by liberal japonicus
This is probably a bit too heavy for a Friday open thread, so we'll push that back a few days, cause I'm quite interested in this. But maybe you aren't, so it is below the fold. Join me, if you dare...
And because I'm sure there are folks here who could speak more knowledgably about basketball, if you want to turn this thread into discussing what makes a good point guard, I'm very cool with that (because my love affair with the game has been off and on, attenuated by distance and cruelly limited by being a 6'4" point guard trapped in a 5' 7" (but he plays like he is 5' 7 3/4"!) body)
Still, I suppose the question that would be in the ObWi wheelhouse is the question of whether racism is write about Jeremy Lin's sudden rise, I can tell without a doubt in my mind that... it depends. To start off with, I think that this Indian writer embracing his Asian Americanness is more as a cover for talking about race, which is kind of dumb, but representative of a particular class of pundit who wants to seem prescient in predicting bad things. Moving on.
The Atlantic gives us a sample of the range, with Ta Nehisi Coates giving David Brooks at the NYTimes (not racist, just stupid) some needed pointers and James Fallows giving some needed perspective to Robert Wright (yeah, kinda racist), which deals with a lot of this. Is you want Wright and Brooks totally dissected, go to this Mark Liberman LanguageLog post. There is also this Jake Simpson piece (not at all racist). All we need is McArdle to appear and explain why the rise of Jeremy Lin supports her thesis about household appliances and the set would be complete. (if you look at that last link, note the first image of the ad for the 'Farberware Electric Coffee Robot', which suggests that Gary has time travel capabilities, so I look forward to improvements, though I won't realize that they happened)
When we talk about racism, I guess I have to mention Floyd Mayweather Jr., a boxer, who tweeted “Jeremy Lin is a good player, but all the hype is because he’s Asian. Black players do what he does every night and don’t get the same praise.” Given that Mayweather posted a video of him saying of rival Manny Pacquiao "we're going to cook that little yellow chump. We ain't worried about that. So they ain't gotta worry about me fighting the midget. Once I kick the midget ass, I don't want you all to jump on my d---. So you all better get on the bandwagon now. ... Once I stomp the midget, I'll make that mother f----- make me a sushi roll and cook me some rice." Tweeting is not really writing, but I would probably say yeah, that's racist. Though Mayweather later tweeted that this was what the basketball players he knew thought, but were too scared to say. More about that later.
I did like Stephen Colbert's comment that times must be hard if it is easier for a Harvard grad to get into the NBA than it is to become a Wall St. bond trader, though I'm impressed that Colbert didn't suggest that he wasn't a victim of discrimination based on his tryout with the Knicks.
Were the two teams that cut Lin racist? As another commentator pointed out in the last open thread, there were already a bunch of point guards at Golden State, and the same was true at Houston, so I'd have to say no.
Were the teams that didn't draft Lin racist? No to that as well. The position of point guard is one that doesn't really translate into watching a prospect at a combine. The only way you tell if someone is a good point guard is you watch him play in a game situation. Lin himself has noted that what he thinks are his strengths are not things that are easily visible in watching him run drills. This is a scout's report on him before the draft
Strengths: Jeremy is deceptively quick and athletic ... Noticeably has a quick first step ... Has nice touch around basket, he's very crafty with the ball, excellent at changing direction ... He sees a lane and takes it, and he's not afraid to get fouled ... Can adjust his body and shot in mid air, absorbs contact well ... Uses on-ball screens very well with an ability to explode to the hoop, solid handle, above average crossover and shows the ability to split double teams with ease ... Can get in the paint and make plays for others ... Plays solid off-ball defense, ability to see man and ball ... Great awareness and reaction time ... Very effective in transition ... Good lateral movement when playing man to man perimeter defense and high awareness when playing help defense ... Has decent strength with long, solidly built arms ... Works hard at his game ... Has shown the ability to step up in big games and make clutch plays (hit a game winner to open the season) ...
Weakness: Lacks a true position ... Is not a natural playmaker but plays the position out of necessity at times for Harvard ... Not a true point guard, and plays off the ball more effectively and often ... His dribble is too high making it easy for opponents to strip the ball away ... More of a SF in a 6-4 body ... Doesn't seem to have much of a mid-range game, has ability to shoot the 3 but definitely not a strength ... Not a pure shooter ... Does not seem confident at all when taking a jump shot, passes on wide open shots at times which he won't be able to do at the next level ... Really needs to develop a pull-up or step back jumper, also has an unorthodox form on his shot ... His ISO skills are just average despite a quick first step ... Much more effective spotting up than creating shots off the dribble ... When fatigued tends to force the issue, turn the ball over, and take questionable shots ... Plays in a very weak conference so his lack of competition and experience on a big stage is a hurdle ...
Still, it has been suggested that Lin was overlooked because he was Asian. This article by Jason Lehrer suggests that it is not a race problem, but a vision problem
By now, you probably see the theme: nobody thought Lin could make it in the NBA. He was too short and too weak, with a mediocre jump shot. And that’s why, if I were an NBA coach or scout or GM, his remarkable success would keep me up at night. Professional sports, after all, are supposed to be a pure meritocracy, in which those with the most talent are carefully vetted and tested. Those who make it in the NBA are supposed to be a pure distillate of athletic potential: the players are richly rewarded because they really are the very best.
But how effective is this meritocracy? Are there lots of Jeremy Lins out there? How many benchwarmers could hit game winners? Unfortunately for professional sports, the evidence suggests that there’s plenty of room for improvement: teams are terrible at identifying talent.
I think there is some truth in that, but I have a slightly different perspective. Musicians generally agree that there are a lot of people who are just as good as famous musician X. (Musician in this sense is not someone who is writing their own music, but someone who is performing other people's music) And in getting the gig, while it does mean that you are better than everyone else they heard, musicians (at least the ones I have hung out with) are very conscious that there are tons of people who didn't audition and would have been able to do just as well. Of course, over beers, frustration over not getting a gig might have some forget that. Mayweather's later comment, that this was what a lot of black players were thinking, should be seen in light of the notion of stealin', which David Halberstam described in his book Breaks of the Game, about the Portland Trailblazers 1979-80 season and the state of basketball then. Stealin' is where the lower bench positions are given to white players as a 'bone' to fans. Perhaps folks more up on the current state of the game can tell me if it still seems to be a problem.
So folks who think that Lin was overlooked because he was Asian are missing out that there are tons of people who are overlooked. As Lehrer says 'There is talent everywhere. We just don’t know how to find it.' though I disagree slightly. There is talent everywhere, we just don't know how to nurture it and make it fully flower.
I haven't seen it mentioned in conjunction with Lin, but the story of Landon Clement bears a look.
"White boy."
That's how Landon Clement is referred to by a lot of students here on the historically black campus of North Carolina Central University. When he first arrived two years ago, the term was not exactly a compliment.
What's White Boy doing here?
Students couldn't help but notice Clement, and talk. He spent all his time with black teammates. He had a son with a black girlfriend. And from that came another, more scathing suggestion:
Oh, he's trying to be black.
Read the whole thing, as they say. I'm also reminded of Ed 'Booger' Smith, the streetball player who appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and was the subject of the documentary 'Soul in the Hole' (with Finnish subtitles for the commentor who is studying Finnish! This is a full service shop, folks).There are lots of constraints on talent that have nothing to do with the game.
Finally, the rest of Linsanity, with folks with names like Thieu and Park and Kobayashi, and even Patel finding some common ground, well, yeah, I think that is racist. But let me explain.
I suppose one could accuse me of trying to turn racist into a positive term, rather than trying to banish it from our world. I'd prefer to think that I hope it underlines the irrationality of racism. Asian American is a strange and wonderful mix that would seem to defy any kind of grouping and it would be silly to make group with that definition. As silly as believing in shared traits because your birth, because it falls in some 30 day frame, means you share the same characteristics as someone born in another place and era. Or based on the computer operating system we use. Or which Star Trek captain we like. Crazy really, that we think groups like these mean something, but that is what humans do.
Because the Asian-American experience has no unifying notion, no Ellis Island gateway and it draws on a canvas that is half of the world, and is usually the half we (for various values of 'we') don't know about, this coming together really makes no sense. (as someone observed, dang those Asians all look alike, I'm always getting Amartya Sen confused with Wen Jiabao) I like the way this piece (by Hua Hsu, an assistant professor of English at Vassar College, but the essay title seems to be strangely out of synch with the content) says it
It may seem like a strange moment to obsess over, a minor achievement given the broader history of Asians in the U.S., and a fatally macho one at that. But the lure of identity is, at root, an imaginary one.
For now, I want to preserve this strange thrill of an Asian-American from near where I grew up starring for the Knicks; I want to temporarily shield this experience from deeper inquiry about cultural capital, politics or the meaning of meritocracy. It’s here that the irrationality of identity merges with the irrationality of fandom. We hope against reason and find meaning in the ephemeral; each new series is an opportunity to start anew. Clear thinking is the enemy. There are nicknames to be invented, menu items that need renaming and raps to be written.
Have at it.
I read this, and then a while later someone reposted that story about Joshua Bell playing unnoticed in the subway, and realized it's connnected. There are tons of unrecognized musicians and athletes out there —it's not the only way in which our professions are similar. Whether in sports or the arts, overnight stars are made by the media. Of course they are very talented, but the reason no one noticed Joshua Bell there in the subway is precisely because the last (unfamous) violist they'd heard playing in the subway sounded just as good to their ears.
That's just my take, anyway.
Posted by: Marcellina | February 18, 2012 at 09:06 AM
Cool post LJ. Lots of things to discuss here.
IMO there is definitely a racist, or at least racial, aspect in making a big deal out of an Asian guy playing NBA ball. It's as if an Asian guy playing good hoops is some kind of freak of nature, like a talking dog or a chicken that plays the piano.
It's racist in a few directions, actually, because as Mayweather notes, nobody would be that amazed by a black guy playing that well.
All of that said, I'm not sure it's that big of a deal, as a practical matter. Nobody got lynched, for one thing. And Lin's success will only open up the sport for lots of folks who didn't think basketball was "for them", which will only be good.
Yay Jeremy Lin!
What's also interesting, to me, is that he's a Harvard grad. How many Ivy League-ers in the NBA? How many Ivy League-ers even aspire to playing professional sports, or any kind? Aren't they grooming themselves for "better" things? Another interesting social / cultural lens there.
Regarding the music thing, Eric Clapton famously commented that every town in the US had at least one guy who played as well as he did. Clapton's a great player, but there is way more than a little truth in his statement.
The range of factors that contribute to someone performing at the very highest levels of achievement, or not, are really broad. Many if not most of them are not really directly related to talent. Many are not under the control of the performer. Many are related more to plain old luck than anything else.
I was talking with a bass player I work with occasionally the other night, and we were in fact discussing the number of guys we knew who are great - really great - players, who after a lifetime of work were still scuffling.
My buddy commented that one of the biggest factors in being successful in a musical career is whether you're someone that other folks basically like hanging out with. Nothing to do with music, just whether you're good company. Because a lot of playing music for a living involves, basically, hanging out.
The skill set involved in doing something professionally, at a high level, is often only tangentially related to the thing itself.
Or, at least, being extraordinarily good at the thing itself is just sort of assumed. In other words, being extraordinarily good at the thing itself basically gets in the door -- makes you a candidate for success -- but is no guarantee, at all, of success per se.
Talent means that, if you put in Gladwell's 10,000 hours, you might turn out good enough to be worth considering. Then, you have to put in the 10,000 hours.
Then, if you bring the other 572 things that go into being professionally successful, and also have some luck, and also are insightful enough to recognize your lucky moments, and also know how to make good use of them, you might do quite well.
It's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll. Or, be an NBA point guard. Or, whatever.
Basically, if you love something, you should just do it, and not think too much about how far you're going to get. Because, realistically, you probably won't get all that far, and even if you do, the success might not be as satisfying as just doing the thing itself.
Posted by: russell | February 18, 2012 at 11:07 AM
I think the idea that the perfomers of any elite outfit--opera, basketball team, Princeton students--are the "best" is an illusion. The perfomers are very very good, of course. But the cutoff between someone who didn't get in and someone who did does not necessarily relflect a real difference in quality.
Think of Olympic class downhill skiiers: is the the skiier who makes the bronze medal by one hundredth of a second actually a better skiier than the one who just missed it by one hundredth of a second and got no medal at all?
It's possible to determine who lacks the skills to be qualitied for admission to one of the elite outfits and it is reasonably possible to decide who has those skills. But who is "best?" There's too many ways to be excellent to think of performers that way.
As to Jermey Lin, since I don't know who he is I'm just left feeling sort of baffled as to why anyone cares if a basketball player is Asian American (whatever tht means) or not. Is it a competition thing? I can remember some angst amongst some of the African American boys of a middle school basketball team when the showy player that got all the attention was the music teacher's son and Jewish. It didn't last long because middle school basketball isn't that big a deal but there were some ugly things said.
Posted by: Laura Koerbeer | February 18, 2012 at 11:20 AM
I think that Fallows makes a good point, that there would be hype over Lin's store regardless, but there is more hype due to his being Asian.
That said, I thought the salient point of LJ comments was this:
There is talent everywhere, we just don't know how to nurture it and make it fully flower.
More to the point, we don't know how to even recognize talent (let alone prospectivce talent) unless it up and smacks us in the eye. As a result, we make enormous use of proxy indicators. Proxies which, objectively, depend on apparent (not real) correlations. (See also Fallows' comments about basketball being a "Jewish game" pre-WW II.)
If anyone thinks that isn't a defensible description of how we approach the question of talent, ask yourself this: have you ever worked in a large organization? Did you notice how many really mediocre people got promoted way beyond their level of incompetence? (Yes, some superstars get recognized. But we're talking about the vast majority of employees here.)
Why does that happen? I submit that it happens because they are good at some things (aka "politics") which are most irrelevant to their actual job. And the ability to schmooze, etc. is rewarded because those doing the evaluation don't know how to actually evaluate the people they are rating and promoting.
In short, this isn't a basketball thing. It's a general problem -- with a few sports amenible to statistical analysis (although that is far from precise).
Posted by: wj | February 18, 2012 at 11:55 AM
Whenever I see something about Lin's story and how it resonates with young Asian-American males I have flashbacks to the discussions that came up when I taught Better Luck Tomorrow a couple years ago -- many comments centered on the character of Ben Manibag and his 'token' role on the HS basketball team. Justin Lin sensed some of the same undercurrent that Jeremy Lin is tapping into now. Judging by my students' responses back then to the film and now to Linsanity I'd have to say that there's something cathartic about this particular public vindication.
Guess we cold call it Lindication.
Posted by: nous | February 18, 2012 at 06:17 PM
This, about another sport, football in England, suggests the kind of pressures that even athletes at the top level might have.
Last year Plymouth Argyle's players went eight months without wages. A friend of mine playing for them at the time very nearly lost his house. In the end he lost everything else as he battled to meet his mortgage payments.
I suppose that American pro sports are more professional and you might say that Plymouth Argyle is not the top level. But I think about what happened with the Montreal Expos, where the team was stripped of players and then front office staff and equipment, such that the Marlins clubhouse was filled with equipment that still had the Expos logo on it, it is difficult to imagine any player playing to the full extent of his talents.
Also, I think that wj is probably more correct than I am. And russell's observations about playing and hanging out probably explains my situation. Hanging out, no prob. Playing, never quite had the chops.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | February 18, 2012 at 06:50 PM
Having lived in Asia for many years, it never occurred to me for a moment that there was something remarkable - as opposed to unusual - about a good Asian(-American) basketball player.
What surprised me, and "made" the story as far as I was concerned, is how long he had gone without recognition of his exceptional talents. Outstanding in HS, but no scholarship offers. Goes to Harvard, not exactly a hoops powerhouse. Undrafted, gets picked up but not retained by several teams. And now, miracle man!
A large part of this is explained (above and in the articles linked to) by the fact that one particular skill that he has - that a point guard has to have - is one that is not terribly visible/testable. And that is the ability to "see" the whole court, assess it, and make instantaneous but sound decisions based on this. (Football QBs need something very similar, which - similarly - is hard to assess until you see it in action, over and over again.) It's the converse of measurable, visible "athleticism," on which too many people (including sportspeople who should know better) obsess.
I understand that Lin's Asian(-American)ness made this story, as a story, special, along with the fact that it happened in New York, where any sporting experience is routinely awarded about ten times its actual significance by the NY-based media. OK, but from a sporting perspective, it's the fact of his being unrecognized, passed over, so often, at so many levels, that makes it fascinating.
That one writer thinks it's really about Lin's open Christianity is symptomatic, if not emblematic, of utter cluelessness.
Posted by: dr ngo | February 18, 2012 at 11:30 PM
I think the idea that the perfomers of any elite outfit--opera, basketball team, Princeton students--are the "best" is an illusion. ... Think of Olympic class downhill skiiers: is the the skiier who makes the bronze medal by one hundredth of a second actually a better skiier than the one who just missed it by one hundredth of a second and got no medal at all?
Maybe not... but the group of Olympic downhill skiers themselves are most certainly the best in the world. Just as American professional basketball players are some of the best in the world at what they do. How is this even in dispute?
As to Jermey Lin, since I don't know who he is I'm just left feeling sort of baffled as to why anyone cares if a basketball player is Asian American (whatever tht means) or not.
"Asian American" -- Americans whose descent is from the Indian subcontinent, East Asia, or Southeast Asia. Though colloquially this tends to refer only to those of East Asian and Southeast Asian descent. Jeremy Lin's roots are in Taiwan and mainland China, and he also grew up in the sort of very distinctive Chinese-American-Christian subculture. Lots of people have a certain amount of pride in their ethnic and racial heritage and like to see "one of their own" becoming famous, especially when it's in a field held in high regard by the public where those of their background aren't normally represented.
It's the converse of measurable, visible "athleticism," on which too many people (including sportspeople who should know better) obsess.
Basketball, compared to baseball, strikes me as a sport that is much harder to use blind statistics and metrics to rate players and predict their ability on the field, so I can imagine that coaching and recruiting decisions end up focusing more on subjective impressions of things like "athleticism" and "hustle."
Posted by: Tyro | February 19, 2012 at 01:21 AM
I didn't dispute the excellence of someone who could get into the Olympics.
I wrote "Asian-American whatever that means" because I was remembering this from the post:
"Because the Asian-American experience has no unifying notion, no Ellis Island gateway and it draws on a canvas that is half of the world, and is usually the half we (for various values of 'we') don't know about, this coming together really makes no sense. (as someone observed, dang those Asians all look alike, I'm always getting Amartya Sen confused with Wen Jiabao)"
Sometimes people don't like being lumped together and I knew I was using very imprecise language and felt a lttle apologetic about it.
Posted by: Laura Koerbeer | February 19, 2012 at 08:15 AM
that is the ability to "see" the whole court, assess it, and make instantaneous but sound decisions based on this.
Yes indeed.
The most meaningful metric, IMO of course, for if someone is a good athlete is "when that person plays, we win a lot".
Hard to pin down, but savvy folks recognize it.
Applies in lots and lots of contexts.
Hanging out, no prob. Playing, never quite had the chops.
LOL.
Which reminds me of the old chestnut:
Q: What do you call a guy who likes to hang out with musicians?
A: A drummer.
Posted by: russell | February 19, 2012 at 10:07 AM
"My buddy commented that one of the biggest factors in being successful in a musical career is whether you're someone that other folks basically like hanging out with. Nothing to do with music, just whether you're good company. Because a lot of playing music for a living involves, basically, hanging out."
This is almost certainly a big factor, especially for the non-front-man. But one thing we hate to admit is that there really is just a lot of luck which separates the various really good people into 'has a good career' and 'does not have a good career'. You can set yourself up for the possibility of a good break but not necessarily get it. You can get a good break and not be the best in the room. And there are some artists who you wonder if they couldn't have been much more popular if they had been born 5 years later or 10 years earlier.
One example I'm thinking of right now is Janelle Monáe. She is young enough that of course we don't know if she is going to have an enormous career, but I feel almost as if she would have had a better chance at a different time.
[I have a half baked theory about ebbs and lulls in the importance of harmony vs. melody in popular music, and the dangers of doing too much harmony when it isn't the 'time' for it. I think it is unrelated to my half baked theory about baritones vs tenors and my theory that you really don't want to be a baritone trying to break in during the 75% of the time when tenors rule the airwaves.]
Anyway, I don't know crap about basketball and I've gone down a huge tangent. Sorry.
Posted by: Sebastian | February 19, 2012 at 01:59 PM
No prob, Sebastian. Actually, I'll probably take the Janelle Monáe ref and the second to the last graf and make that the Friday open thread ;^)
Posted by: liberal japonicus | February 19, 2012 at 05:53 PM