The NBA needs more White Chocolate.
Jason Williams, even though he’s not as big a household name, is more of an ambassador for the league than Michael Jordan or Larry Bird. Williams is bridging the gap between how we look at basketball and how we should look at basketball.
Since the dawn of those “Like Mike” commercials in the early 90s, basketball has become the only sport in which everybody, regardless of color, thinks they’re Michael, Magic and Bird all rolled into one.
But for some reason, we continue to conceptualize basketball in terms of color. We constantly assign particular players to racial categories based on how they play. For example, take Ray Allen. Allen has been, and will always be, a sharp-shooting guard.
And for that reason, we say that he plays “white.” Subconsciously, we’ve accepted this niche system, a system that says African-American players are flashy and dunk, while white players are plain and shoot. Logically, though, this doesn’t hold up, because these widely held assumptions aren’t based on any criteria other than our own subjective notions of who ought to play a certain way.
What we all fail miserably to realize is that basketball is universal. There’s no “white” or “black” way to play it.
That’s why White Chocolate is the revolutionary prophet of the NBA, because he’s unlike any other player I’ve seen to date. He saunters down a fine line between racial borders, rewriting the white basketball archetype Larry Bird created.
Playing with the flashiness and pizazz many people have reserved for African-Americans, yet maintaining his racial essence by launching 3-pointers like J.J.
Redick or unselfishly dishing to teammates like John Stockton, J-Will is where the ‘hood and high fashion meet.’ He’s the GQ of basketball — a mixture of Rucker Park and the Naismith Hall of Fame.
Except he’s not. Or, rather, he shouldn’t be.
To understand what I’m getting at, you must understand the basketball origin myth – how the game was created by a naturalized American, James Naismith, but racialized over the last several decades because it’s been overwhelmingly dominated by African-Americans. Close to 75 percent of the league is African-American.
Thus, people thought, and still think, that in order to break into the so-called Nothing but Brothers Association, players must mirror the African-American style of play — if they have a style — especially if the players are white. And then Bird arrived on the NBA scene and gave Caucasians the Great White Hope. Dennis Rodman and Isiah Thomas grumbled about inverse tokenism, Rodman calling Bird “very overrated” and Thomas saying that the Birdman received MVPs at an alarming rate because of the pigmentation of his skin, sparking outrage from white folks.
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“I think Larry is a very, very good basketball player,” Thomas once said. “He’s an exceptional talent. But I have to agree with Rodman. If he were black, he’d be just another good guy.”
Somewhere along the way, the Bird legend grew. Broadcasters, fans and coaches gushed about his passion for the game after Bird said he would “play for free.” They gave speeches about his unparalleled ability to anticipate plays to the point that he was nicknamed “Kodak” by Bill Fitch. Much was made of his leadership, his basketball IQ and the way the silk wove itself into a net because of Bird’s uncanny shooting ability. Thus, out of all this praise, another dictionary of sports clichés was born — and another “style” of play, somewhat void of flavor and athleticism.
Basketball purists called it fundamentals, and Bird was grounded in the basics of the game. But now we know what that really means. Bird embodied everything “polished” about the game, everything “white” about basketball. While his African-American counterparts had “raw talent” and were “athletic,” Bird was exactly the opposite. Or so it was said.
Fast forward to now.
J-Will has spent a year out of the league helping nurse his wife back to health after a complicated pregnancy, and he again has an opportunity to banish this niche system in place in the NBA. The fact that he signed with the Orlando Magic, considered the anti-African-American team of the NBA since all they do is bomb 3-pointers, is great. He’ll be teamed up with Vince Carter and Dwight Howard.
When you watch him play, keep this in mind. Understand that just because White Chocolate unleashes an array of behind-the-back passes doesn’t mean he plays “black,” and just because he lurks behind the 3-point line, doesn’t mean he plays “white.”
No, White Chocolate symbolizes something greater.
He’s simply an athlete playing an undiscriminatory game.
