Kyle McAlarney: Just Another Case of Keeping the White Man Down; FBS Short: More ESPN Racial Shenanigans with Charlie Strong

By: dwil

Kyle McAlarney thinks he can ball with the big boys.

Kyle McAlarney thinks he can ball with the big boys.

He is a 5′11 point guard. His hops aren’t great but he can shoot the three. He plays defense adequately but not at a consistently high level. In college he was busted for marijuana and was removed from his team. Then his mother implied race had something had something to his suspension.

Now, he is playing the race card all by himself:

I think if you called somebody up who’d never seen me play and gave them my stat sheet and said I was a point guard and everything I think he would sign me right away if he didn’t know my color.

On ESPN.360 an Outside the Lines segment revolving around Staten Island’s Kyle McAlarney is aiding the former Irish player in making the claim that reverse racism is in the mix in the NBA. To reinforce McAlarney’s point the network trotted out a set of statistics 71.8% of NBA players are Black, 18.3% are European, while 9.9% are “White Americans.”

Wait right there. You mean, Steve Nash, dirk Nowitzki, Manu Ginobili, Darko Milicic, Peja Stojacavic, Eduardo Najara, Danilo Gallinari, Primoz Brezec, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Marco Bellinelli, Jose Calderon, and Ra-sho Nes-ter-o-vic don’t count as White because they weren’t born in America?

We’re breaking it down to White Americans? That there hasn’t been a White American All-Star since Brad Miller in 2004 (but don’t fans vote in the All-Star players); that since John Stockton in 1997 there hasn’t been a White American starter in the All-Star game is suddenly a big deal because ————— Kyle McAlarney says so?

When asked Jerry West couldn’t think of the best White American player in the NBA. ESPN special host Mark Schwartz talked of West’s scoring average back over three decades ago and intones solemnly:

Now, West can’t name a single White American player he’d pay to see. He can’t recall many he drafted during his time with the Lakers or later the Memphis Grizzlies.

Schwartz says from 2005-09 190 Black players were drafted 80 International players were drafted and only 25 White American players were drafted. West also said that when he was with the Lakers he received letters saying he was a racist because he didn’t draft Black players to play for the Lakers.

What these not-so-well-meaning letter writers – almost all of whom were, assuredly, White – forgot is that West is White and these Black players play for one of 31 White owners in the NBA, Jerry Buss.

Schwartz asked former NBA White American point guard Mark Price why there aren’t more White American players in the NBA, Price chuckle loudly and said:

I guess they aren’t good enough to get drafted. You know I don’t know. I just think athleticism, as a whole is important at the NBA level probably more so than any other level that the game is played. And I think it’s simply because the shot clock is only 24 seconds and the game is moving faster.

McAlarney, while claiming some sort of rush Limbaugh-like reverse racism, admits one important reality ————- he is not good enough to play at the NBA level:

Having that extra gear that’s just faster than everyone else on the court – I don’t have that yet. I don’t necessarily agree that I’m too slow. I’m not slow at all I just think that’s the perception, that’s the label I’ve been given. Scouts and coaches that aren’t willing to take a chance on a White player who they feel their potential athletically cause he’s White. Who can he guard he’s too slow, can he jump, can he keep pace with the game.

LA Clippers head coach and general manager Mike Dunleavy, who invited McAlarney to play on the Clippers Summer League team, has a different opinion of the point guard’s game:

I’m not sure that’ they’re wrong. I mean, show me that type of player that has proved them wrong?

Schwartz:

You mean a small White American player?

Yeah.

Dunleavy expounded specifically about McAlarney’s game:

[With McAlarney] You like that threat [of three-point shooting], that ability. He doesn’t have great size. He doesn’t have great athleticism. It made it hard for him to guard people and get around people [on the offensive end of the court]. It all comes down to, again, one key point, who can he guard?

Former  GM Wayne Embry (four decades) concurs with Dunleavy:

We look for athleticism that’s a priority in today’s NBA.

When asked by Schwartz if White American players are considered suspect defensively, West rolled his eyes and replied:

Well, I would say that’s a stigma you have to overcome.

The All-Defensive teams from 1997-98 to 2008-09 bear out Dunleavy’s, West’s, and Embry’s concerns. Of the 123 players selected to the All-Defensive team Kirk Hinrich is the only White American who has been selected. But Schwartz said the look at the All-Defensive teams “illustrates West’s point.” The implication by Schwartz is that there were White American All-Defensive team worthy players who were not chosen, rather than the fact that they were not of the caliber to achieve that award.

The “point” is Schwartz’s and ESPN’s and not West’s at all.

ESPN’s attempt to create racism where there is none knows no bounds. Embry said the zone defense was implemented by the NBA in 2001 was to “address the perception that many White American players are poor defenders.”

This is Embry’s quote:

That’s why we are allowed to play zone defense. To help compensate for the player that may be a little bit deficient with speed and quickness, the ability to guard someone.

Though NBA Executive VP of Basketball Operations Stu Jackson gave a statement refuting Embry’s assertion, the executive for the Toronto Raptors’ statement stands. And yet, it is Embry who is shortsighted in his thinking. The zone defense was the long-preferred defense in European League basketball. And if there were players the zone aids, it is the European player who has little experience guarding opposing players man-to-man for extended periods in a game.

Schwartz asked West:

Do you think the NBA should have no thought or interest in what the number of White American players there is?

To which the Hall-of -Famer replied:

Well, we have a lot White players in our league, they happen not to be from our country.

ESPN countered with an argument that not only shot their premise in the foot, it stank of ———– racism. From the 1980-81 season to now the percentage of Black American basketball players has barely wavered. In that season 30 years go 74% of the NBA players were Black, 24.3% were White, and 1.6% were European. In 1990-91, 22.6% were White Americans and 6.2% were European; in the 2000-01 season 14.3% were White Americans, 10.6% European. Again, today 9.9% are White Americans and 18.3% are Europeans.

This means ESPN’s beef is not with Black American NBA players, but European players ———- almost all of whom appear White. But this little tidbit, which is actually the heart of the issue, went unsaid and unaddressed.

Meantime Schwartz described McAlarney, in the end of the OTL segment thusly:

Kyle McAlarney’s focus remains the same. Now, toiling in the NBA Developmental League for the Ft. Wayne Mad Ants he is trying to defy demographics, to make it to the NBA – and to keep a vanishing breed from disappearing altogether.

McAlarney ended by saying:

I’m fightin’ a pretty big monster [reverse racism] right here. I’m tryin’ to break in and tryin’ to break the mold. I’m tryin’ to pave a way not only for myself but for guys like me who are younger than me who wanna identify with someone at that level. There’s very few White Americans that you can do that with in today’s game.

Then, to top it all off, ESPN.360 halftime host, Paul Severino,  had the audacity to say this of the most recent White American NBA draftee:

If NBA teams are grading players on defense no one was more of a monster on that side of the floor than Tyler Hansbrough, the first White American player drafted this past spring – 13th overall to the Indiana Pacers. (emphasis Severino’s)

Vanishing breed? Fighting a pretty big monster? trying to pave the way for guys who want to identify with someone at that level? There was no more of a defensive monster in the NCAA last season that Tyler Hansbrough who sunk to number 13 in the draft, rather than be picked in the top five, since defense is primary to picking NBA players?

This OTL segment was right out of the Limbaugh playbook. I can hear the Big Pharmaceutical telling his racist audience that this is what America has come to. He would say we now live in a country where White men are afraid of protests from Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson if they draft more deserving White American NCAA basketball players who get great grades and are from solid backgrounds, and who would proudly represent the League instead of cornrow-having baggy, shorts wearing, unintelligent African Americans, who abused their college scholarships and who, just like President Obama, hate White people, and therefore do not have the proper respect for the White fans who pay their salaries or the White owners who drafted them and sign their checks.

Limbaugh would urge his listeners to do what “the Blacks” do and boycott NBA games until the league’s racial makeup reflects that of White and African Americans in the United States, that is, 13% of all NBA players should be Black.

Some producer thought the subject of reverse racism in the NBA was a viable issue. Mark Schwartz thought enough of the producer’s outrageously racist claims enough to take up the charge and voice this stupidity. They found a willing subject in Kyle McAlarney, a White Staten Island, New York basketball player who, just because he can shoot and wants to play, thinks he can play in the NBA; who thinks those high-jumping, fast running niggers are keeping him out of the game and are keeping him from being a beacon for other undersized, slow, no jumping White boys who can shoot up a storm, but can do little else on a basketball court. And Paul Severino felt strongly enough about the piece to lie about the defensive prowess of the only White NCAA player any White person talked about last season – Tyler Hansbrough.

In fact, Hansbrough was not in the top 100 in blocked shots, not in the top 100 in steals, not in the top 100 in rebounds, all key defensive statistical indicators.

In fact, as soon as North Carolina point guard Ty Lawson regained his health, the Tar Heels stopped playing through Hansbrough at all. As a result, the team flourished and ultimately won the National Championship.

But never let the truth get in the way of a good reverse racism argument – there are so few corners of society where facts can be obfuscated and the truth be recontextualized so that a hairs-width tenuous argument can be made for what is one of the few complete fallacies in American society.

This season, the Blackest of all professional sports has been utterly church-like in its quiet. There are no controversies, no fights to replay every 10 minutes, no players striking officials, coaches or fans. There have been no marijuana busts, no DUIs at 3:30 a.m. the morning of a game.

The only major case of infidelity is on the PGA Tour thanks to that now infamous Cablinasian whose myriad sexual trysts now dominate the national headlines.

So, in this season of extreme quiet ESPN, the Big Subliminal, felt it necessary to drum up some good old racial hatred by dragging out poor some poor, little Irish kid with a big NBA dream, but who is without the skills to attain it. They took the kid and manipulated his worth, twisted the words of some of the fairest men in the history of the league, editorialized and confabulated facts to the point they became the stuff of fairy tales – and pissed off a whole bunch of White Americans – especially all the ones with hoop dreams, even if they don’t have hoop game.

—————————————-

And while we’re talking about ESPN and race, just this morning, that’s right Wednesday at 6:26 a.m. CST I heard this ESPN news brief:

Louisville has its next man. After striking out with offensive whiz Steve Kragthorpe the last few years, the Cardinals will go with the it defensive man of the moment, Florida defensive coordinator Charlie Strong. Should become official today. Gators D top 20 last season, top five this year. (emphasis mine)

Unbelievable. So, Kragthorpe, and every other White coordinator I have ever heard ESPN announce for a head coach position, is an offensive whiz, Charlie Strong – black guy – is but the “it defensive man of the moment.” Not, man behind the Super Bowl winning New England Patriots offense, as Charlie Weis was called, or “offensive whiz” as failed head coach Kragthorpe was called – the guy got run out of Louisville, but he is still called an offensive whiz! – “but it defensive man of the moment.” The it defensive man of the moment means, today Strong is hot but tomorrow someone else will be hot.

Strong’s acumen for coordinating defenses is temporary; he is no “wizard,” he is not “the man who presided over the Florida Gators national championship defense,” or, “the man whose defenses got the ball back for Heisman Trophy winner, Tim Tebow.” Charlie Strong is solely today’s hot defensive coordinator.

Hell, later today Will Muschamp can be mentioned as  a “defensive wizard,” defensive genius behind Texas’ drive to the National Championship game.”

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2 Comments

  1. Regardless of McAlarney, there is a disturbing trend that is pretty obvious the source when you look at it. At my alma mater in 1998 UK won the championship with two or three white guys leading the charge, one of them a high jumper: Shepard who was as athletic as they come. After Tubby began fishing for McDonald’s stars, post Kobe-NBA days, the number of white starters has pretty much dissapeared. Not athletic enough? Rex Chapman was Eddie Sutton’s pivotal rebuilding player, and he was tiny, too.
    Bottom line is that the McDonald’s and others’ rating systms is based on the “Trinity” and marketability, and the Jordan image. The top college programs all go for the top HS prospects, hoping to get them before they dive into the NBA - why I don’t know since it’s better to have them for years - and mostly they are black… bottom line. If you don’t play for a top tier college program, what’s your chance of gettign into the NBA? Low. That’s how it’s done. HS ratings–>NBAesque college programs–>small amounts of white starters in college–>few NBA stars.
    It’s not athleticism… it’s opportunity to play as a prospect.
    As for Mac attack… no he does not make the grade.
    But it’s about tiem the NBA has a B-league and markets them… it’d make sense.

    Comment by Angel RC on December 23, 2009

  2. I dissagree with your logic.

    I go to UK and I work with the sports department for the kernel. I dont think anyone here would say Tubby Smith sought out 1 and done prospects. On the contrary he allways got weak 4 star, 4 year players. Lest we forget why he is no longer with us…

    I dont disagree with you that McDonalds all americans are often selected with politics as opposed to actuall abillity. But I do not think its based of some Jordan Marketing Scheme, for there are no shortage of White McDonalds All americanns especially relative to the NBA nba white to black player percentages. You might not notice them in college because they all go to the same places. (Duke, Wisconsin, north carolna, syracuse).

    I do agree that the NBA tends to shy away from american white players but I think it is more due to nba preferences more than the college system.

    Comment by ukwildcat on January 13, 2010

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