Taken from the AABA's Official Press Release:
The All-American Basketball Alliance announced in a news release Sunday evening that it intends to start its inaugural season in June and hopes Augusta will be one of 12 cities with a team.
"Only players that are natural born United States citizens with both parents of Caucasian race are eligible to play in the league," the AABA statement said.
Don "Moose" Lewis, the commissioner of the AABA, said the reasoning behind the league's roster restrictions is not racism.
"There's nothing hatred about what we're doing," he said. "I don't hate anyone of color. But people of white, American-born citizens are in the minority now. Here's a league for white players to play fundamental basketball, which they like."
Now, as you've noticed, I've refrained from getting all worked up over this story until now.
Why?
Well for starters, I wanted to take a few days and soake it all in before going for the obvious KKK jokes and speed-dialing Sharpton. In doing so, I realized a few things:
For starters I work in advertising (on occassion). As most of you know, advertising along with PR and marketing is a nearly 95% white male/white female run industry. Over the years, most folks in the advertsing world have been heard echoing Moose's sentiments as it relates to advertising and Black folks. (I've personally had white ad execs tell me to my face they didn't think Blacks werere competent enough ad-wise to excell in advertising.)
Point is, the concept of an intentionally all-white anything in 2010 pretty plausible and the want for it is way more present than most will ever admit.
Secondly, the more I thought about an all-white hoops league the more I remembered that at one point every major sports league in America from basketball to baseball to football to boxing was intentionally and legally "Whites Only". It took courageous black athletes enduring the worst types of bias to excel and dominate along with some changes in the law in order to break those barriers. So old Moose and his AABA aren't really that original in their idea.
But in today's society how could someone propose something like this? Well as Moose reminds us, a growing number of whites are feeling like minorities. Which is kinda funny given that whites are still over 60% of the country. I never heard of 60% being "a minority" of anything. But hey, I went to public school, so whaddoo I know?
But I get it, Moose "feels" like a minority. He wants an arena where white basketball players can dominate and bring back "fundamentals" and Bob Cousy length shorts or George Mikan-style shooting. (I doubt this is what Larry Bird had in mind when he said the NBA needs more White superstars. But who knows? I'm no mind-reader.) So be it.
But can this idea of basketball actually fly in 2010? Well if the ostate of ther sports leagues are any indication, the answer might be, "maybe".
According to NHL.com the National Hockey League has about 947 players. Only 50 are self-identified as being non-white. In short, over 95% of the NHL is White.
According to the MLB, while its percentages of White, Hispanic and international players continues to rise, less than 4% of current major league baseball players are Black.
According to the PGA, there are no black or non-white US-born professional golfers currently on the PGA tour. (Way to go, Tiger!)
Now, if you move over to another popular sport—omen's professional tennis, there's Venus and Serena Williams and... um... Well, basically that's it far as Black American women tennis players go on the WTA tour. (Lord knows how them cursed Williams 'girls done screwed up tennis!)
As for Mens Tennis? Well, according to the USTA figures, there's Chicago teen prodigy Donald Young and.... Um... yeah.
Horse-racing? Well,believe it or not about 15 of the first 24 Kentucky Derby-winning jockeys were actually African Americans. But around 1910 or so, the sport banned black jockeys. You haven't seen a US-born black jockey since.
And how could we forget NASCAR? Well, there are no US-born Black drivers on the NASCAR circuit. ZERO. (So how's that 'Drive For Diversity' thing working, fellas?")
Figure Skating? Gymnastics? X-Games? Figures are hard to come by but based on what's shown on TV and the few events i've attended, you're liable to see more people of color working security at these competitions than actually participating in them.
All in all, most every major sport we see on TV the concept of a Whites Only Basketball league isn't as absurd as it sounds on first blush.
Obviously, I've saved the two most apt comparisons—the WNBA and the NBA—for last:
The NBA is fully integrated Obviously. But the league's doing all it can to "take the game global" which means more non-Black and more non-US born white players. And while it won't be fast enough for the AABA's tastes, sooner or later (or much later) US-born Blacks will be a minority in the NBA.
As for the WNBA? Assuming it's around 3 years from now, it too will proably have to go global in order to grow. But its growth problems have more to do with gender and sexual orientation acceptance than racial issues.
With that said, personally I think the AABA could work. I think there's a fanbase for it; not that they'll be loud and proud about it. But they'll support it if it can show a good product. Also I think there's enough sponsors willing to openly support such a thing. Again, look at NASCAR which makes 100s of millions in sponsorship deals from major brands despite being an exclusively white sport. And trust me, there's not a single sponsor that's not fully aware that the absence of diversity in US auto racing is all but intentional. But NASCAR and its sponsors smartly couch this as "south culture" & "middle america lifestyle" so they can dance around the white elephant on the track.
AABA's biggest problem will be talent. It's either gonna come in dorves or bunches or not at all. And because of the money at steak and the AABA's lack of money, the big time white talent isn't going to the AABA over the NBA. Maybe in 5 or 10 years, but not in 2011.
So let's see what happens. Maybe this thing will work...
Long live the ghost of Larry Bird.


















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