all-time all-white team

NBA rosters nowadays hold fifteen players, twelve of which can suit up for a game. If I were to fill out a roster with the best white NBA players of all time, here’s how I’d do it. Since this is fantasy, I permit myself to choose players at their peak performance.

Point guard—John Stockton
Subs: Steve (not John) Nash, Mark Price

Shooting guard—Jerry West
Subs: Pete Maravich, Christ Mullin

Small forward—Larry Bird
Subs: Rick Barry, John Havlicek

Power forward—Dirk Nowitzki
Subs: Kevin McHale, Jack Sikma

Center—Bill Walton
Subs: Dave Cowens, Bob Pettit

A few words about these players. Neither Larry nor Jerry need any explanation or rationale. There’s not a team in the history of the NBA that Larry Bird wouldn’t be a starter, and the same holds true for West. Stockton is the all-time leading assist guy. He was pretty good. Nowitzki. Well, he’s fine I guess. And I love Bill Walton.

A couple of thoughts. My assumption is that great players from older eras would be great—or at least very good—in the contemporary era. This is impossible to prove, of course, but it’s not a stretch to imagine. Take Petitt. Petitt performed admirably in an era that included Oscar Robertson, Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell. Slouches none. Chamberlain played competitively with Kareem, and Kareem’s career overlapped with Hakeem Olajuwon, who won the MVP in Shaq’s second year in the NBA. No recent generation of incoming players has embarrassed the established era.

My sense is that on balance the players are a bit better than they once were—they’re certainly better athletes. They arguably play better defense and are better shooters as well. But the point is that, contrary to what young people believe, basketball was not invented, and perfected, in the past few years.

I haven’t seen a million NBA games live, but once upon a time I saw a fair number. I’ve seen Elvin Hayes, Artis Gilmore, Pete Maravich, Bill Walton, Moses Malone, Dr. J., Magic Johnson (my all-time favorite player), Phil Ford, Adrian Dantley and bunch of other guys play live. The best performance of the bunch by far was Larry Bird. Larry had come off a game in which his opponents had snapped his long streak of double-digit scoring. I remember two things about the game. First, the dude was ubiquitous man. Every time there was a loose ball, he got it, and he always seemed to be in the thick of the action. Second, the range on the guy’s shot seemed to have no limit. He routinely took shots three or four feet from behind the three-point line, and the ball was in the air so long you could go out and purchase a coke and come back just as it was swishing the net. Our poor hapless Kings had no idea how to contain the guy. If they stepped out at that range, he’d beat you inside.

One of the other outstanding performances I saw live was by Bill Walton, who didn’t score much yet somehow seemed to dictate the flow and feel of the game through his defense and fabulous passing.

How would this all-white perform today? I think it would be competitive—very competitive—against any team in the NBA today. But maybe that’s not saying much since no team in the NBA is filled with all-time greats. The problem wouldn’t be with the starters—these white starters would be perfectly competitive with the best players of any era--but the problem would begin with substitutions. It would be unquestionably crushed by a comparable list of all-time all-African-American roster, which might look like this:

Point guard—Magic Johnson

Shooting guard—Michael Jordan

Small forward—Elgin Baylor

Power forward—Karl Malone

Center—Wilt Chamberlain

Now consider who didn’t make the list: Kobe. Bill Russell. Shaq. Barkley. Dr. J.Elvin Hayes. The Big O. Tim Duncan. The Admiral. Kareem. Kevin Garnett. LeBron. Isaiah. The Iceman. Iverson. Earl the Pearl. Moses Malone. Patrick Ewing.

You could go 4th string and still have a ridiculously good team—competitive with the all-white 1st team.

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What do the photos have to do with the commentary? Only this:

Whiteness.

Big-time profound whiteness.

I was constrained by my own blog code which says that (a) every post must contain a photo; (b) the photo should be one of my own; and (c) when possible the photo and commentary must be related, at least tangentially (defined by me, not you).

That put me in a bind. So I decided to post photos of two of the whitest persons I know. One is a grad school friend, and one is a father-in-law that I know. (Mine.)

I want to emphasize that I do not mean anything insulting by saying that these two gentlemen are white. (Though it is insulting.) Because frankly there’s nothing wrong about being white.

(There is.)

I love these guys like brothers.

(But not like bruthas.)

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On an unrelated note, you need to listen to Brandi Carlile’s live version of Radiohead’s Creep. If you’re anything like me, it will make you cry like a baby.

(Not that I cry at music. That would be sissy-ish. Which I’m not. I’m very manly. And not white-manly, either. Cool manly.)

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I had my last school-related meeting of the semester yesterday. I’m on break. Can you tell?

Still, I couldn’t sleep last night and thus the early morning post.

(Not that I’m bragging about not sleeping. That would be wrong.)