The United States is 13 percent black. The NBA is 75 percent black. But this year, the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves are “only” 30 percent black.
Obviously, this is a civil-rights issue.
Tyrone Terrell, chairman of St. Paul’s African American leadership council, told the Star-Tribune that he thinks the unbalanced roster could be seen as a ploy by the ownership to sell the team to a majority-white fan base.”How did we get a roster that resembles the 1955 Lakers?” Terrell said to the Star-Tribune. “I think everything is a strategy. Nothing happens by happenstance.”
So the same fan base that supported the Timberwolves for the first 12 years of Kevin Garnett’s career, after he was drafted out of high school and eventually became the league’s highest-paid player, has decided to pull out their white sheets.
Ron Edwards, a longtime Minneapolis civil rights advocate, told the Star-Tribune that it was “somewhat disturbing” when he saw a game last season in which Wes Johnson was the only black player on the floor for the Timberwolves. The composition of this season’s roster has prompted Edwards to react even stronger.”It raises some real questions to me about what’s really intended,” Edwards said. “I think, personally, that it was calculated. Is this an attempt to get fans back in the stands? Minnesota, after all, is a pretty white state.”Edwards added that the Timberwolves’ roster decisions are a “nullification of diversity and a reversal of history.”
I should think it goes without saying that anyone watching an NBA game and sorting players by color is on the wrong side of history. (And that same person might want to double check the definition of “diversity.”)
Really, if this is what so-called civil-rights leaders are reduced to complaining about, the war for civil rights must’ve ended long ago.
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