What Happened to the White American NBA Star?

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Rex Chapman, I love him, jumps like a brother and shoots like your mother.

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So, Rex, I read your book, your new book.

It's great.

Yeah.

Yeah,

you're unconvinced of my.

I'm skeptical of anything I do.

But the thing I wanted to talk to you about today, the reason I brought you in, is not because I wanted to just rehash the whole book.

Good.

I can sense the relief already.

But there's another topic that I've been wanting to do on this show forever now.

And I realized as I was reading your book, It's Hard for Me to Live With Me, a memoir, that you're also the perfect person to do that topic with, which has long fascinated me.

Okay.

And so this is a topic about a critically endangered species.

The World Wildlife Fund calls it that, at least.

Like I'm looking at this list, right?

There's the Sumatran orangutan.

There's the black rhino.

And right there is the white American NBA star.

Are you down to help me?

Are you down to help me?

Yes.

Are you down to help me help you?

Yes, yes, I am.

I'm dying to talk about this, actually.

Okay, so what you should know about Rex Chapman is that he himself was a would-be savior in this way.

He was a rare athletic specimen, a real great white hope at 6'4 with a 40-inch vertical leap, who got drafted by the Charlotte Hornets out of the University of Kentucky at number eight overall.

But the reason that Rex did not become the next white American NBA star is a deeply personal story.

It's a story about not just expectations, but also addiction, crucially.

And that part of his story is chronicled in his aforementioned new book, which you should absolutely go and check out.

But our story here is about how once upon a time, a time even long before Rex,

white America did not have to be this thirsty for basketball representation.

In 1957, for instance, 93% of the NBA was white.

93%.

But over time, of course, that percentage plummeted and plummeted all the way down to less than 18%

last year.

There is now no more comically obvious place where a white guy feels more like a minority than in the NBA.

Because look, you're going to watch March Madness this week and you're going to see a whole bunch of white dudes playing basketball all month.

And some of them are good, real good.

But none of them.

are projected to be NBA stars.

Not like Rex Chapman.

In fact, it has been 10 years since a white American, Kevin Love, got named to an all-NBA team, which designates him as one of the 15 best players in the sport.

All of which actually makes me wonder who the best one even is

right now.

Do you have the answer to that question?

The best white American NBA player?

Yes.

I thought I did the other day.

Two come right to mind, but I'm probably missing who the biggest one is.

It's not an easy question.

I show Austin Reeves and Tyler Hero, but who am I missing?

So some two good answers on the list.

I think right now, Chet Holmgren.

Chet Holmgren.

Definitely up there.

Yeah.

Up there too.

Definitely.

But the point is, you got to think.

And it's, in fact, like one of those things where you got to like.

Who else is out there?

Well, this is the thing.

We're going to Google right now, Rex Chapman, white American NBA players who is best.

This is a list from rancor.com, a deeply scientific website, of course, that I've just found, updated quite recently.

Here it is.

Number one, Chet Holmgren.

Yep.

Number two, Tyler Hero, Miami Heat.

Number three, Austin Reeds.

Okay.

I was

just mentioned.

Number four, Alex Caruso.

He's right up there, and I could have him at the top.

Could have him at the top.

Alex Crusoe.

I'm in a fantasy football league with Alex Crusoe.

Great guy.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Alex Caruso, the thing you got to know about him is his fantasy football team.

has made more transactions than anyone else in the league because he, like he is on the court, is always grinding, always trying as hard as humanly possible.

Love Alex Caruso.

And then number five, I'm like,

I don't even know if this

gets into the complexity of race, I guess, of the concept.

Jaime Hakez Jr.

We're really

love him.

Yeah, let's do some colorism talk.

Let's throw him in there, sure, I guess.

This is getting complicated, but also illustrative of the difficulty.

Number six, age 33 now, Gordon Hayward.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah, Hornets.

Number seven, Max Strus.

Max Struss is a nice player.

Number eight, Walker Kessler.

Yep.

The Jazz.

Now, what I want to point out, though, is that, okay, let's be real.

This list,

if you were to assemble this as a national team.

Yeah.

Oh, it gets beat.

It doesn't get into the field.

Doesn't make the field.

However, when you look at the actual all-NBA roster right now, Russia, and you look around, it's not that there aren't white guys.

They're just not Americans.

Yeah, they're not American guys.

Joker, Luca,

right on down the line.

Dude, I mean, so before we get to theories as to why, I do want to establish just the arc of history here and how you fit into it for people who are just unfamiliar with how this cause came to be.

Back in the day, the idea of there's an NBA star and he's a white American guy was not terribly uncommon.

Right.

So in the white American NBA star Hall of Fame, literally in the Hall of Fame, I suppose, too, who's up there that just comes to mind immediately in terms of the days of your?

Oh, Larry.

Larry's right up there.

Bill Walton,

Brent Berry's dad.

Rick Berry.

Rick Berry, who played against my dad.

My dad said held him to 38 one night.

Pistol Pete.

Jerry West.

Bob Cooze.

Yeah, those guys.

When you were growing up, did you idolize any of those

guys?

I didn't.

I just didn't.

In fact, I disliked Larry.

Larry Burr.

Yeah, because he didn't run and jump.

I want to get to you as a kid growing up because the point at which it becomes obvious to you that you being a white kid who can do the things you can do on a basketball court, the point at which that became clearly an object of fascination was when?

I was probably about 16 and a guy came up to me and we were playing a road game and I was coming out of the locker room.

I was a sophomore and he was a big gruff looking guy and he kind of put his arm on my shoulder and he looked over at me.

He said, he said, man, I love watching you play.

You play just like an N-word,

but you get to be white.

And there was a bunch of adults standing around,

and I was very uncomfortable.

But then nobody said anything to him.

And then when I got on the bus, I thought, well, that's the worst thing I've ever heard.

Because in it,

he's praising me on one hand.

He's saying, this is a fan of yours now.

now.

You know, you play just like one of them,

but you get to be one of us.

I think he thought I should be happy about that while he's demeaning every one of my friends who were black.

All the people that were dissuading me from, you know, hanging out with black people.

Yeah, can you talk to that?

Speak to that in Kentucky.

I got a lot of N-word lover growing up.

I'd go to away games.

You know, I'd come out after games and people would say that to me.

You guys are coming to the game where all my teammates are black.

What are you talking about?

Because I room with a black guy?

Because the girl that I like to kiss is black?

What is it?

I don't understand other than you think you're better than they are.

And so that has bothered me since I was a teenager.

Well, you just described something fascinating, right?

Which is a teenager, a kid even at this point, is learning, wow, the thing that makes me feel great, playing basketball and being loved for it, is now also being tainted by this notion that maybe my fans are

rooting for me for the wrong reason.

Rex Chapman has all the abilities of any high school god in the country.

He comes from good bloodlines.

His father is the coach of Kentucky Wesley, Rex Pinner.

Apollo 6'5 guard Rex Chapman, the featured story on Al McGuire's preseason special.

And that's the way it was for this 1985-86 Apollo basketball team.

Having to deal with unbelievable hype, possibly the most publicized player in the history of Kentucky high school basketball being counted upon to lead and be a key part of the 1985.

I want to get just to the idea, right,

of

you in a dunk contest.

Yeah.

Because when you talk about the way you played and how it was special and how it was that people were cheering you, not just because that guy is good, but that guy plays a way that we white people

have felt like we do not have access to.

Yeah, which is weird.

They had the access I did.

Not the same genes, but, you know.

The dunk.

The dunk.

The dunk as this

magical

superpower.

I've told my mom about it before.

I've said, nobody gives a shit, mom.

The only reason they care is because I could dunk it.

That's the only reason anybody gives a shit about any of this.

It's because I could dunk it.

The first first connection you make with just casual fans who are showing up and realizing, holy shit, this kid can jump.

That was fun, though.

Let's talk about the job.

It feels like a superpower, kind of.

Yeah.

And I could jump so high.

Like, I could,

I say that.

I could jump so high.

No, I could jump.

It's true.

It's objectively

tape of this Rex.

But there were times I would get a good jump

and would scare me.

I got hurt all the time because, too, it's how I played.

and I really felt obligated to put on a show.

The only way that I could really play was to jump and run and expose myself athletically during every game.

And there'd be those couple, two or three times during a game, you'd just bounce up and shoot one over an outstretched arm, and the crowd goes crazy.

And, you know, so I knew I could do some things that they didn't normally see.

But to me, I was trying to keep up with all my peers.

And

to the fans, I probably looked like, I couldn't see it at the time, but I probably looked like

a novelty kind of this thing.

I went and watched the tape of you and the McDonald's All-American System.

Oh, God.

Oh, okay.

And one of the spectacular efforts turned in by Rex Chapman from Owensboro, Kentucky.

Look at that flip behind the back.

Oh, kids, listen to that Garpigo Bob Gibbons in Sunny Hill.

Perfect.

But unfortunately, I think he missed his first one.

Unbelievable.

He flips it around his back, a reverse slam.

That's scintillating, sizzling, and they're going to love him in Kentucky.

I tried to do some stupid dunk that, you know, I hadn't practiced or something like that.

And, of course, you didn't even practice dunks at the time.

Dunk contest was kind of new.

But I missed a dunk, and a guy named Chris Brooks won it.

Howard Garfinkel, they wanted to give me the trophy so bad.

They did.

And I missed my first first dunk.

So they couldn't, like, you had to make it.

So, anyway.

Right.

The political system was dying to make you white kids dunk contests.

They were dying to.

But in the process, it was still impressive to go back and see, wow, Rex really did get up there.

Yeah.

No, I could, I could touch like 11 and a half feet up on the square.

It's crazy.

It's crazy.

But to your point, there is a spotlight on that demographic of player, player really

good at basketball and also clearly white.

Clearly white.

And then when I go back to all my college stuff and the college years, I can say that all six schools were greatly considered up until yesterday when I made my decision.

However, one school seemed to have everything I was looking for, the whole package.

That's why I decided to further my academics and athletics at the University of Kentucky.

If you were a really good player in college, or maybe just good,

and you go into college early and you play and you do well, you can, you know, they kind of latch on like me.

I was on every cover of every, you know, thing as a freshman and sophomore.

And Danny Manning and David Robinson were easily the best players in the country at that time.

They were juniors and seniors.

I get it.

But what are we talking about here?

You know,

I get it.

I'm good, but I'm not them.

I had older black teammates who I idolized, and at the time I was in Kentucky, I never thought I was our best player.

I thought Ed Davender was our best player by a lot.

I'm getting all of these accolades and my eruption at you know, starting lineup.

Mine's louder than everyone else's.

I watch another freshman, Kevin.

Showtime

There's Muhammad Ali, the champion, who's watching a future heavyweight.

And Rex Chapman,

the greatest of all time.

Chapman's saying, I want to be in that same breath, huh?

It made me feel very bad at times.

I'm trying to be the best teammate I can be.

The best part about all of it, my teammates,

they...

That might have been why we ended up losing because they really empathized with me somehow.

They, uh, or sympathized, I should say.

It's just, it's just weird.

It's weird being like the best white player on a team.

I think there is a weird loneliness to it.

You got to really have the personality to be like, hey, fuck you, man.

You know, I'm coming in here and

I'm taking, we're going to beat you guys, and I'm taking all your girlfriends, too.

I don't tell this story often because it, but it, it leads me in.

They knew what was going on.

Twice when I was in college, I don't know.

I'm going to tell you something here that I don't know if you know.

In the South,

you know, we get black guys that come in to our campuses and they date white girls.

What?

So, for those only listening, I've just fallen upon a fainting couch.

How dare you suggest the race?

Here's the other thing: the coaches didn't care about that,

and so to me, that I felt very,

I didn't understand.

However,

those girls' parents felt very much like my coaches.

So twice when I was in college,

I went with two different teammates to this, to the girls' hometown with them for the weekend.

to pretend to be her boyfriend while we were in front of her parents.

We might hold hands for a second, walk in the room, And then at dinner, we'd sit beside one another.

And it's so sad.

It makes me want to cry every time because the girl just wants

her parents to meet this good guy that she's met who plays, you know, basketball, who, who is in college doing great things.

Your friend.

My friend.

And we're having to do this.

Now,

Did we have fun doing it?

Was there something kind of exciting about it?

Yeah.

But

we felt trapped.

This is not an uncommon thing in the South.

It may not be, it may be everywhere.

I don't know, but I was raised there.

And that's how things were.

And

the younger people, we just, it was something we couldn't talk about.

I mean, this is the context for a topic that fundamentally is also to me

like funny and fun, right?

So this is the trick of this topic, right?

It's like,

it's about trash talk.

It's about a majority feeling like a minority.

Yeah.

Yes.

And it's also about the context of America, which is deeply fed up, as you've just outlined.

We could go into the political aspect of this, but I don't really want to.

If you're looking to add something special to your next celebration, try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

This smooth, flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection, giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip.

Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Learn more at remymartin.com.

Remy Martin Cognac, Veen Champain, 14 Alcohol by Volume 40 by Remy Control, USA Incorporated, New York New York, 1738, Centaur Design.

Please drink responsibly.

I want to get to the, you know, to the comparisons when you're at Kentucky in terms of just like scouts.

Because it's one thing to be like, oh, wow, like high school prospect, super, super exciting.

And then you're actually now among guys who are headed to the league.

And what are scouts saying about you?

So very interesting.

I never thought about a scout watching me at Kentucky the entire time I was in school because I never thought about leaving.

I just didn't.

And, you know, again, there are seven, eight, nine McDonald's All-Americans on my team, and those guys are juniors and seniors.

They're coming to scout them.

I know that they're there.

I never thought about them because I was not thinking about coming out of college.

So that was something I never,

you know, it was not a pressure I had because I just kind of left school and that was it.

I felt like I was good enough to play after I'd been in college for two years and had played on the USA team with Danny Manning and David Robinson and Pooh Richardson and Ricky Berry, you know, guys that were going to be drafted in the first round this upcoming draft.

I started on that team.

And I could tell at the time there aren't 10 better players than I am in the country, even though I'm by far the youngest, because at the time you didn't come out of school unless you were Magic or Michael.

Yeah, the four-year player was the default.

Yeah, and I didn't really want to leave.

You know, I thought about transferring to Louisville, which I thought, well, they'll kill me if I do that here.

But then I just left.

Who are the comps you were getting?

Well, it was always Jerry West and Pete.

But then I remember.

You're a 6'4, 185-pound-ish

guard who can jump, and you're getting guys

don't.

They asked me who I thought, and it was, I was, it was Gene Xu who asked me, and I was completely caught off guard by it.

I had never heard who's your comparison.

What?

What are you talking about?

And we're sitting in the meeting.

They had like the third pick in the draft.

And who's your comparison?

And I said, oh, I don't know.

And also, I didn't watch a lot of NBA because we didn't, it wasn't that big a thing.

We get one game a week.

League passed it down.

I knew a couple of teams.

I said,

Byron Scott.

And he was like, okay.

And I thought,

and then I said, I said, and you know, my idol is Daryl Griffith.

Here we go.

Here we go.

Oh!

Oh, oh.

He had his moment.

Philly doesn't like that.

Daryl Griffith slams one in, and it's a 12-point lead for Louisville as Dr.

Duncanstein performs.

If you look at mine and Daryl's career stats, they're almost identical.

So I really tried to play like Daryl.

I tried to idolize his game.

So, those are two black guys for the game.

Yeah, those are two black guys.

So, that was,

but that Gene Xu didn't poo-poo it.

He was like, okay, I can see that.

I thought, all right, well, if he can see that, that gives me confidence.

Yeah.

Because those guys are my heroes.

Right.

Okay.

So, but your heroes are guys who don't look like you.

Right.

Well, I never

pigmented.

I never saw anybody growing up that played like I did, I guess,

that was living or active, still active.

I'm trying to think of the older Danny Ainge.

Did he jump?

Yes.

Really?

Yes, he didn't jump like I did, but he dunked.

Danny was a great athlete.

He's bigger than I am.

A great athlete.

Great athlete.

Great basketball player.

He wasn't as springy and bouncy.

He wasn't in contests the way that you were.

No, no, no, but he could dunk.

Brent Berry could dunk.

Now, Brent's after me, but before

the point, I guess,

I was kind of one of the first guys.

Yeah, like in the modern game.

Yes.

Danny Ainge, you're grading on a hell of a curve to bring him into the

verticality conversation.

There are guys, Todd Lichty, if you remember Todd Lichty, you would not

bounce.

Went to Stanford, played in Denver for a little while.

Tom Gugliata later on Googs could bounce.

I mean, goes up and catches it.

Yeah, let me think of older guys.

Older guys than me would be hard just because I just think this is the reality of it, Rex.

Yeah.

At some point, we're talking about, yes, stereotype and convention, but also a reality that you go through the list and it's like,

not a lot of people who look like you can do what you do, which is why your perspective when you get to the NBA is so fascinating to me.

You know, part of my plight, personal plight, is that

I didn't want to be known.

as just the dunker and all of that.

And then when we were talking about Pistol Pete and

Jerry west

i was nothing close to them i didn't come close to them and that that's right to me that's a failure like it to me steve nash my best friend jason kidd one of my best friends

none of them the great state guards maybe yeah but none of them jason maybe were as highly regarded as i was in as a freshman and college sophomore jay jason was you're drafted eighth overall but i'm just saying as a college you know mcdonald's all-american parade all-american those guys became Hall of Famers.

They're my teammates.

When we were playing, I didn't like

Steve came off the bench behind me for two years.

Like

that, that those guys, you know, there's part of my personal ego that, you know, I'm a first-round pick.

I should be an all-star every year.

And if I'm not an all-star, it's a failure.

And that's how I kind of, I look back at my, my, all my stuff.

You know, Magic and Isaiah, and I'd see those guys and Michael and all those guys.

They always gave me great love.

I think they felt like I was kind of this new little toy they had that was kind of, what is this that we have here?

But I will say, as a kid grew up in the 90s,

I can verify objectively as a non-white and non-black person.

The way you played was I just played like I played, though.

I didn't, I wasn't trying to be black.

I was just playing.

Monkey Pogue takes it from the attacking zone.

Monkey looking for somebody to give it to him to give to it Chapman.

Nice one.

Slammed up.

That's a great play.

I didn't think that 6'4 guard could glide like that.

Oh, yeah, he's a curious.

Del and Muggsy and I are on the way to a game.

Del Curry, Mugsy Bogues, and I are on our way to a game

in 1988.

We're on our way to the ball game and we're listening to sports radio.

Some caller calls in and says, Rex Chapman, I love him.

Jumps like a brother and shoots like your mother.

And we started.

I was shooting like 18% for three or whatever it was.

You know,

okay.

Well, listen, I think it's, it's understandable for you to be labeled as one thing, the white guy who dunks, and then you realize as a guy who's also like a smart basketball player, you realize that's not going to get me

into all-star games.

Like it gave me all-star weekend,

but not to the all-star game necessarily.

And so.

From the marketing perspective, right, as you're struggling with this label, I imagine imagine the NBA.

I didn't do it.

I didn't do it the first year.

The dunk contest.

Yeah.

They asked me to do it every single year I was in the league except my last year.

And I was not even a good athlete at that point.

But they asked me every single year.

They also asked me for the first five or six years to do the three-point contest.

I didn't even,

I didn't have a high enough percentage.

They didn't do it on that back at the time.

They just wanted me to do it.

And I told them, absolutely not.

I'm not going to the all-star Game until I'm in the All-Star game.

And I wanted to go home for the weekend,

rookie year, to Kentucky, to the bars where my teammate friends were and stuff.

And

I keep saying no to them.

And then the second year,

the All-Star game's in Miami.

And the league made me do the dunk contest.

Looks like he's going to try something similar.

Yes, Rex Chapman is 39-inch vertical leak.

He gets the bounce and the reverse two-handed jam.

So I did it.

I had a good time.

And then, all right, I thought that was done.

The next year, the game is in Charlotte, and I can't.

I can't

bail out.

They make me do it again.

Off the bounce, the reverse jam, Rex Chapman.

Now there's timing, there's power, there's finesse.

You've got all the creativity, so you've got all factors to the cross.

You've got the hometown crowd.

Now you'll see when he makes the catch that he's way up over the top of the rim and he puts it through very easily.

Right there.

I did it again.

Not my best dunks that year, came in third.

And then after that, I was done.

And they kept asking me, kept putting pressure on.

And every year I just said, no,

I'm just not doing it.

There's something

hilarious and fundamentally sad at the same time about the guy who's like ashamed in a dunk contest.

Oh, yeah.

It's the contest.

Oh, that's kind of a bit, right?

It's just like the ultimate showcase for ego and unapologetic athleticism.

Now, look, there's something in it, you know, obviously it's a stroke to my ego.

Again, I said it earlier.

It does, there is something about it that feels like a superpower, you know, and

and also when that's gone you feel like that's gone and and for me that was a big part of my identity i see i have people every other day ask me can you still dunk no i'm 56.

i tried it at 50 i did it at 50 and i came down and i hurt my back and was

up for about six months and i said that's it

but i still have people to do that and then for my son who grew up playing basketball was a good player went to ball state and played everybody has asked him, you jump like your dad?

He does not.

He does not.

In this case, he literally shoots maybe like his mother.

Yeah, right.

But no, yeah, right.

Exactly right.

So I want to get to now just the arc of this, right?

So, as a marketing concern, the NBA wants you as many places it can get you, as many dunk contests it can have.

Rex Chapman, it wants to inject Rex Chapman.

Simultaneous to this, of course, is like the era of, I mean, it's Larry Bird being in some of the most iconic commercials of all time, right?

Against Michael and McDonald's commercial.

What's in the bag?

Lunch, Big Mac, fries.

Play you for it.

You and me for my Big Mac.

First one to miss what does a winner eat

no dunking

Of course him and Magic doing Converse stuff

I heard Converse made a pair of bird shoes for last year's MVP.

Yep, well they made a pair of magic shoes for this year's MVP.

Okay, Magic.

Show me what you got.

The notion of marketing in the NBA.

This must have felt obvious to you why it is that they were trying to make you into a thing.

I remember being,

I'd just come out of school.

I'd hired David Falk as my agent.

This is Michael's agent?

Yeah, Michael, Patrick's agent.

Yeah.

A lot of people there.

So many stars.

Super powerful in the NBA.

Yeah.

And we're talking one day, and I'm in an office.

They got down to like a couple teams, and they were like, well, you know, oh, they'll take him here because, you know, and I was like, take him here because what?

And they were like, well, you know, that you're white, you know, kind of.

I was like, what are you talking about?

They're like, well, Rex, most of the season ticket holders are white and the sponsors are white.

And, you know, the fans are white.

So, you know, people want to come see.

people play that are kind of look like them.

And I was like, are you finging kidding me?

But guess who took me the charlotte hornets brand new team right down there

uh in the bible belt yeah and when i got to charlotte met the owner for the first time and then uh he took me in the basement to his house and

poured me something to drink and said hey rex do you have a black girlfriend

i was 19 or 20 and i was just so tired of hearing this and he immediately went no no no no i don't I don't care.

That's the, you know, I don't care.

It's just, and he said this, it's just, we live down here in the Bible Belt.

Good, God-fearing people don't like that.

And you shouldn't do that out in public.

What year was this?

Would have been my rookie year, so 1988.

So for the record, right?

Stephan had just been born.

He was a baby.

He was six months old.

So that Stefan, by the way, that Rick just mentioned, is Stefan Curry, as in his aforementioned friend and teammate, Del's son, Steph Curry, who was born, yes, in 1988.

But I am also jumping here to point out that in the year 2000, a dozen years after Rex's meeting with that Hornets owner, another white NBA player, a first-rounder too, named Mark Madsen, who's out of Stanford, he was going through something similar to Rex during a pre-draft interview that he had, it turns out, which he later described to HBO's Real Sports.

And Madsen's conversation was with an NBA general manager who said to me, Mark, you had a great workout.

Another thing that's going to help you in this league is that you're white.

And he said, 20, 30 years ago, teams were mostly white and they were looking for good black players.

He said, now teams are mostly black.

They're looking for good white players.

When I heard that, it was a little bit upsetting.

Number one, I believe in my own ability as a player.

Number two,

if an organization makes a decision based on skin color, that's a negative.

Yeah, again, a real bizarro world for white dudes, the NBA is.

But I also bring this up to point out that in the quarter century or so since Mark Medson said that on camera, the whiteness of the NBA hasn't simply decreased even further.

It's also changed.

It's globalized.

Because as we mentioned before, and on the show just last week, actually, we talked to Hall of Famer Oscar Schmidt, the international player who inspired the international players who now rule the NBA.

And lots of these international guys, I just want to make this very clear, are white as hell.

What they are not, though, is American.

I mean, here's a partial list, just a partial list of active white European players.

There's DeMontis Abonis, Laurie Marketen, Christops Porzingis, Nikola Busevich.

They're all all stars, by the way, those guys at various points.

And then there's the new wave: there's Operin Shangoon, Franz Wagner, those two future stars, in my estimation, plus Mo Wagner, and Jonas Valentunis, and Bojan Bogdanovich, and Bogdan Bogdanovich, and Yusuf Durkic.

And it goes on, right?

It goes on and on and on.

And I haven't even mentioned, arguably, the two best players in the entire league.

Let's just talk about Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic, right?

Because Nikola Jokic, just for the record here, has about the same vertical leap as me.

Luca

is a different specimen in that regard, but he's also one of the most skilled players you've ever seen this young enter the NBA.

And so these are two guys whose calling card is really-I mean, it's all around offensive skill, you would say.

People used to say that

Dirk was like Larry.

Yes,

I think Luca is like Larry.

Same, just f you, just likes when the opposing crowd taunts him.

And Joker is a seven-foot Steve Nash.

It's just, he's a director out there playing at an advantage mentally every single night,

usually over his opponent.

He out-tricks everyone.

He's big as shit.

He can shoot it.

He makes crazy runners and floaters.

He's a great teammate.

I couldn't be a bigger fan.

Luca's just young and still kind of wild figuring it out, but he is, I mean, he might be the best player on the planet.

There are nights where it certainly feels like you can drop 50 as easily as anybody else.

Oh my God.

Both of those guys.

Both of those guys.

And Joker from playing water polo as a kid.

These guys come from places other than America and are

also clearly white and clearly killing it.

And so when you think about why it is.

I know why it is.

I think I do.

Why is it that America has an endangered species list when it comes to its white NBA stars and the rest of the world is flourishing?

They're not dissuading their kids from playing basketball.

They're not.

We are.

You know, we're, I can't play that sport.

It's not, it doesn't suit your race.

That's not how these guys are brought up.

Right.

I mean, exactly.

So we don't put Billy and Johnny and we put them in soccer and we put them in baseball and we put them in lacrosse and tennis and everything else.

Basketball, that's for them.

It's not for our type.

That's fed up.

The other thing, they know time and score.

They know the possession.

They know everything because they've been coached extremely hard from a very young age.

And if they talk back or if they gave any lip or if they this or that, no, fuck you.

Sit down.

You're not going to play.

They don't coddle.

their

AAU aged kids in Europe.

Guys are not coddled.

Guys are not coddled playing professional ball in Europe.

So when European players come over here now, especially when you can't hold and grab like you can, they feel like it's easier to play in this league because more freedom of movement.

Yes, the athletes are better.

The coaching, though, they look at it as, you know, oh, we're not being coached up real hard around here.

And it's kind of more like a vacation for them a little bit from the coaches they played with growing up.

We start coddling, some of us do, start coddling our kids.

And if they don't start on this AAU team, we take them to another AAU team.

And pretty soon that you're making your kid an excuse maker.

And on this point, this point about nurture and not simply nature, I did want to bring in another source who is native to this entire world because Fran Fraschilla is an American who's been working as a college coach and an analyst and an international scout for decades now, including Free Team USA.

And what he's been doing is studying the systems of countries for longer than anybody else that I know.

And what Fran immediately pointed to was exactly that concept, actually,

a system.

Around the world, Latvia, Lithuania, you know, Croatia, Slovenia, it starts genetically, and then it becomes environmental, like how the game is actually taught.

And over here in the States, we teach basketball 100 different ways.

Everybody's an expert.

So we don't have a system like they do in some of the smaller countries around the world.

Serbia, for instance, has fewer than 7 million people.

America has 332 million people.

And so what Fran had been especially curious about was Jokic in specific, his training in Serbia under the tutelage of the late Dehan Milojevic,

the man who had coached Jokic as a pro in Serbia and then went on to be an NBA assistant with the Warriors before he died from a heart attack in January.

I remember he was a great player in Serbia, and then he was Jokic's coach at 16, 17, 18.

And I said, how did you develop him?

And he showed me the drills.

We were in a gym one day, and he showed me the drills.

And I said to myself, these are junior high school drills.

These are basic fundamental drills.

And I'm always been a purist, but the point is these guys who come over, come over here with an incredible

fundamental base.

They happen to be big and they happen to be better athletes than you think.

And then there's one more thing, because on top of all all of that, especially as the Balkans are concerned, this region ripped apart by war, there's also this deeper and to some Americans at least, this almost familiar sort of motive.

What do you have?

You have a basketball court with a ball and you go out and play because it's cheap.

The Jewish players of the 20s and 30s did that in New York and gravitated into the African Americans.

And if you go around Europe, I'm telling you, it's a low-income sport.

And a kid from Belgrade or Zagreb thinks that's their way out.

Being great at anything takes a little bit of sacrificing of sanity in some regard, and they do it differently than we do.

So what we're identifying here is culture.

Okay, if you say so.

No, I mean, but culture, basketball culture,

right?

Like as much as it is, I'm not saying that in Serbia,

Serbian culture is naturally going to produce better NBA players, but the system of basketball seems to.

Now,

all the kids in Europe who were little while those guys were playing know that they too now,

Joker,

Luca, they all can do this.

And they're playing against adults in the Euro league.

They're not in the Euro league.

Most of them are.

They run pro sooner.

Yeah, yeah.

And their leagues are better.

Yeah, it's just, it's crazy just how

whiteness in this way has been transmogrified over to the European continent.

And it's like, wait a minute, this was America's game.

Yeah, what happened?

How can I help

your people, Rex?

The white American NBA star.

I want to be solutions-oriented here because

it's a desert out there, man.

It's almost like you need to...

Every white kid needs to be assigned a black kid or black kid needs to be assigned a white kid at the beginning of school.

And you guys grow up together and you do everything together.

and then we got this stuff.

It's just exposure to each other and being able to

integration.

Integration, basically.

How dare you say that?

Forced integration.

It's just, you know, and starting, starting so young, it's to destroy the myths around what I can't do and what they can't do.

Right.

Right.

It's just,

and we're at such a divide right now, it's, it's hard to see through.

But, you know, I, I honestly believe most people want to get along.

I just don't know if we know how.

Right.

I have another solution.

Okay.

What if you donated your sperm to a Serbian woman?

Oh, well, you'd have to, we'd have to reverse a surgery.

I thought if I got down on my luck too bad, I could just freeze some sperm and go and maybe sell it on the open market in Kentucky.

Yes.

How about that?

I think what I found out today is that the solution to the endangered species that is the white American NBA star being saved is somehow making more Rex Chapmans.

Rex Chapman, the author of It's Hard for Me to Live With Me, a memoir.

Rex, this was a total joy.

Thank you for doing that.

Thanks, Baba.

Always.

As I hover over my keyboard trying to articulate what it is that I found out today, I realize I'm in a bit of a pickle.

Guys, I'm in a pickle because, once again, a serious investigation into a silly topic has brought me to a complicated realization about a far larger thing in American society.

Because I should point out here, representation is not the solution to what ails us.

Not the stuff that's really,

really eating away at the soul of our country.

The stuff that Rex Chabmin was articulating, the injustice of how we treat each other.

Representation, seeing a version of yourself in pop culture, in Hollywood, in comic books, on television, in NBA games.

That stuff isn't going to fix that problem.

But it does matter in a sincere way.

And I should disclose that my favorite thing I ever experienced in sports is Lin sanity.

Because Jeremy Lin was a guy who looked like me, a person I'd never seen before in my lifetime on an NBA floor, doing stuff that I had never had the joy of witnessing.

And I also now understand how it is that there's a zero-sum game around attention and marketing dollars.

And so I also get the frustration of all of the black players who might have thought this novelty is taking stuff off of our table.

It's a parallel, actually, to the way that Rex Chapman's career took off and his guilt about all of that.

And of course, there are many, many, many, many differences between the white American experience and the Asian American experience in the NBA and, of course, in this country in general.

I hope that's needless to say.

But there are also key differences between the white American experience and and the white European experience when it comes to selling jerseys, when it comes to selling burgers and selling sneakers.

It turns out that Americans are not exactly trampling over each other because Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic are endorsing stuff, not the way they did with Larry Bird, much to the chagrin of those corporations.

And so, are they the next Larry Bird?

Well, for that reason, They can never be.

It's the difference between foreign and domestic.

Which brings me all the way around to what it is that I found out today, which is that, yes, I am still very willing to urologically assist Rex Chapman in solving the endangered species issue,

but I'm also

kind of happy

in a weird way that in my favorite sport, at least, the ultimate majority in America

kind of has to feel as thirsty, as longing, as hungry to see see themselves

as the rest of us feel

everywhere else.

All right, I forgot to tell Rex that my dad is a urologist.

I don't know if he'd come out of retirement to do this procedure, but he might consider it because he supports Pablo Torre finds out, like our entire staff,

who include Michael Antonucci, Ryan Cortez, Sam Dawig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Loman, Rachel Miller-Howard, Ethan Schreier, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Chris Tumanello, and Juliet Warren.

Our studio engineering by RG Systems, our post-production by NGW Post, our theme song as always by John Bravo.

You are very welcome from all of us, White America.

We'll talk to you next week.