Help Wanted in the NBA…only one ethnic group wants to help

Recently, at a wedding, I ran into an FBF (Facebook Friend) which is very different from a BFF (Best Friend Forever). We were catching up, and he started asking me questions about 6ixthman and somehow we drifted onto the topic of Blacks in the NBA and the fact that African American players are the overwhelming majority in that sport. Specifically, blacks make up about 76% of the world’s most renowned professional basketball organization. What was funny is that my friend then mentioned genetics as a factor and I thought, then that must be why blacks don’t play hockey (lol).  We’re genetically predisposed to indoor sports. I have an idea…but I borrowed it.

I did a bit of research a couple of summers ago that arrived to a “common sense” type of conclusion about this statistic. Blacks flood the applicant pool. I’ve had student-athletes from other countries ask me if blacks have an extra tendon near their ankles and in their calves. They said they had been taught this in school. Is there a chuckle/smirk emoticon? For a sport to be so grossly overrepresented by one ethnicity in light of the world’s diversity, it must mean that for every 10 players interested in a career in the NBA, perhaps better than 8 of them are African-American. Blacks only constitute 12-14% of the United States population I believe. Feel free to correct. So why this homogeneity in a sport invented by a white person?

See that’s what I want to research man. There are fascinating sociological factors that must contribute to what my friends in high school called the Negro Basketball Association. From failing freshmen to Phi Beta Kappa caliber black males, it seemed like we all grew up aspiring and perhaps even believing that with the right regimen, we could join the ranks of hardwood greats, not to mention the Emerald City of cash beyond the yellow brick road leading from the inner-city. The most peculiar piece, however, on this subject for now is that when I was a 3.5 to 4.0 student, I and my friends were willing to gamble, mortgage everything for NBA stardom. People poorer than me believed that they were the 1 in 3400 that will make it (.03%). I thought I was the one and so did my neighbor and hundreds of thousands in the greater Los Angeles region. And that’s just LA. It seems so counter intuitive to gamble all when you’re barely surviving but there’s something to be said for desperation. I feel a second post coming on.