Credit where credit is due, Big Ticket first turned me on to Robson's Timberwolves "
On the Ball" blog over at The Rake. Now Slam has great
two part interview up. My hands-down favorite beat writer this year.
Born and raised in Mass FYI, for those that prefer the "hometown boy makes good" angle.
Here's a hot potato:
"SLAM: Are there instances where you think race impacts the actual game?
Robson: Good question. I think that when Kermit Washington punched Rudy Tomjanovich I was really pleased to see how little that got turned into hysteria. That’s a classic fear mongering scenario, you know? To be honest with you, if it happened today, I really don’t know what would happen. Cause this nation is pretty ****ed up sometimes, sometimes even worse than it was before. But when I think of things like that, I think “Maybe not.” Is it coincidental that most of the people that K.G. has had beef with in the last ten years have been white? I don’t know. It’s not for me to say, quite frankly, but I notice it. The Joel Pryzbillas and the Pau Gasols and Zaza Pachulias, there’s a dozen of them. This is kind of like when Wally and Juwan Howard got into something. Howard was clearly - from what we saw - as much of an aggressor. At the very least it was mutually bad. And K.G. said something like “I understand Juwan, Wally can get under your skin…” Again, I see this. Am I gonna call K.G. a racist? No ****ing way! I don’t even know, cause Wally is a jerk. [inaudible] I know that to be true. I shouldn’t…My experience with Wally Sczerbiak is he pretends to answer questions, but doesn’t really answer questions and if you try to make him answer questions, he gets very perturbed very fast and that facade flies away. On the basis of that I call Wally a jerk and on the basis of a lot of people disliking him for whatever reason. But the point is, race is always the elephant in the room and when most of the people in the room are black, it’s just a different kind of elephant. But it’s still an elephant. You can’t separate race out of the conversation, but - this is a total cliche, yet I happen to believe it - it’s no better or worse than it is in society. What happens in sports, what happens on the bandstand, what happens in the military or wherever, at the very least is the same if not a little bit better than what happens in the street. "
But you just ought to read the rest.
Topic: Britt Robson / For the Aspiring Basketball Beat Writers Out There (Read 3212 times)