By David Steele
Have you heard what Milwaukee Bucks center Andrew Bogut said about his fellow NBA players?
If you regularly soak up every newspaper, magazine and major sports Web site you can get your hands on ... you probably have no idea what he said.
Too bad for those news outlets, and too bad for us. What Bogut told a paper in his native Australia two weeks ago (yes, two weeks ago) about the American league in which he plays and the players, most of whom are black, populating it ought to open up another good avenue to discuss the issue most desperately in need of sane discussion: race in American culture.
Yeah, you're right. Who wants to talk about that? Better to talk around it. Or, if we do talk about it, to shriek and shout and curse about it and tune out whatever the other person is saying (or shrieking or cursing) about it. Or, the most attractive alternative: to not talk about it at all.
Here is what Bogut, the 2005 No. 1 overall pick and former college star at Utah, said in the middle of an otherwise fluffy feature in the Sydney Morning Herald (under one of the more spot-on headlines you'll ever see - "The Bling and I"):
"The public's image of NBA players is true. ... A lot of them get caught up in the hype and do video clips with rappers and all that crap. They want bling bling all over themselves and drive fast cars. ...
"There are guys who drop a hundred grand for a chain. The public's got it right - a lot of NBA stars are arrogant and like to spend lots of money and have lots of girlfriends and all that," he continued. " ... About 80 percent of them go broke by the time they retire or come close to it. ...
"I would never want my child to be brought up in an environment like that, where if you have money you're supposed to flaunt it and make everyone jealous. The American attitude is, 'We're the best.' That's why the NBA guys who come from other countries, the Europeans, all sort of stick together away from the game."
http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/b...rts-columnists
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