what do we have

[igor]

position by position
center; no team in the country has what we have. we're tall athletic and experienced. this is by far the hardest position to get better. any one of these guys would be a bonus. we have three

forward; we have the best combo forward in the country in grant, and a top ten in fair. rak isn't bad either, but it's tough to play that big

pt guard; young, but talented and experienced. he' smooth

off guard: biggest surprise of the preseason. cooney. really good college player. a marvelous athlete despite his skin pigmentation. that miss he had after the t.o. in overtime told it all. boeheim called it and he was fluid.

bench: talented, but help. one or 2 perimeter players need to step up, not as shooter or scorers, but as players and ball handlers.

 

[TerryM]

holy smokes that Cooney comment is borderline offensive.

 

[LGO85]

That's one hell of a positive post!

 

[DoctorBombay]

Saw nothing wrong w/ this post and the "skin pigmentation" dig was, I assume, tongue-in-cheek?
Good post.:noidea:

 

[Capt. Tuttle]

holy smokes that Cooney comment is borderline offensive.

Thats because many people assume he's not athletic. That cannot be based on watching him play. Therefore, it can only be based on assumptions.

Sent from my SCH-I200 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Niastri]

Igor's comment on the subtle racism still current in basketball and the US in general. Nobody seems surprised when a young player is athletic if he happens to be black, but a if a kid is white, people expect him to be a "high IQ" player. Igor was making a dig at America in general, not at any player in particular.

Is he wrong?

Well, not with his harpoon of the American psyche, particularly. However, the American psyche has figured out what science knows... A huge number of the best explosive athletes (run and jump) come from a very small geographical area in the west of Africa. Evolution needed the humans living in that area to run faster and jump higher for some reason. A huge number of African Americans descend from that area, and thus that genetic stock. While the Bell Curve pseudo study from a few years back is base racist mythos, the fact is that the top end athletes in the run and jump categories are not just black, they are largely descended from a certain region! The physiological differences haven't been defined, but something like 99%% of the fastest men in the world by 100 meter times are descended from the western African coast.

http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/genetics-and-sports-performance-557

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1011594/

http://run-down.com/guests/je_black_athletes_p1.php

Igor is either stating what we all already know about athletic proclivities based on race, or he is making fun of us all for believing it. Cooney is an exceptional athlete, but Corey Winfield makes him look tall and slow:

http://syracusefan.com/threads/corey-winfields-future-role.56121/#post-721236

Here's the thing... While your average high school bench warmer of any race can't run or jump like Winfield, any young child's chance of growing up to be an athletic freak is higher if he is African American descended from a particular part of Africa.

 

[skurey]

This thread got weird

 

[Dcuse]

But nobody to coach them. What a shame