This is just a symptom of a time in society where EVERYTHING has to be painted as racism or white supremacy.

White people are underrepresented by proportion of the population in the NBA. And that is FINE. Why wouldn't it be? The NBA is meant to be the best and brightest, and they so happen to be black more often than not.

But as soon as a team by whatever reasoning is more white than they should be, there's hell to pay and it becomes an issue of "The Mavericks roster has often failed to reflect the demographics of the league."

Let's have a look at the article piece by piece and ask ourselves, "if you replaced the words 'white' with 'black' would this article be allowed to exist?"

In the first section it states:

"n 2020, the NBA was 74.2% black and 16.9% white. It seems every decade, the white NBA player becomes less relevant. Yet one franchise has often kept the dream of mediocre white guys alive: the Dallas Mavericks"

Okay everyone, LUKA DONCIC is a 'mediocre white guy', Kristas Porzingas too. Please do the colour switch on that statement and then meditate over how downright racist and offensive that is.

"In more than half of those 15 seasons there were at least four white players, not to mention at least two starting white players. The Mavericks, in the literal sense, do not look like the rest of the league."

Okay, so the league does not reflect the demographics of society at large, so to somehow make white people in the Mavericks a racist phenomena, you have to compare it to the demographics of the league. Good, good!

"But the problem with Cuban's Mavericks isn’t their penchant for white superstars - if every white guy they acquired was as good as Nash, Nowitzki and Doncic they’d be perennial champions. No, it’s their seemingly unquenchable thirst for terrible white players that sinks them."

I am sure there are terrible black players that this racist author willfully overlooks.

I am not going to pearl clutch and cry about reverse racism but it does seem we're in a time when whinging about white people has reached an absolute climax. The colours of players on a basketball team shouldn't matter.

Reverse the colours and they'd be celebrated for their inclusivity

I feel like utah did the same a while back. I dont know the stats but since europeans joined the league in droves from 2000 onwards, youd assume the league is whiter now than in for instance the early 90s.

Yeah, I was searching for the relevance about the gold medals as well. The USA is one country which usually sports 12 NBA All Star level players. Europe is dozens of countries that between them probably sport a dozen NBA All Star level players. I mean we've had conversations on this very board about what a current Yugoslavian team might do in an Olympic tournament. The sheer difference in the amount of people and players in the entirety of Europe vs. America has clearly been lost on this "journalist" (to use the term lightly).

Another thing is play style. European players are generally more fundamentally sound and team orientated and some teams happen to still prize that in the NBA. Mavericks happen to be one of them. Sorry that those players are more often than not white. Shall we cover them in black face to make idiots like this more comfortable? What an absolute trite article. The guy should be publicly shamed. People can say what they will about racism and white supremacy but garbage like this is not the path to correcting it.

Terrible article to say the least. Not sure why it was given the go ahead, however, it completely eroded any credibility at this point...

" Keith Van Horn, Austin Croshere, Matt Carroll, Rudy Fernandez, Shawn Bradley, Zaza Pachulia, Doug McDermott and JJ Redick."

That's the list of horrible players. KVH, Rudy, JJ and Bradley... Horrible? Sheesh

Even if the league is whiter it is ridiculous that it is treated like a negative thing like in this article. If the NBA were a place where white people were the vast majority and they were getting preferential treatment, I'd say fair enough. But as the article even states, the NBA is 16 percent white in a country where white people are over 60 percent of the population. White people are vastly underrepresented in the NBA. That's not an issue as far as I see it. That's just a matter of skill and athleticism. But as soon as ONE team just so happens to have a higher distribution of white people than is the norm, "Oh my god... RACISM!" It's really getting tiresome. This race baiting crap needs to stop.

Finally someone speaks up on this

I read The Guardian, but certainly not for their basketball. They completely ignore the sport until there's some tepid outrage to slurp page views with.

There have been other teams with a noticeable proportion of white players. There have been trades based around white players. Cuban wanting to unearth his next Dirk seems pretty obvious (like Pop would look for the next Duncan).

I'm sure there are relevant race-related stories in basketball, but I don't think this is anything. Not healthy to get caught up in, especially when the flipside is that sports teams are more frequently places where races cooperate towards a common cause. The NBA is more international than ever, there are MVPs and elite-tier players from all over the world.

I'm eagerly awaiting The Guardian's next well researched sports exposé on how white and racist the upcoming Winter Olympics in February are.

Journalism officially dead, want clicks, go woke

Someone who hates Euros, specifically Eastern Europeans. Wait, the Guardian is a UK rag right? It's all starting to make sense.

Barely got through the first paragraph without throwing up my weetbix