beasley anywhere on the court: he might have hung 50 on the Blue Devils.

But wait. The angle’s closing again; it’s back to seven degrees. It is too late for complaints. Hansbrough, the white guy, has won the most prestigious individual award in college basketball. The reason why is because the revolution will be televised; it is happening right now. And the revolution has a white face that demands glory beyond that which is not white.

As we are told over and again, the media just serves us what we want. So, ask the fans around the world who calls black athletes “monkey” and “n*****” in their native tongues. Ask the fans who throw cups full of water and soda and beer, batteries and syringes, at black athletes. Ask the student-fans at universities who throw objects at the parents of black athletes.

Ask the fans what they want. They will tell you they want, more “Psycho-Ts” - and a few fast-runnin’, high-jumpin’ slam-dunkin’ Mantans and Sleep n’ Eats thrown in for good measure.

After all, the seven degree reason Tyler Hansbrough is the NCAA player of the year is because racism is a thing of the past.

Nothing to see here. Just move along. Just move along.

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D.K. Wilson is a freelance sports writer. He is better known on the internet as "DWil," and writes for Sports On My Mind.

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