Interesting and doubtlessly controversial piece by Josh Levin of Slate on why star young basketball players who happen to be white are often compared to Larry Bird (Levin, "Follow that Bird," Slate, Dec. 12, 2005). It's a good example of how situation--like the color of another's skin--influences our thinking, perhaps in ways that we don't appreciate or intend:
Want proof that getting compared to Bird is a one-way ticket to the Caucasian basketball graveyard?
A list of players who've been identified as Bird-like reads like the roster of a CBA team sponsored by the KKK. There are the Dukies: Danny Ferry, Mike Dunleavy Jr., and Christian Laettner (according to Charles Barkley, "the only thing Christian Laettner has in common with Larry Bird is they both pee standing up").Hat tip: the always engaging Celtics Blog.
There are the guys whose main qualification was playing college ball in the Midwest: Troy Murphy and Wally Szcerbiak ("a Larry Bird game, a Tom Cruise smile," one scribe said). There's the inexplicable: Australian Andrew Gaze.
And the monstrously, hilariously inexplicable: center Eric Montross, whom Celtics exec M.L. Carr said was cut from the same cloth as the Birdman . . .
According to the Web site Basketball Reference, the list of players whose statistics mirror Bird's most closely includes one German (Dirk Nowitzki) and six African Americans: Kevin Garnett, Antoine Walker, Clyde Drexler, Magic Johnson, Dominique Wilkins, and Julius Erving. Instead of being classified with his true peer group—the Magics and Dr. J's—Bird has become the patron saint of slow-footed white guys like Troy Murphy and Adam Morrison. Such is the burden of the white archetype.
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