The reigning Eastern Conference champion Boston Celtics suspended coach Ime Udoka after a months-long investigation by an outside law firm that found multiple violations of team policies but did not point to a larger cultural problem of sexual misconduct, owner Wyc Grousbeck said Friday.

“We go to great lengths … to run the organization with the central core value of respect and freedom in the workplace from harassment or any unwelcome attention,” Grousbeck said at a news conference. “This feels very much, to me, like one of a kind. That’s my personal belief. But I’ll have to verify that.”

Neither Grousbeck nor president of basketball operations Brad Stevens would elaborate on the specifics of the violations or the private report that was delivered to the team two days ago. But a person with knowledge of the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the details were not made public, told The Associated Press that it involved an inappropriate relationship with a woman in the organization.
— Associated Press, 9/23/22

Not to make light of anything inappropriate and/or possibly adulterous, but this whole situation could have been handled better. It’s not like the Boston Celtics were in uncharted waters navigating through a sex scandal. There are dozens of politicians, executives, entertainers who’ve been busted, maybe took a leave of absence, and eventually went right back to work.

But not the Celtics. They are in Boston surrounded by woke media writers who demanded a head on a spike for the indiscretion. The Celtics “zero tolerance” policy is one that would have been ignored by almost every political and business institution in the country. It certainly would have negotiated-down yet, ironically, it was a mostly white Boston sports media who went out of their way to make sure the city and nation knew Udoka’s actions would not be tolerated. There would be no insufficient multi-game suspension.

Ime Udoka had to go and the Celtics, very publicly, fired him.

Udoka connected with his young players because he was himself a former player of 12 years, among which he played for the Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks, Portland Trail Blazers, San Antonio Spurs and Sacramento Kings. He was later an assistant coach with the San Antonio Spurs, Philadelphia 76ers and Brooklyn Nets before being hired as the head coach of the Boston Celtics in 2021. In his first year with the Celtics, they came within two wins of winning the NBA title. The 2022-23 was expected to be very special.

Instead, he was seemingly banished from his profession for committing a selectively-enforced ultimate crime against women. Instead of a team suspension, an example was made of him in Boston and Udoka was shown the door. The Celtics gave the keys of the car to Joe Mazzulla, a 34-year-old with zero NBA head coaching experience.

That didn’t sit well with many people within and outside of the organization and the double standard was obvious to anyone with a set of functioning eyes, especially when ominous clouds hovered over the team during the NBA Conference Finals against the Miami Heat.

I have said it countless times over these airwaves and I’ll repeat it one last time. All of us in this business know plenty of folks in the world of sports or sports teams that had stuff going on in the office. It was an HR matter. We know people who have been fired for the same thing. We never heard a word. But now, everybody knows what Ime Udoka did because of the way the Boston Celtics handled it.
— Steven A. Smith, ESPN First Take, 5/22/23

Smith reminded his audience that mistakes the inexperienced Mazzulla made during the playoffs were ones his head coach predecessors in Boston would have not have made. Clearly preparation was lacking and while “living in the moment” sounded cute, there is no substitute for preparing a team for “situations” that only experience brings.

His players, also muzzled by the politically correct shroud in Boston, let glimpses of the frustration slip, especially when the unmentionable happened as the playoff were set to begin: Ime Udoka was hired to be the new head coach of the Houston Rockets.

The hiring comes nearly three months after the Boston Celtics suspended and dismissed Udoka for an improper workplace relationship, a situation the Rockets investigated with the league office and with the Celtics, among others, before making the job offer, sources told ESPN.

The hiring is a coup for Rockets general manager Rafael Stone, who helped sell Udoka on the franchise’s young talent, salary cap space and chance at winning the draft lottery and selecting generational talent Victor Wembanyama.

“Ime’s intelligence, drive and toughness were the traits we were looking for in a coach to lead our team through this next stage of our development as we strive to become a champion,” Stone said in a statement. “We were honored to have the opportunity to speak to multiple outstanding candidates throughout the interview process and felt that Ime’s vision best aligned with the goals the Fertitta Family and myself have for the future of the Rockets.”
— ESPN, 4/24/23

Obviously, “Ime’s intelligence, drive and toughness” was something missing on the Celtics bench during the season and especially when it was needed most: during the NBA Playoffs where the they were pushed to Game 7 twice against teams they should have easily beaten. Udoka’s hiring couldn’t have come at a worse time for the younger players on his former team trying to make a playoff run without him.

This locker room never got over Ime Udoka’s dismissal as head coach These players did not accept the organization’s reasoning for doing it. They thought it was a wild overreaction. There were a lot of the people on the outside who thought it was an overreaction. That it was an HR matter. This team talking with management never got any more answers than the public was getting on this. That doesn’t mean they haven’t accepted Joe Mazzulla as head coach, but this is a team that really believed in Ime Udoka and had a strong connection with him.
— Adrian Wojnarowski, ESPN, 5/22/23

But none of that mattered to the Celtics organization.

The Boston Globe had to be reassured. The liberal academics and institutions that pepper Boston like chicken pox had to be placated. The social elite and activists, many of whom don’t even know Boston has a basketball team or anything about the sport, had to be made to feel safe. And the team had to shut up and deal with it.

In the end, Steven A Smith had it right. Justice was served on the Boston Celtics organization. The team not only lost their last playoff game of the season, but it came in a humiliating fashion for all the world to see.

The team and their fans had to suffer and it was for a greater good, right?

On one hand, the left demands divestment on any entity that has interests in traditional apartheid governments while others get a pass. Sports is a prime example.

How do professional sports teams get the money to pay their athletes outrageous contracts? The main source is multi-billion dollar broadcast deals where television networks pay for the rights to air each team’s games. The United States is a big market but pales compared to what a country with a population like China lures, so care is taken not to offend a partner of that size.

NBA China and BesTV, a member of the Shanghai Oriental Pearl Group, announced on Sunday that they are expanding their partnership to deliver extensive NBA games and programming to fans in China. The NBA’s partnership with the Shanghai Media Group (SMG), the parent company of the Shanghai Oriental Pearl Group, dates back to the 1996-97 NBA season.

As the Official Multimedia Partner of the NBA in China, BesTV and SMG’s extensive media platforms will offer nearly 1,300 NBA games to viewers each year.
— China Daily, 10/10/16

Geopolitics can make business relationships contentious and one example is the documented slave labor in China, specifically of the Uyghurs, who are forced to produce goods for Abercrombie & Fitch, Amazon, GAP, H&M, Jack & Jones, Sharp, Siemens, Skechers, ASUS, Apple, Samsung, Huawei, BMW, Volkswagen, Sony, Polo Ralph Lauren, Puma, Victoria’s Secret, Vivo, Fila, Adidas, Puma, Huawei, Lenovo, and Nike (specifically) NBA merchandise that personally and financially benefits players. Many high-profile players like Los Angeles Lakers LeBron James will interject himself into American politics on race issues while defending human rights abusers as to not negatively affect his wallet.

Yes, we all do have freedom of speech. But at times, there are ramifications for the negative that can happen when you’re not thinking about others and you’re only thinking about yourself. So many people could have been harmed — not only financially, but physically, emotionally, spiritually. Just be careful about what we tweet, what we say and what we do. Yes, we do have freedom of speech, but there can be a lot of negative that comes with that, too.
— LeBron James, 10/15/19

Other liberals benefiting from financial arrangements with the Chinese communists have chosen to look the other way in silence. One decided to speak out and it didn’t go well. During a recent “All-in-Podcast episode, billionaire investor Chamath Palihapitiya spoke with fellow liberals and it didn’t go well. Most networks reporting on his honest assessment of the Uyghur plight only played a short clip of his offending comments.

It was a striking comment for someone who excoriated his fellow venture capitalists back in 2017 for being a bunch of “well-intentioned, soulless cowards.” Palihapitiya soon after released statements calling for “nuanced discussion” and saying that the clip was taken “out of context.”
— New York Magazine, 1/18/22

Here’s the full segment, in context….

While it’s commendable that Palihapitiya believes we should take care of Americans before we save the world, he conveniently failed to mention that almost everything the Democrat left has done to “help” blacks, in particular, has only made things much worse.

Needless to say, the blowback from his comments were swift.

In a statement released Monday, the Golden State Warriors said, “Mr. Palihapitiya does not speak on behalf of our franchise, and his views certainly don’t reflect those of our organization.” Mr. Palihapitiya is a limited investor who has no day-to-day operating functions with the team, it added.

His comments on the podcast drew condemnation on Twitter.

Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter Freedom wrote, “When @NBA says we stand for justice, don’t forget there are those who sell their soul for money & business like @chamath the owner of @warriors.”

 Mr. Palihapitiya is no minor player with a loose cannon of a mouth.

A Sri Lankan immigrant to Canada whose family got by on welfare payments when he was a child, Mr. Palihapitiya graduated from the University of Waterloo and worked at Bank of Montreal before moving to the U.S. during the dot-com era. He joined Facebook in 2007 to help grow its user base after stints at a venture-capital firm and America Online. He left Facebook in 2011 after he said Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg denied his request to start a cellphone business, and later emerged as a critic of his former employer.
— Wall Street Journal, 1/18/22

Virgin Galactic distanced itself Tuesday from Chamath Palihapitiya, the chairman of its board of directors, after he declared on a podcast that “nobody cares” about China’s human rights abuses toward Uyghurs.
— New York Post, 1/18/22

The western world has been very kind and generous to Chamath Palihapitiya and his family. He’s been able to achieve and live a very comfortable life, thanks to nations that cared enough about the plight of those in shithole countries to allow his family to flee genuine poverty.

His callous indifference to those less blessed is so… progressive.

Hardwood floors and heels typically don’t go together but somehow NBA sideline reporter Kristina Pink missed the memo and took a nasty fall on Sunday at the Crypto.com Arena.

Of course, that rule got thrown out the window when entitled sports announcers began venturing onto the hallowed floor in their street shoes, let alone females in hooker heels.

The following was inevitable.

Pink was doing her due diligence interviewing L.A. Clippers shooting guard Amir Coffey after a game against the Atlanta Hawks. After her chat, Pink somehow lost her balance in black heels on the hardwood, slipped and came crashing down pretty hard. The cracking sound of Pink slamming to the floor emanated through the mics around the arena and shocked bystanders who quickly ran to her side to help her up.

“For everyone asking, I’m ok,” said Pink. “There was water on the court… Appreciate all the messages.”
— Black Enterprise, 1/10/22

Instead of suffering the indignity of having to wear more practical footwear in the future, what’s the bet that there will soon be a new NBA rule where special carpets have to be rolled out for announcers so wardrobe statements won’t have to be compromised?

In September 2015, police arrested Blake after he pulled a gun at a bar in Racine, Wis. He was charged with one felony count of resisting arrest and “one misdemeanor count each of carrying a concealed weapon, carrying a firearm while intoxicated, endangering safety-use of a dangerous weapon, and disorderly conduct,” according to the Racine County Eye.

A warrant was issued July 7 in Kenosha. According to Wisconsin’s circuit court records database, Blake has been charged with one felony count of third-degree sexual assault and two misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing. According to Wisconsin law, third-degree sexual assault can include nonconsensual sexual intercourse or other sexual contact.
— Politifact, 8/26/20

And what tripped the whole incident off?

The Kenosha News reported that a woman living in the 2800 block of 40th Street told police in May that Blake, her ex-boyfriend, had come into her home and taken her car keys and vehicle. She also said he had touched her sexually without consent. It’s not clear if the officers who arrived at an address in the same block shortly after 5 p.m. on Sunday were aware of those charges.
— Newsweek, 8/26/20

While this is not to imply he deserved to be shot, Jacob Blake is hardly worthy of civil rights icon status.

Blake’s shooting tripped off a collective major league sports kneejerk. Baseball, basketball, hockey and football franchises nationwide staged boycotts of games, practices and left sports fans on the lurch. Speeches and social media posts from players and coaches flooded the Internet and those who disagreed were shunned into pitiful little children, begging for forgiveness.

One impassioned speech illustrated why some should speak about that which they either know or can relate to.

Let’s look at some of what Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers said.

What stands out to me is just watching the Republican convention and viewing this fear, right?

It’s not clear how much of the Republican convention Rivers actually watched, but it was a celebration of the United States of America, all we can be, and the ramifications of the civil unrest that’s occurred with select pushback in many American cities. The result is billions of dollars of public and private property damage, disruption of public movement, dozens (if not hundreds) of police and civilian injury and death.

The convention also gave voice to some directly and adversely affected by the “mostly peaceful” violence. If the truth is what Rivers considers “fear”, he has a right to his opinion.

All you hear is Donald Trump and all of them talking about fear. We’re the ones getting killed. We’re the ones getting shot. We’re the ones that are denied to live in certain communities.

President Trump talked about the need to restore law and order back onto our streets so people feel safe in their communities. Yes, “we’re the ones getting killed. We’re the ones getting shot” but I can’t remember when Doc Rivers last gave an impassioned plea for black people to stop doing the killing and shooting in Chicago, New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, New Orleans, Baltimore, etc.

We’ve been hung, we’ve been shot.

Mostly, by Democrats.

All you do is keep hearing about fear. It’s amazing to me why we keep loving this country and this country does not love us back.

Going into the 2019-20 National Basketball Association season, the Los Angeles Clippers paid their players a combined “guaranteed” $132 million, not including coaches and staff. Their highest paid player, Paul George, will receive over $33 million just this season alone. Doc Rivers is the second highest paid coach in the NBA with an annual salary of $10 million. Seems to me this country could “not love” those people for a whole lot less.

Rivers made this partisan so if he’s talking about black people not being loved back as a whole, he should take an honest look at the communities where they live and who’s been running them for more than half a century. Can’t blame the lack of opportunity, decent schools, high crime, poverty-level housing and more honestly on Republicans.

Under President Trump economic policies, black unemployment hit historic record lows and it didn’t even require knowing how to rap or shoot a basketball. If that’s not love, what is?

It’s really so sad. I should just be a coach and it’s so haunting, reminded of my color. It’s just really sad. We’ve got to do better. We’ve got to demand better.

Democrats have consistently taken the black vote for granted, reigned on election promises made, leaving signature misery in their wake. In 2016, Donald Trump asked for black support, got some, and made good. Maybe Doc Rivers is making a “demand” to the wrong people and is too political to acknowledge the one man who actually kept his word to all Americans.

It’s funny, we protest and they send riot guards. They send people in riot outfits.

Maybe “we” should stop burning, looting, and assaulting. Then there would be no need for “riot guards”.

They go to Michigan with guns and they’re spitting on cops and nothing happens. The training has to change in the police force.

That made no sense.

The unions have to be taken down in the police force. My dad was a cop. I believe in good cops. We’re not trying to defund the police and take all their money away. We’re trying to get them to protect us, just like they protect everybody else.

If you watch that video, you don’t need to be black to be outraged. You need to be American and outraged. How dare the Republicans talk about fear? We’re the ones that need to be scared. We’re the ones having to talk to every Black child. What white father has to give his son a talk about being careful if you get pulled over? It’s just ridiculous.

Most people, when being pulled over for anything, are respectful and obey the police officer’s requests. It’s only when some decide it’s okay to mouth off, and/or take things to a physical level with law enforcement that bad things happen. White fathers have no problem conveying such logic to a son. Then again, maybe too many black sons (including many players on Rivers’ team and around the NBA) don’t have a father in the home to deliver structure and common sense discussion.

Then again, given the makeup of recent “mostly peaceful” protests, conversations with white daughters are long overdue.

Breonna Taylor, no charges, nothing. All we’re asking is you live up to the constitution. That’s all we’re asking, for everybody.

Taylor was killed amidst a shootout in the apartment where she lived. Drugs may have been involved. Again, another innocent black person being killed by police but with shady shit clouding it all. Law-abiding black people, for the most part, live higher than the national mortality rate for the demographic. That is, unless they get assaulted and robbed by a young blacks in the neighborhood.

Until people like Rivers denounce the rampant crime we see video clips of almost every day in the black community, it’s an invitation for law enforcement intervention. What happens after that becomes fodder for the opportunist and there sure are a lot of them.

Every year Yahoo Sports asks every NBA player a series of questions to determine the greatest of all-time on a number of different topics.  Every year, Kobe Bryant is mentioned in almost every category.  This is a collection of some of those answers and a testament to why Kobe is The G.O.A.T.
— Yahoo Sports, 2/24/20

Kobe Bryant was a great player, however many teams have had great players. Some have gone on to win championships and some have not, but you can’t honestly have a conversation about the greatest-of-all-time in professional basketball without nudging out Walt Frazier, Wilt Chamberlain, Karl Malone, Oscar Robertson, Nate “Tiny” Archibald, George “Iceman” Gervin, “Pistol” Pete Maravich, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Clyde “the Glide” Drexler, Dominique Wilkins, Jerry West, Bob Cousy, Elgin Baylor, Charles Barkley, Lew Alcindor (if you don’t know who that is, it makes our point), Earl “the Pearl” Monroe, Isaiah Thomas (Pistons), and that’s only some that immediately come to mind.

There were greats who redefined their positions, changed the game and inspired many in the NBA we have today. Had it not been for the following, we may not have a LeBron James who was clearly inspired by those who preceded him. Golden State Warriors’ head coach would certainly have been a nobody had his game not been elevated to play on the same court with one of the following who should be automatically in the GOAT conversation.

BILL RUSSELL, center

A five-time NBA Most Valuable Player and a twelve-time All-Star, Bill Russell was the centerpiece of the Boston Celtics dynasty that won eleven NBA championships during his 13-year career. His shot-blocking and man-to-man defense were major reasons for the Celtics’ domination of the NBA during his career. Russell led the NBA in rebounds four times, had a dozen consecutive seasons of 1,000 or more rebounds, and remains second all-time in both total rebounds and rebounds per game. He is one of just two NBA players (the other being prominent rival Wilt Chamberlain) to have grabbed more than 50 rebounds in a game.

He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame. He was selected into the NBA 25th Anniversary Team in 1971 and the NBA 35th Anniversary Team in 1980, and named as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History in 1996, one of only four players to receive all three honors. In 2007, he was enshrined in the FIBA Hall of Fame. In Russell’s honor the NBA renamed the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player trophy in 2009: it is now the Bill Russell NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award.

Consistency is when your teammates can rely on you year after year and you almost always get the same result: winning.

JULIUS ‘Dr. J’ ERVING, forward

Julius Erving helped popularize a modern style of play that emphasizes leaping and playing above the rim in his career at the ABA and the NBA. Erving helped legitimize the American Basketball Association (ABA) and was the best-known player in that league when it merged into the National Basketball Association (NBA) after the 1975–76 season.

Erving won three championships, four Most Valuable Player Awards, and three scoring titles with the ABA’s Virginia Squires and New York Nets (now the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets) and the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers. He is the eighth-highest scorer in ABA/NBA history with 30,026 points (NBA and ABA combined). He was well known for slam dunking from the free throw line in slam dunk contests and was the only player voted Most Valuable Player in both the ABA and the NBA.

Erving was inducted in 1993 into the Basketball Hall of Fame and was also named to the NBA’s 50th Anniversary All-Time team. In 1994, Erving was named by Sports Illustrated as one of the 40 most important athletes of all time.

All one need do is look at a highlight reel and you can do nothing but admit Dr. J changed how big men played the game and he did so with a grace yet to be replicated with such beauty.

Lastly, how could anyone honestly elevate Kobe Bryant over…

MICHAEL JORDAN, guard

Michael Jordan played 15 seasons in the NBA, winning six championships with the Chicago Bulls. His biography on the official NBA website states: “By acclamation, Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time.” He was one of the most effectively marketed athletes of his generation and was considered instrumental in popularizing the NBA around the world in the 1980s and 1990s.

Jordan joined the Bulls in 1984 and quickly emerged as a league star and entertained crowds with his prolific scoring. His leaping ability, demonstrated by performing slam dunks from the free throw line in Slam Dunk Contests, earned him the nicknames Air Jordan and His Airness. He also gained a reputation for being one of the best defensive players in basketball. In 1991, he won his first NBA championship with the Bulls, and followed that achievement with titles in 1992 and 1993, securing a “three-peat”. Although Jordan abruptly retired from basketball before the 1993–94 NBA season and started a new career in Minor League Baseball, he returned to the Bulls in March 1995 and led them to three additional championships in 1996, 1997, and 1998, as well as a then-record 72 regular-season wins in the 1995–96 NBA season.

Jordan’s individual accolades and accomplishments include six NBA Finals Most Valuable Player (MVP) Awards, ten scoring titles (both all-time records), five MVP Awards, ten All-NBA First Team designations, nine All-Defensive First Team honors, fourteen NBA All-Star Game selections, three All-Star Game MVP Awards, three steals titles, and the 1988 NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award. He holds the NBA records for highest career regular season scoring average (30.12 points per game) and highest career playoff scoring average (33.45 points per game). In 1999, he was named the greatest North American athlete of the 20th century by ESPN, and was second to Babe Ruth on the Associated Press’ list of athletes of the century. Jordan is a two-time inductee into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, having been enshrined in 2009 for his individual career and again in 2010 as part of the group induction of the 1992 United States men’s Olympic basketball team (“The Dream Team”). He became a member of the FIBA Hall of Fame in 2015.

It’s safe to say, if you could have any player on your team for the last two minutes of a game you HAD to win, Michael Jordan would’ve probably be your best option.

Kobe Bryant was blessed to enter the league with the Lakers and play alongside a Shaquille O’Neal in his prime. The players mentioned above initially had no one near the supporting cast Bryant had. Russell, Erving and Jordan made their teammates elevate their game to a championship level.

Bryant was also blessed to play his entire career in the entertainment capital of the world. It could be argued, had Kobe played his entire career in Indiana or Utah or Cleveland, he may have just been regarded as a great player who tragically died. “Greatest of all time”… that would probably something that many would be debating.

During a segment aired on the BBC, the video creator appears to have come down with a case of they-all-look-alike-itis as footage of LeBron James was inserted with footage of Bryant. Even though there were slight hints of a difference between the players, the error wasn’t caught and allowed to air.

…

A BBC spokesman said: ‘In tonight’s coverage of the death of Kobe Bryant on BBC News at Ten we mistakenly used pictures of LeBron James in one section of the report.

‘We apologise for this human error which fell below our usual standards on the programme.’
— Daily Mail, 1/26/20

Human error? No shit. But let’s talk about the BBC’s “usual standards”.

Both players are black. Whew, at least they got that right.

Despite the perception in the BBC production wing and the possible politically correct practice of not dwelling on appearances, they don’t look alike.

Another slight hint as to the difference between the two players, Bryant was #24 and not #23.

The ability to read and comprehend also appears to be an issue here as this was to be a clip about Kobe Bryant, with the name Bryant on the back of his jersey, spelled B-R-Y-A-N-T, not J-A-M-E-S.

Obviously whomever was tasked with putting the package together obviously knew nothing about American basketball as there would be zero confusion about the players. This should have been caught by multiple eyes before airing and yet it got by them all. Was this a case of ignorant women or context-challenged millennials or those who could care less about sports being tasked to create a very short memoriam of one of the greatest players in Los Angeles Lakers history, if not the National Basketball Association?

But this just illustrated (again) what’s wrong with today’s media; a profession where writing about that which they don’t know has its perils and we see the results almost every day.

Are Negros Closer to Apes Than to Humans?
Study Confirms Unconscious Linking of Blacks with Apes
Comparing Black People to Apes: It’s Worse Than You Thought
Enough with stereotyping black people as monkeys!
Comparing Black People To Monkeys Has A Long, Dark Simian History
Google Censors Gorillas Rather Than Risk Them Being Mislabeled As Black People
H&M Apologizes for ‘Monkey’ Image Featuring Black Child
Outrage as museum depicts African people next to animals including gorillas and baboons in ‘racist’ exhibition
Gorilla Statue Removed After Complaints It Was ‘Racially Insensitive’

Again, thanks to some of the more prominent in society, it’s hard to lament the degraded image of black men when black men are the ones doing the self-degradation. Over the last few years, black athletes are repeatedly acting out in ways that back in the day would be considered head shakers, to say the least.

One of the latest episodes occurred during the Boston Celtics, Cleveland Cavaliers 2018 Eastern Conference Final Game 6 where LeBron James made a late three point shot and acted in a manner that would have left a previous generation of proud black people in sheer disgust. And given how many times that particular “dagger” and reaction was replayed, the politically-correct, progressive sanctimonious at ESPN appeared to really enjoy one of our darker moments.

Despite the traditional racist treatment by Democrats, black people are the most imitated and culturally appropriated. Jazz, the blues, funk music, language has been culturally appropriated and screaming like a wild animal is now something many non-blacks are doing with regularity.

They will NEVER be compared to apes. Wonder why that is…?

Basketball.

Given my background, I look at everything we see on television or video as something someone had to initially conceive and another to approve. In the case of this ad, not sure I think much of either.

Nike and the many entities that perpetuate the black Basketball Jones give off that racist impression that the sport is one of the two major industries we gravitate to as THE way out of poverty. The other being gangsta’ rap and/or what’s now called “R&B”, but that’s a topic for another post.

However, numbers are something never addressed by those who continue their soft bigotry of low expectations.

According to the NCAA, as of 2016 there were over 547 thousand children playing basketball at the high school level, of that only over 18,000 made it to the higher-tier college level, of that only four thousand were eligible for the NBA draft, and of that only 44 were drafted by a team. In simpler words, the chance of a high school student making to the professional level is 0.00008052296 and the odds probably haven’t improved noticeably since.

Marketing sneakers to the millions who play is smart. Promoting what amounts to a pipe dream is another.

Then again, it appears Nike and the left don’t think blacks have potential for much else and Apple isn’t any better.

We dance for their entertainment.

See a pattern?

There was a report that prior to the start of the Los Angeles Clippers-Cleveland Cavaliers game, Holtkamp’s name was announced with fanfare unheard of for a rookie ref, so this was about political correctness from the start.

While Chris Paul’s comments were something you don’t say today in a hypersensitive media climate, we all know that telling the truth can get you in more trouble than pointing out an uncomfortable truth. Especially when that same Chris Paul led the team revolt against former owner Donald Sterling, words can come back to haunt and he should know that better than anyone.

UPDATE: Chris Paul fined for calling out ref
Chris Paul: It was about a bad call

Chris Paul has been fined $25,000 for his public criticism of Lauren Holtkamp, the first-year referee who called a technical foul against the Los Angeles Clippers star point guard earlier this week.

So, if anyone criticizes Holtkamp, they’ll be fined and she knows it. It’s not fair, but political correctness was never meant to be.