OUTRAGE: ESPN accused of insulting athletes by focusing only on the skin color of Cooper Flagg and Caitlin Clark!
DALLAS – There is – or, at least, there used to be – a sensible way to discuss rɑce in sports.
ESPN’s NBA coverage is proving just how difficult doing so now seems to be.
“The Worldwide Leader” and its coverage of the NBA Draft was a debacle, from Kendrick Perkins making ridiculous scouting-report claims about Cooper Flagg (comparing the new Dallas Mavs rookie to a combination of “LeBron James and Kevin Garnett”) to its issuing of draft grades (the Mavericks inexplicably got a “B” for the No. 1 overall pick of the Duke star Flagg.)
And now comes another wild swing from Bristol.
Speaking on “First Take,” Peter Rosenberg stated that Flagg’s presence on the Mavericks will make them the team that is “most intriguing and gets the most eyeballs.”
Why does ESPN think this?
Because, said Rosenberg. “Cooper Flagg is a wh1te guy.”
Oh.
The host continued his awkward exploration into rɑce in sports by saying, “Let’s not act as if we don’t live in America and we’re not seeing what’s happening with Caitlin Clark in the WNBA.”
Oh.
Rosenberg’s point as it regards the NBA ignores that the league’s leap in popularity in the last two generations of fans can be tied directly to the work of Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Steph Curry.
They’re not wh1te.
It also ignores – because we’re talking about sports in America – that the explosion in popular in golf is all about Tiger Woods.
He’s not wh1te.
And it ignores so many of the personalities who drive this country’s most popular sport, the NFL; many of them are not wh1te.
This take not only insults the athletes – Caitlin Clark is the WNBA’s best player, skin color aside – but also insults the audience, and here’s why: We cannot possibly read the minds of all of the people who have fallen in love with Jordan or Woods or Clark or, soon, Flagg … so we cannot know what drives their attraction.
And it’s a dangerous game for ESPN to pretend otherwise.
We’re not naive enough to pretend rɑce-based thinking doesn’t exist in sports; there is surely a sociological study of this worth undertaking. But freeing somebody named Peter Rosenberg, whose main beat is pro wrestling, to lead the scientific discussion?
That ain’t it.
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