@Bobbys_pregame
I am merely asking a question about the elephant in the room, Bobby fuckface, not condoning it. If race affects viewership and interest level why wouldn’t it affect the gambler’s who watch this shit? The very people who root for these teams and players also bet on them, or don’t you know?!
An article from 2020, written by a black professor:
The NBA has found its ‘Great White Hope’ — but it’s 6 months too late
During an ESPN interview in 2004, interviewer Jim Gray asked Larry Bird, arguably the best White player in NBA history, if the league needed more White players.
“I think it’s good for a fan base because, as we all know, the majority of the fans are White America. And if you just had a couple of White guys in there, you might get them a little excited. But it is a Black man’s game, and it will be forever,” he replied.
Bird wasn’t saying anything that 99% of NBA ownership and then NBA commissioner David Stern hadn’t been saying under their breath for years. The National Basketball Association has spent 30 years looking for its Great White Hope. A White player with that rare combination of championship mettle, ESPN highlight level play and off-court charisma, that will supposedly lure White fans back to a league that is dominated by Black players and culture.
The renaissance of the NBA in the 80s was due to the racial proxy battle between charming, good looking and unmistakably Black Magic Johnson of the glitzy Showtime Los Angeles Lakers vs. the lanky, tousled hair, Indiana born White Larry Birdof the blue-collar Boston Celtics. The thinly veiled symbolism of these two icons battling it out on the court was lost on nobody. Black folks rode with the Lakers religiously, and Boston Sports radio in the ’80s during NBA season was indistinguishable from a Trump rally today.
However, after a couple of championships, when Larry Bird finally hung up his basketball shoes after the 1992 season it would be nearly 30 years before the NBA had another, let alone several, legitimate White superstars.
Why does it matter if the NBA has White Superstars? It shouldn’t, but like everything else in America the White man’s ice water is colder, and the almost exclusively White NBA team owners, and majority-White male-dominated sports commentariat, believes that the league’s Blackness is a turnoff to White fans and their money. This isn’t cynical speculation.
Former Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levinson in 2012 emailed team executives to complain that the Hawks’ financial struggles were due to Black cheerleaders, too many Black folks on the Kiss-Cam, and hip-hop music scaring White fans away from games. It apparently never occurred to him that putting a lousy team on the court might’ve played a role too. Even White basketball fans who are supposedly steeped in Black hip-hop culture are still desperate for a White Avatar on the court.
You can read the rest here, or you can choose to remain ignorant idiots.
https://news.yahoo.com/nba-found-great-white-hope-174242509.html