They Aren't Good at Basketball Either

by Bill Simmons

We all know the claim: basketball is the black man's game. Larry Bird said it. Nike promotes it. The media repeat it. Whites and blacks both seem to believe it. We hear ad infinitum that Blacks are natural athletes, and nowhere do their superior speed and jumping outshine the other races more than in basketball.

But just as the claim of blacks having bigger penises than whites turned out, upon scientific review, to be a lie, so is the truth otherwise when it comes to the urban legend of black hoops superiority.

To put it baldly: blacks suck at basketball.

They are not only not better than Whites at basketball, they are worse by every quantitative and qualitative measure.

It makes sense, doesn't it? Just as blacks are inferior to whites at lawyering, doctoring, accounting, road-building, fast-food service and not-littering, they are inferior to them at basketball, too. Do you really think the media representation of the Cosby negro stops in between commercials?

The principal reason for blacks' inferiority, from which most of their courtly ineptitude springs, is their low mental ability. It is only their superior capacity for jumping -- and perhaps an edge in explosive quickness -- that allow them to stay on the same court with whites. Basketball, although

White-haters such as Bryant Gumbel appear not to realize it, is one of the few sports blacks even _appear_ to dominate. Almost all the rest, except football, are dominated by Whites. Whites who, after all, invented the sports. And the appearance of black domination of basketball is just that - appearance. It is not reality.

Blacks do everything wrong that can be done wrong on a basketball court, and they commit their errors far oftener than Whites. It it really a surprise? Or would the surprise be if the mental deficits everywhere else manifested in black behavior were miraculously to disappear when they hit the parquet? Don't think so? Or is it that, as I suspect, you've never seriously entertained the concept? I know the answer. And so do you, if you're straight with yourself.

If you don't believe that blacks suck at basketball, then you aren't paying attention. Niggers make technical mistakes nearly every possession. Just watch.

There are literally hundreds of mistakes blacks make time after time down the floor. But more telling is the fact that blacks never get better. In just the same way, Africa never develops. Same old cycle of murder, war and cannibalism for time immemorial. Basketball-playing blacks, as a whole, never improve.

They make the same mistake over and over and over. Whites, by contrast, make technical mistakes far less often than blacks. That is a fact clear to anyone who watches the game with unbiased eyes, and the sound off to keep out the oohing and aahing white commentators. You know, those borderline homosexual middle-aged White guys like Bill Raftery who will be fired if they depart from the Politically Correct orthodoxy? You think they're going to tell you the truth? Not on their paycheck, they won't.

Fact is, nearly every possession that lasts longer than a drive to the hoop (and plenty of those too) will be screwed up by a Black making an easily avoidable technical mistake resulting in either a turnover or a worse scoring opportunity than should have been had - or, conversely, allowing an easier scoring opportunity than should have been available. I will list the first 100 technical mistakes I observe, and I defy you to tell me that niggers don't make these at a per-capita rate MULTIPLE that of whites.

Mistakes Blacks Make Three to Five (or More) Times as Often as Whites:

1) Peeling off the guy with ball, allowing him to go straight to the hoop and score. Blacks will do this a minimum of 3-4 times a game. Whites virtually never do this. Like so many mistakes we'll list here, this springs from a complete inability to hold a thought, or keep an important fact in mind, for more than five seconds. Blacks simply can't think. Can't remember. Can't learn. That's why they make the same mistakes over and over. This is why Africa never developed - low IQ. A genetic incapacity that prevents failure patterns from being recognized, then corrected. Time after time a point guard drives right up the court and either his own black never picks him up, or, a black sees him coming, guards him for a few feet, then assumes someone else will get him and peels off to guard his own man. The point guard drives in for a layup. Happens every single game. You simply cannot teach a black to think. You can scream at him for three minutes of a timeout, but the sensation will leave his head within seconds of the klaxon. They just aren't built to think. This is why teams with whites, the Drakes, Butlers and Gonzagas, are always the "surprise" teams, and the teams that get closer to the finals. One white, if he controls the ball, is often enough to overcome four other typical black screwups - just as we see on the battlefield. Whites can keep their cool, and have a carryover effect on the blacks on their team. Steve Nash in the pros is the perfect example. Without him, the giant black sequoias are discombobulated and useless.

2) Blacks pass imprecisely. Throwing the ball in the general direction is all blacks do, 90% of the time. Whites are smart enough to grasp that the idea is not just to get the ball to the player, but to get it to him in the position from which he has the most options, or is best suited to pass/score, whatever the case may be. Whites a far higher percentage of the time put the pass recipient in position to do the most damage. They don't make him reach. They lead him naturally into a shooting motion, or into, if he's a big man, a position from which he can pivot around the defender. Blacks? They just aren't able to be precise about anything, it seems. The general direction is good enough. That's why they turn the ball over so many times. Many, many times a black will pass to a guy open for a three. But he'll pass to the wrong spot, making the shooter reach or even move his feet. The wastes part-seconds, and often the chance to shoot is entirely gone, or the rhythm is lost, which amounts to the same thing. A shot opportunity is missed, or a worse shot is taken, or a less confident shot, or a rushed shot. These are small things that add up to big things. Blacks never sweat the small things because you can't sweat what you're never even conscious of.

3) Blacks pay no attention to clock; they seem genetically incapable of playing rationally. Here's an example that happened as I was writing this. 2:40 left in game, leading team rebounds under own basket. Black races up court and, with no clear path to basket, makes insane, low-percentage pass that bounces off his guy and the defender out of bounds. It's not that whites never do this - although they very seldom do. It's not that blacks always do this, they don't. It's that they do this a crazy-high percentage of the time. They just cannot be taught to master themselves. They get wild hairs up their asses about every ten seconds.

4) Blacks give up easily. This is evident in many ways, but here we are concerned about the crucial seconds after a missed shot. Many, many times the outcome of the next possession depends on whether the defender, seeing he has failed to get the rebound, actively defends the guy who did come away with it. Often a failure to defend at this precise point, for, say, three seconds, allows the rebounder to make a fast break. Whereas if the defender waves his hands for just a couple seconds, before retreating back to his basket, it will be enough to slow the offense possession in the back court, thereby preventing the easy outlet pass leading to successful fast break.

5) Blacks love to hang on the rim, play the monkey, then wander around with aggrieved expression when the ref calls T.

6) Blacks cannot grasp the concept of charging - either way. Blacks believe, simultaneously: a) you can run through anyone without fouling, and b) if you step in front of anyone, you should draw a foul. The concept behind the rule is simply too abstruse for negroes to conceive an understanding of it. How many times a game do you see a black run three steps before slamming into a stationary defender? It is a frequent occurrence, and often enough, blacks will commit this foul off a three-on-one break when all the dribbler has to do is dish to a teammate in the wings.

7) Blacks are unable to guard without downswiping hands. Blacks cannot grasp that what draws the call is usually a hack, even if the hack is not truly a foul.

8) Blacks foul with less than five seconds on the shot clock. What seems to be the case with blacks is that they are incapable of keeping two things in mind at once. Their processor, it appears, taps out at one, and is none to certain of handling that. But you throw a stay-out-of-the-endzone in with a down-the-punt, and 99.9% of the time, you can guarantee that only one of the two will be accomplished. So it is on the court. The black guards the guy, but his overworked brain can't simultaneously encompass the idea of not fouling as the shot clock expires. Too much to handle for so slight an IQ. (And let's pause to point out here that any of you who think IQ isn't real are living in the dark ages. Black IQ in America is 85, and about 60 in Africa. 85 is a full standard deviation below the White IQ of 100, and 60 is below the level at which one is considered retarded.)

9) Backing up to shoot a 3 and not getting both feet behind line. Paying attention to details - it's not a black thang.

10) Blacks tend to shoot over or by the hoop a surprising percentage of the time when they are close.

11) Blacks fail to finish. They burst by, but far too often they fail to score.

12) Blacks shoot too hard near the hoop.

13) Moving faster at basket, rather than slower. Really, 10-13 are more or less related. They come down to blacks being unable to understand, hence play, the percentages. Whites instinctively do the correct thing, which is to move SLOWER as you approach the basket, and to shoot more softly. The harder the shot, the likelier and faster it is likely to go back the other way. The softer and slower the shot, the likelier it is to hang on the rim, give the attackers time to adjust their position for offense or defense if it comes off, and the better it is for the offensive team. Blacks will drive right by everybody and throw the ball off the hoop much harder than is necessary. Thereby negating their speed advantage and turning a potential offensive threat into a defensive liability. Just watch and you will see variations of this a dozen times a game. It is obvious that on cannot act on what one does not understand, and it is obvious that blacks do not grasp the concept of playing slow and soft at the offensive rim, even though this is correct percentage play. Screaming, slamming and racing around like headless chickens is the way blacks prefer to play, and if you don't realize this, it's only because you've never played with them. Blacks are basically only interested in scoring. They care for defense nothing at all unless they can make a spectacular block. A few geniuses can sort of coach some of these tendencies out of them, but the underlying proclivity never goes away.

14) Not paying attention to clock. How many times does a black look up startled that the clock is running out? This is not just inattention, it's also partly a lack of knowing the rules. White commentators fawn over any black who makes an obviously indicated play, like calling a timeout before he can be tied up. As though doing the ordinary is grounds for special merit.

15) Blacks love to lie on the court and pretend to be injured, especially after they miss a shot. Whites virtually never do this. You'll see a black do this at least once a game. Are blacks essentially child-minded drama queens? The evidence says they are. Blacks are thought and described as tough; Whites actually are.

16) Blacks will bitch at ref rather than playing defense, allowing their man to go by for score. The other factor, besides low IQ, is extreme pride. Of couse, what is normal to Whites - self-control and humility, should not be thought normal to blacks. After all, they're a different species. It is unreasonable to hold them to White standards when they aren't White. Blacks are very much into dominance and submission, and this organizing principle in their lives, which results in near continual challenge-response activity well known to readers cannot entirely be concealed on the court, even when it's in their interest to do so. Blacks often prefer to allow their man to score, thereby damaging their team, than to appear punked by a ref call. So they put on the show we're all too familiar with.

17) Blacks run back under basket dont even look for guy with ball. So many times, all you have to do against a black team is run up the court as fast as the defenders, who never seem to recognize that, being on defense, they need to be quicker and more alert than the offense, or it will simply move right through them before they turn around. Or they'll race back and stand under basket while ball-handler pulls up for his seventh three of the game.

18) Blacks always give up shooting space to the ONE GUY who can hit the three. Yet another manifestation of blacks' low IQ and inability to identify patterns. Blacks simply can't get into their head that they're going to be burned by the same shooter the same way until they cover him. Whites are far quicker to identify and respond to threats because they have greater capacity for thought.

19) Blacks jump wildly at 3-point shooters. Anyone playing basketball for any amount of time recognizes that the most efficient defense requires movement only when necessary - that is, only when the other player has committed to moving or shooting. Blacks cannot understand this. They lack the self-control to refrain from excessive jumping, which not only depletes their energy, but leaves them open to being jumped into (drawing a foul) or easily gone around for open shots while they are in the air. I'm sure the coaches try to teach this out of them, but it clear that in this regard, most blacks simply cannot be reached. They will always leap 18 feet in the air at a head fake, whereas Whites very rarely do this. Because they know that when they leave their feet, the percentages are not on their side.

20) Fouling someone immediately after having ball stolen or blocked due to ego not being able to take humiliation. It's not just low IQ but excessive self-esteem that plauges the black character, and this is evident on the court. Blacks simply cannot control themselves as Whites do, nor can they puzzle out the highest-percentage play in a given situation, nor have they, if the coach tells them what to do, the self-control to execute the proper action.

21) Stepping on the baseline. Blacks are simply not mentally charged enough to keep two things in mind at once. They can try to score. Or they can avoid stepping on the baseline. They cannot do both. Any more than they can, in football, down a ball near the goal line without stepping in the end zone.

All these black deficiencies are well known to coaches. However, coaches are prevented by affirmative action from acting on them by putting together majority-white teams. Just as there's a great clamor to get more minority coaches into the ranks, there would be a tremendous hue and cry if a popular white coach attempted to draw the majority of his players from the majority population. The courts and media wouldn't stand for it.

Taking an objective view of things, the optimal number of black players on the court is one. One can supply some of the quickness and hops that are harder to find among Whites, but one black cannot, by himself, disrupt the flow the of the game and introduce the low-percentage, ego-driven play for which blacks are famous. The top college coach Mike Krzyzewski is well aware of these facts, and that is why so many Duke players are white. And why Duke has been so successful. It is also why the media love to hate on Duke. Don't be fooled by Dickie V and his love of Duke. Just like professional wrestling, you always need a bad guy to stir up the audience. Duke, with its white majority, fills that role.

It would be very interesting to see professional basketball segregaged by race, with a 'super bowl' for the winners of each league. What you would find is that the white team would win almost every single year. Of course it will never happen, as our society is built on the lie that race doesn't matter, and thus the races must freely mix at gunpoint... But it would be interesting.

So watch ESPN games all day long, but never for a minute forget that mass sports is just another form of political indoctrination, and, the simple fact of the matter is that blacks aren't good at basketball either.