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Tonya
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Posted on Friday, January 12, 2007 - 10:44 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

BY ERIC BARROW




Allen Iverson

The NBA despises itself.

It can barely stand to look in the mirror anymore. It hates what's staring back.

It hates its walk. It hates its talk. It hates its hip. It hates its hop. It turns its own stomach. It wants a nose job. It wants a lip reduction. It wants bleach. It wants charm school.

The NBA is desperate for a nip. It's fiending for a tuck and David Stern won't rest until he gets one.

But I'm sorry Mr. Stern, it's not your father's NBA anymore, hasn't been for some time now. You're fighting something more powerful than even you. You're fighting a culture that pervades the league and will for a generation to come, and you better get used to it.

It's in Allen Iverson. It's in Carmelo Anthony. It's in Ron Artest. Its smack-talk and back-talk. It's brims to the side. It's do-rags. It's cornrows. All the dress codes and league fines won't change what's already ingrained. Hip-hop and the NBA are one.

It's as simple as black and white: The black sport marketing itself to the white audience, the killer crossover, as old as Little Richard.

The NBA is doing all it can to make its sport more palatable to White America, been doing it ever since Michael Jordan left the stage and the One-on-One Generation grabbed the spotlight, the NBA looking to put a big, fat smiley face on the angry black athlete.

This past week Darrent Williams of the NFL's Denver Broncos was gunned down outside a club after celebrating the birthday of Denver Nuggets star Kenyon Martin. What's to blame? A hip-hop run rampant in the Mile-High city - which is being predicted by some to only worsen with the arrival of Denver's newest citizen, Iverson, and the corrosive influence that follows him.

But why is the violence associated with hip-hop only the NBA's problem? This past year alone, eight Cincinnati Bengals were arrested on charges ranging from driving under the influence to battery to burglary. Where's the NFL's alarm bells? Where's the outrage that the league is raging out of control? Does the NFL hate itself? Does it hate what it's becoming?

Not one bit.

How about the NHL, where the Rangers' Brendan Shanahan picks a fight with known enforcer Donald Brashear and is regaled for defending his team? Or how about Isiah Thomas getting the rack at that same Garden two weeks earlier for calling for a hard foul on the Nuggets, who'd had their starting five on the court in the waning minutes of a 20-point blowout?

Why does the NBA have this inferiority complex? Why does it hate what it's become? Are crime and fisticuffs exclusive to basketball, making this all-out push for a kinder, gentler NBA necessary? Hardly.

It's time for the NBA to stand up for its players instead of cracking down on them. Stern acts more like a single parent trying to teach a house full of unrulies how to walk, talk and dress than a commissioner. He even has to tell them to go to school for a year, leaving barrels of cash on the table.

A year at Duke will make you a better man. A year at Georgetown will do the same, just like two did for Iverson.

Maybe the NBA would like itself again if it embraced its culture instead of stifling it. It is, after all, the culture that sells the video games, and the baggy shorts and oversized jerseys and puts money in everybody's pocket.

Maybe it's time to embrace what the NBA is: Black and proud.


http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/story/486299p-409450c.html
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Nels
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 03:25 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Stern's a Jew. Hmmmm... $$$
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Doberman23
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 10:39 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

iversons an asshole he's basketball version of terrell owens, that's why the nuggets will suck even when carmelo "sucker punch" anthony comes back. and some of those spoiled ass athletes needed to get cracked down on, it's too many young kids looking up to them and wether they like it or not, they are role models. and as far as the bengals situation all of those players where suspended without pay and when you play only 16 games when you miss games due to suspension the financial impact is much different than when you play 82 games, not to mention one of those players lost his job for good. if iverson didn't have basketball skills who would be in jail ... he should be thanking god every day that he is great at playing a sport he would've been playing in jail. another thing to, most of those athletes don't listen to hip hop they listen to g-rap ... mos def, roots, talib kwali is hip hop.

and hockey has lost it's spot on being one of america's top 4 sports to nascar, the nba has made some stupid rules but i don't blame stern from not wanting them to fall from grace.
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Chrishayden
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 10:42 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Last time I looked the brothers were still playing and still making that big moolah.

The players may be black but the audience is white--only they can pay them big prices. And Stern as a white man, probably has to listen to the others in them big meetings ride him and ask him why he can't hem those bucks up
(Another thing black people need to understand is that the ruling class of America is racist to the core)

So he's gonna have to act like massa. If the brothers don't like it, they can quit--I doubt it.
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Fortified
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 10:56 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

The predominantly white audience at games is never going to change. When it gets down to it, it's all about the game. But the game hasn't been the same. You have a few explosive players (Wade, Lebron, Kobe), but the rest are all inconsistent, washed-up. Stern needs to focus on talent, not off-court attire and activities.
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Chrishayden
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 11:02 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

My sympathies are with them, but they ain't got no power.

He got to show the other white men he can control those bucks--they're flashing cash and bling, getting into trouble with the law, running white women, looking like a bunch of characters from a police lineup.

Look for all the gang stuff to disappear in the next few years.

After all, they are, in many cases, millionaires and businessmen, not corner boyz.
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Abm
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 11:07 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

The issue is as much GENERATIONAL as it is racial. NBA players are mostly 20-something. While it's audience (at least those with the $$$) is 40-something.

But the KIDS of that audience are COOL with the look and style of the players. All you have to do is look at who buys MOST of the grittier hip-hop music & culture (See MTV) to see evidence of that.
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Fortified
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 11:10 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hmmmmm...I wonder what will become of them (hip-hop artists, the culture) when white boys no longer find hip-hop cool?
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Chrishayden
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 11:16 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hmmmmm...I wonder what will become of them (hip-hop artists, the culture) when white boys no longer find hip-hop cool?

What happened to Dixieland Jazz musicians? Swing musicians? Rock n rollers? The Temptations?

It's out on the Oldies Circuit.
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Doberman23
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 11:20 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

hip hop artist will continue to transition into actors, the culture will change it always does, that's what it's supposed to do. just like disco there will be something new ready to replace rap. black people don't let white people make decisions as what's cool though, we never have ... we decide what is cool, it is only up to them if they want to buy into what we do to make it main stream.
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Chrishayden
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 11:30 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

we decide what is cool

Yeah. We ask white folks if it is cool and then we decide it is
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Doberman23
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 11:45 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

white people aren't very original when it comes to things being hip or not. rock n roll, blues, r&b, rap... you name it and it's usually started from black people. that's the way it's always been and that's the way it will always be.
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Chrishayden
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 11:49 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

How many Eminem albums you got?
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Abm
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 11:55 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Fortified: "You have a few explosive players (Wade, Lebron, Kobe), but the rest are all inconsistent, washed-up. Stern needs to focus on talent, not off-court attire and activities."


I agree though I think the issue is less about talent than it is SKILL. I think many in the NBA are potentially vituoso pianists who've had too FEW good piano lessons.
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Doberman23
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 11:58 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

eminem is rapper who has adopted rap culture not the other way around.

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Abm
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 12:04 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Fortified,

MOST professional singers and musicians either move on to a more modest and traditional lifestyles and forms of employment. Or they die poor, embittered and destitute.

I expect very much SAME for hip-hop artists.
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Yvettep
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 03:06 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hmmmmm...I wonder what will become of them (hip-hop artists, the culture) when white boys no longer find hip-hop cool?

That is a very valid question. The big$$ in Hip Hop comes from White American and international audiences--not Black Americans.

But will there be another Big Thing originating from White culture? A new wildly popular boy band? The next "grunge" movement? A new British invasion? Time will tell, I guess.
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Yukio
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 03:06 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

black folk still listen to music and are fans...this is similar discussion that we can have about jazz music...black folk keep creating and whites lags behind as creators but are steadfast as consumers of our creations...
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Robynmarie
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 05:08 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Allen Iverson is gorgeous. Quit hatin'
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Enchanted
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 05:19 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

I tell you one thing he sure is Robynmaire and that's NO joke people get on my nerves with all the hate around here.
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Robynmarie
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 08:15 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

^^^
that's right.
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Cynique
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Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 10:42 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Allan Iverson does have a good work ethic. Out there on the court, he gives 110 Percent. Face it, basketball is the black's man's revenge, just like the strain of diarrhea tourists catch in Mexico is called Montezuma's revenge. Payback for past slights at the hands of white men! And in the case of the NBA, payback pays good. And since Rap has been accepted by the music world as a legitimate music genre, when it goes out of style its body of work might be elevated to classical status, available for those who fancy it or are curious about it. But I wonder if it will ever go out of style? It used to be only certain people could rap but now even little kids know how to free-style and rhyme. It's like how every Hawaiian female knows how to dance the hula, almost from the time she can walk. It's part of their culture.
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Ntfs_encryption
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Posted on Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - 03:59 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

"Allan Iverson does have a good work ethic. Out there on the court, he gives 110 Percent."

Interesting you said that Ms. Cynique. A good friend of mine and I were discussing Iverson today. To show you how out of step I am with this season (I was too caught up with football), I didn't know he was traded until I saw him in that Nuggets uniform. I didn't know the 76'ers had traded him. Even though I have no use for the cornrow/tattooed thug look, he is a great athlete and he does, as you said, play at a 110% level. As I said, I can't get into the thug look but I heard some very good things about him. I'm sure he will be a great asset to the Nuggets.

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Abm
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Posted on Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - 09:39 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Ntfs,

Iverson is a remarkably talented athlete. And he plays hard. But there's MORE to being a championship player than that.

Part of the book on Iverson is he hates to practice. And since he was the leader of the Sixers, he set a bad example and tone on the team. Because it's very difficult to establish the order, discipline and commaraderie that is CRUCIAL to creating a winning team when your BEST player appears to not care about such.

However, Michael Jordan (and Bulls teammate Scottie Pippin) is reputed to have RELIGIOUSLY practiced and worked out. And that SHOWED via how successful he and the Bulls were.
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Cynique
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Posted on Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - 01:41 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Well, the Sixers did get to the NBA finals thanks to Iverson's drive and will to win. Michael Jordan intimidated all of his teammates and did as he pleased not to mention entering into a secret liaisan with his coach Phil Jackson. Not exactly a sterling example of a team player. He had the killer instinct and that's what made him invincible. And of course, there was that infamous incident when Scottie Pippin sulked and pouted over being benched during one of the play-off games and refused to participate in the time-out huddle.

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