www.thepostgame.com/blog/dish/201210/are...mberwolves-too-white

Found this article, I thought it was pretty funny how ridiculous some peoples statements can be. But it has some truth. Are the wolves too white?

It can partly be explained by the wolves place a lot more importance on international players than most teams. But even considering that, I still think it was at least partially intentional, maybe due to a subconscious bias. It's just too far of an outlier not to be.

NBA = 75% black players
Wolves = 33% black players

roundhouse wrote:
Agreed. It's unlikely they just plotted in a room with a Lester Freamon style bulletin board full of white dudes. Same way management ranks are full of white dudes, our country's bias.

I can't believe we have THAT MANY black guys on our team! What is wrong with our Front Office?!?!

I'd only care about this if it affected team chemistry because dudes couldn't get along off the court. I seriously doubt that's the case.

daddyfatsax wrote:
SUBCONSCIOUS....maybe, just like any bias we constantly have in any situation as human beings.

But for a state official of a very liberal state (pardon the generalization, I now live in the reddest state in America) to come out and ACTUALLY say/think that this was a ploy for the Wolves to sell more tickets (to I guess what in his view must be a fanbase full of high-ranking Klansmen) is easily the most preposterous "political" comment of the year and should not be taken seriously. I get a diversity advocate making a comment about the racial makeup of the team; it has indeed been the most overdone joke of the Wolves since well before this offseason and is worth a comment/discussion by itself beyond the jokes.

But the "ticket sales" statement is just so completely out of whack on so many levels.....it hardly bears discussion/strain on the vocal chords other than a chorus of boastful guffaws. What an idiot. It could be spun as offensive to Minnesota residents, really. A guy just wanting his name in the paper.

Many bash Zgoda for writing his recent article, but kudos to Jerry for starting the 'elephant in the room' discussion that has just been a wildly overdone joke all along.

The entire thing is just soooo absurdly ridiculous.

I honestly think that the ticket sales thing is bullshit. Do people not want to see Lebron/Kobe because they're black? No.

Furthermore I don't think that you can pin this on the Timberwolves Front Office. We've learned from their comeback in NJ today, that this team is significantly better than last year. They are trying to achieve the goal of winning championship and they may have done so by replacing some black guys with white guys. Even if you grant that there may have been some internal bias throughout the offseason, there is no way to blame the FO for making personnel decisions that made the team better.

Finally I think that overall while this "whiteness" is the running joke of the Timberwolves (replacing Kahn's million PGs) it really shouldn't be a discussed factor now that the season has actually started. Unless as Murphs said it affects our team chemstry in someway (VERY doubtful) this really shouldn't be thought of as an issue anymore.

I am happy that Zgoda brought it up though. I read the article a while ago so I don't remember the exact argument, but yeah it needed to be acknoweldged and essentially we can understand why this claim that the wolves FO is racist has very little substantive proof.

*Oh and note law of small numbers yeah 33% vs 75% is a big difference, but recall that this is on a team of 15 guys, even by pure chance it's not THAT unlikely. (yes I know it's like 0.1% but over 30 teams and a bunch of years... whatever.

Me personally, I'm quite happy with the situation.

It's surely the first time for years, that Media etc. doesen't make fun of Minny because of directly basketball related matters. So that's quite a good sign...

p.s. I really don't get the point:

Alone in the USA, the bigger countries of Europe, Russia, Brazil, Argentin, Venezuala, Australia, Cuba, Sout Africa & Puerto Rico live about 770 million white people. So it's only a sign of internationalization of the Sport, when there's also a certain amount of white people in it (sure: 66% is to high, but in other teams the percent-quote is way to low, and noone has a problem with it, so why this is a problem?)

I really don't mind at all, I wouldn't too, if we had 80% african americans, 63% latin-americans or 71% Asiens (all arbitrary numbers). It really doesn't matter, as long as Minny plays hard, I'm all in...