Counter-Currents
Julius “Dr. J” Erving and Larry Bird choke one another, 1984.
2,244 words
As the saying goes, “White men can’t jump.” That’s as may be, but black men can’t do math, yet you don’t see Hollywood filming a whole movie about it. I wish they would; it’d be hilarious.
In the all-white, brick-and-cement neighborhood of my childhood, sports were more important than books. I was good at reading and writing but abysmal at basketball, unlike my next-door neighbor, who wound up being drafted by the Chicago Bulls in 1987. Since I am decent at the art of physical aggression but abjectly atrocious at sports requiring hand-eye coordination, I am in awe of anyone who can dribble and shoot a basketball or throw and hit a baseball with any degree of finesse.
When I was ten, my favorite basketball team was the Milwaukee Bucks, featuring black point guard Oscar Robertson and black center Lew Alcindor, who at 7’2” was even more of a biological freak than the 7’1” Wilt “The Stilt” Chamberlain, who was born in Philly and was easily the most famous basketball player of the 1960s. (Chamberlain hailed from Overbrook Park, the same neighborhood as Kobe Bryant, another all-time National Basketball Association [NBA] great.) Shortly after the Bucks won the NBA championship in 1971, Alcindor changed his name to Kareem-Abdul Jabbar and would go on to become what is as of this writing the top scorer in NBA history. (LeBron James, whose first name is a French term meaning “The Bron,” will likely surpass him next year.) Lew Alcindor’s transformation to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was reminiscent of heavyweight boxer Cassius Clay announcing to the world that he had become a Muslim and had changed his name to Muhammad Ali shortly after he beat Sonny Liston and won the heavyweight title in 1964.
The symbolism behind the fact that the world’s best boxer and the world’s greatest basketball player were black, had converted to Islam, and adopted distinctly non-Western-sounding names was taken as a middle finger to white America. Blacks were flexing their dominance in the only discipline besides crime where they truly excelled.
In my neighborhood, what appeared to be emergent black supremacy in sports really did a number on our heads. When we learned that a 6’11” ginger hippie giant named Bill Walton had been drafted into the NBA in 1974, our hearts were aflutter with hope. When Walton led the Portland Trail Blazers to the championship in 1977, we felt temporarily joyous.
But the NBA’s true Great White Hope entered the league two years later. There has never been a white player like him before or since.
Mind you, Jerry West and John Havlicek were great. As far as raw, mind-bending, visually dazzling athletic skills go, I’d say the greatest white basketball player of all time was “Pistol” Pete Maravich, who still holds the all-time NCAA basketball scoring record by a wide margin, even though he played only three seasons of college hoops before they introduced the three-point line. But Maravich wasn’t nearly as dominant in the NBA as he’d been in college and died of heart failure while playing a pickup game at age 40. In 1980, Maravich briefly joined the Boston Celtics, where a white rookie from Indiana named Larry Bird had come to roost. Seven years later, after Bird had led the Celtics to three NBA championships, Maravich would call Bird the best player on the planet:
I think he is the best, you know. Larry is not really the best rebounder in the NBA; he is not really the best passer, I don’t think, he’s not the best dribbler, he’s not the best shooter, he’s not the best scorer. He’s just the very best.
For a brief flash of time in the early to mid-1980s before he injured his back shoveling gravel for a driveway he was building for his mother, the goofy-looking 6’9” blond Scots-Irish boy from Indiana, which is probably the most basketball-obsessed state in the nation, dominated a sport that by that time had been considered the exclusive domain of black men.
Larry Joe Bird was born in 1956 in the tiny southern Indiana town of French Lick, which is only an hour’s drive from the Kentucky border, and its residents have the Southern accent to prove it. He was one of six children who lived in a three-room house next to the train tracks. Bird was extremely close with his father, an alcoholic Korean War vet who used to scream in his sleep and eventually killed himself while Larry was in high school. His mother wound up working several jobs just to support the family, and Bird says that being raised in poverty motivated him to make the best of himself.
A basketball prodigy in high school, Bird was recruited by legendary coach Bobby Knight of the Indiana Hoosiers. But for Bird, the college town of Bloomington — population around 80,000, compared to French Lick’s 2,000 — might as well have been Manhattan. Overwhelmed by all the people and decadence, he quit the Hoosiers after 24 days and returned to French Lick, where he worked odd jobs such as painting park benches and picking up trash. He soon accepted an offer to play for the Indiana State University Sycamores, a team that had never reached the NCAA Division I tournament but which Bird led to the NCAA men’s championship against Michigan State, only to lose to a team whose star player was a black kid from Lansing named Earvin “Magic” Johnson.
The incongruity of a gawky white boy from the sticks playing amid urban blacks gave Bird his most enduring nickname, “The Hick From French Lick.” He’s also known as “Larry Legend.”
Bird was drafted by the Boston Celtics, while the Los Angeles Lakers snapped up Johnson. Their fierce rivalry revitalized the sport, and both players were so dominant that there wasn’t a single NBA Finals in the 1980s where neither team appeared.
You can buy Jim Goad’s The Redneck Manifesto here.
With the possible exception of the Portland Trail Blazers, the Boston Celtics also happen to be the only NBA team whose name unmistakably signals whiteness. There have been many black Boston Celtics — hell, even Bird’s coach, K. C. Jones, was black at a time when black coaches were a rarity — yet there are no black Celts.
The Celtics’ starting lineup during the mid-‘80s was top-heavy with whites. Of the five starters, three were Caucasian: Bird, Danny Ainge, and Kevin McHale. On some nights during the 1985-86 season, recent acquisition Bill Walton would also start, meaning four of the five starters were white. Boston won 67 games and the NBA championship that year, and is widely considered one of the most dominant NBA teams of all time.
I didn’t pay much attention to basketball during the 1980s because my interests had moved on to music and girls, but my general impression was that white people loved Larry Bird, while black people hated the awkward-looking peckerwood’s audacity in even attempting to compete with the brothers. It was also widely thought — and even articulated by players such as Dennis Rodman — that Bird was simply an average player elevated to superstardom because he was white.
But the numbers speak for themselves:
- In his first year with Boston, the Celtics more than doubled their win total from the year before. Bird won the Rookie of the Year award.
- In his second year with Boston, the Celtics won the NBA championship, their first of three titles with Bird.
- He was an NBA All-Star for 12 of the 13 years he played, winning the All-Star Most Valuable Player (MVP) award in 1982.
- He won three consecutive NBA MVP awards (1984-86). During four other seasons in his 13-year career, he was the runner-up for the MVP award. The only other players to win three consecutive MVP awards were Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain.
- He is the only player in NBA history to play five seasons averaging over 20 points, 10 rebounds, and five assists.
- He became the first player in NBA history to shoot at least 50% on field goals, 40% on three-pointers, and over 90% from the free-throw line in a single season. He also became the first to do this twice.
- He won two MVP awards in the NBA Finals.
- He won the Three-Point Shootout three years in a row (1986-88) and is one of only two players to win it three times. In 1986, he famously walked into the locker room before the competition and asked who was going to finish second behind him.
What surprised me, though, was hearing the reverence with which some of the greatest black NBA players in history spoke of Bird. None of them said he had tremendous natural athletic skill. But he had a confidence, and a toughness, and an intelligence. Tommy Heinsohn, a white player for the Celtics during the early 1960s, would observe, “Larry was playing chess when everyone else on the court was playing checkers” — that places him among the all-time greats:
The best guy I’ve played against might have been Larry Bird. People don’t appreciate Larry Bird enough. They think he is a chubby white guy, but he would wear us down. . . . This muscle here [pointing to his head] was his greatest. Shooting, rebounds, assists, steals — he was always positioned at the right place at the right time. And he was a great competitor, I have much respect for him. — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Well, I think that [the idea he’s idolized because he’s white] may be in the minds of many, but this man also is very, very talented. I think he epitomizes what a forward is supposed to do, especially in the game he played, because he was technically correct. He was a correct type of basketball player, and most people today don’t play the game correctly, and he did. — Wilt Chamberlain
I get so many questions about Larry Bird. The thing is, “Was he really that good?” I say, “Yeah! He was really that good. White, black, green or yellow, he was really that good!” When you see a player like Luka [Doncic], when you see a player like Dirk [Nowitzki], they’re great players, but they’re not Larry Bird [laughs], by no means. . . . You have to have a great appreciation to play against a guy who athletically, every single night, is at a disadvantage. But yet mentally and in the way his work ethic was, he was way above the game, he was way above everybody else. . . . Larry Bird is the greatest trash-talker and mind-game player of all time. He taught me everything I know about getting in folks’ heads. — Michael Jordan, who lost all six playoff games he played against Bird
When I played, Larry Bird was the only one I feared. A lot of black guys always ask me, “Did Larry Bird really play that good?” I said Larry Bird is so good, it’s frightening. — Earvin “Magic” Johnson
What I notice right away about Larry, even as a rookie, is that not only he can get his shot, and he has amazing range for a big man, but he will make it, too. He may be the best shooter I’ve ever seen. And he is a smart passer, able to thread the ball through inches of daylight. And he will not stop working. — Julius “Dr. J” Erving
Looking into Larry Bird’s eyes is like looking into the eyes of an assassin.” — Dominique “The Human Highlight Reel” Wilkins
If you put me, Magic, Michael, and Bird in a room, Bird would be the player to walk out alive. — Isiah Thomas
Larry Bird, Dr. J, Michael Jordan. — LeBron James, when asked to name the three greatest NBA players of all time
Since Bird’s heyday, the NBA has grown increasingly blacker and less white. As of 2022, the league is 81% black and 18% white. It has the highest quotient of black players of any professional sports league in the United States and Canada. As a result, white fans have turned away. Two-thirds of those who regularly watch NBA basketball these days are non-white. There have been good white players — Dirk Nowitzki scored more overall points than Bird and led the Dallas Mavericks to an NBA Championship, while current player Luka Doncic is putting up numbers similar to Bird’s — but both men were born in Europe. Roughly half of the NBA’s current white players were born outside of the United States.
In 1993, at Bird’s retirement ceremony, his former archrival and now lifelong friend Magic Johnson told him:
Larry, you only told me one lie. You said there will be another Larry Bird. Larry, there will never, ever be another Larry Bird.
I’m not so sure about that. Even though I can think of about ten million things that are more important than basketball, I’m holding out hope that the NBA will see another Larry Bird. Or an entire flock of Birds.
When I was ten and a fan of Lew Alcindor and “Smokin’” Joe Frazier — who trained in Philly and who the people in our neighborhood favored over Muhammad Ali because the latter was getting a bit uppity with the blackness — I’d accepted the idea that blacks were better than whites at basketball and boxing. But at the moment, there are two heavyweight champions in boxing: Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk. Both are white, but neither one is an American.
So when it came to boxing, all hope was not lost. At least some white men, somewhere, got tough. Could the same be true for basketball?
Maybe white American men got soft. And maybe it’s time for them to get tough again. They may not have a choice.
* * *
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43 comments
I reconcile it like this: I earnestly believe, despite many Negroes obvious athletic ability… if you restricted cross subsidisation between the two races – that is, you were going to select the best 10~12 Black basketballers, and the best 10~12 White, and put them on opposite teams, and require that all coaching and administration staff were also respectively Black and White for each team, and have only Blacks finance their own team, and only Whites finance their team.. that the White team would win, and win handily. The better coaching, better plays, better teamwork, better emotional stability, better organisation, would beat out raw athletic talent in the end. In reality even Black talent at basketball, is effectively subsidised by Whites. Take them out of the support base entirely, out of the administration, out as players in the league altogether.. and it would collapse. The same would not happen in reverse. (If we went even further, and put Blacks in their own nations, having to supply their own societal framework to even host a league, and build up players to professional level.. the difference would grow more stark again. Nigeria is not beating a full strength Russia (or Spain, or Slovenia or Italy etc) at basketball.
LGTH, I agree 100%. Prime Walton, West, Petit, Pistol, Havilchek, Bird, McHale, Dirk, Stockton, Nash, Doncic, Jokic, and maybe 2-3 others I’m forgetting would be a problem for any team of black greats.
And yes, with racially consistent coaching and administrative staffs and financing, the Whites may well have an edge.
Now here is a question regarding this theory: didn’t the negro baseball league from a century ago have black-only coaching and administration and financing? If so then we would expect the White major league teams to routinely beat them. But IIRC the negro league teams had a winning record against the majors. Doesnt that impugn our theory a little?
The Negro League players were far more motivated to beat the Major Leaguers back in the day.
Think of Duke beating the overwhelmingly favored Kentucky Wildcats about five years ago.
Luka Doncic if he stays healthy has the potential to surpass Bird. He’s only 23 and has been in the league since 2018 when he was still a teenager. Larry didn’t play for the Celtics until he was 22. The numbers Luka has been putting up so far have been incredible, and like young Larry he’s dominating the NBA with only a handful of black players who are on par with him.
Bill Walton could have been the greatest white player ever. In 77 and half of 78, he may have been more dominant than Kareem. But injuries hampered him, sadly.
I have two words for Jim Goad… Nikola Jokić
The fact that no one – I mean no one – in the entire White Nationalist community has bothered to mention that the current back-to-back league Most Valuable Player is a white man from Serbia is an embarrassment and you should all be ashamed of yourselves.
Nikola “the Joker” Jokić, four-time All-Star center for the Denver Nuggets is what happens when the Balkan Renaissance hits the NBA when white racialists weren’t looking: Luka Dončić, Goran Dragić, Jusuf Nurkić, shall I continue? Hard white men straight out of the war-torn former Yugoslavia who didn’t get the memo that whites were supposed to lie down. And it’s one of the greatest things to watch.
I’m also genuinely disappointed that Hall of Fame point guard John Stockton is not being mentioned as well in this article. Universally regarded as one of the greatest point guards to ever play the game, he’s also the NBA all-time career leader in assists and steals by miles. In addition to his legendary toughness and stone cold stoicism, he also holds the distinction of being the one player (not Michael Jordan) to silence world-class trash talker Gary Payton. In the words of Payton, spoken in genuine awe, “It’s like I wasn’t even there.”
Exactly, Joker also showed he’s not afraid to punch back when nigs start f*cking with him. https://youtu.be/Yy8T53X_fx0
I don’t think white on black violence is to be celebrated anymore than black on white.
What if you had to pick one?
Depends on the white person and black person.
What if the white person were Robby Benson and the black person were Scatman Crothers?
No contest. For reasons that were never explained to me, Robby Benson walked up to a newsstand and bought the second issue of my magazine ANSWER Me! in a scene in the 1993 film Deadly Exposure. The scene had nothing to do with anything else in the movie. For this reason alone, I would spare Robby Benson.
I’ll take Steve Urkel over Jake Paul but that’s it. Two-time MVP Steve Nash was quite the sensation for a while as well. And how much of black players’ success is due to White coaching and GM/scouting talent? Whites would win in the NFL as well if fairly sanctioned and DNA testing-at least 90% White or black, mulattos like Patrick Mahomes are prohibited-qualified players, coaches, athletic trainers, and team doctors to participate in the africa vs Europe clash for the racial championship. Granted they have the edge at running back but who’s gonna be their punter? Guess they’ll have to learn to kick a football as well as they kick their pregnant girlfriend’s stomach.
“…Robby Benson walked up to a newsstand and bought the second issue of my magazine ANSWER Me! …For this reason alone, I would spare Robby Benson…”
I envy you your clear cut choice. For me the choice was not so simple.
Sure, Robby Benson is white and possibly knows how to read, but he’s also a Jay E. Double-Ewe.
Scatman Crothers, being black, would normally be the right choice to celebrate receiving violence but it turns out the clever bastard died in 1986 thus avoiding the onslaught of racially motivated violence black people imagine to be so prevalent in our modern world.
To complicate matters, Robby Benson has purportedly been having heart attacks since the mid-1980’s so he could be stubbornly refusing to admit that he’s also dead.
After what seemed like a lifetime of deliberation I found that I simply could not choose between the two.
I will say that Robby should change his name to something more adult sounding…like Bob or Robert. Or is he just going to go by Robby the rest of his alleged life?
You sold Pistol Pete a little short. He was the most innovative player of all time. Magic, Jordan and Isiah Thomas admit they stole his moves off him. He invented the cross over dribble. No look pass. Behind the back pass and others. He was teamed with Bird for one season in Boston. Bird told him “ if you were any good we’d win a championship “. The 86 Celtics are the greatest team of all time!
Not nearly as good as the 72-10 ‘96 Bulls of Toni Kukoć, Luc Longley, and Steve Kerr. 😉
Several days ago I arrived in Montreal driving all the way from Victoria, B.C. Stops along the way were at Hope, Kamloops, Gold, Medicine Hat, Brandon, Kenora, Dryden, Terrace Bay, & Sudbury. Demographically, approximately 50% are non-Europeans aka non-Whites. Miscegenation was not uncommmon. Here in Montreal the Europeans are under 50%; additionally, the distinct Québécois People are definitely a minority & again miscegenation is not uncommon (so much for the Québécois People vehemently wanting to be recognized as a distinct ethnic nation. In fact, such was the desire that they conducted two referendums to separate. Both referendums failed because everybody was allowed to vote. The Québécois People still fail to understand that any decision, vote, or referendum must be SOLELY reserved for the Québécois People; they & they alone must decide their future).
The Québécois People were the only ones in North America who voiced in no uncertain terms that they are a distinct people. Well, what happened? I mean, they fought so hard & for so long to be viewed & treated as a distinct people, yet, they are throwing that all away. At current rates, unless there is an awakening, within one or two decades the Québécois People will even become a minority in their own homeland of Quebec.
Ditto to all the other Ethnic European Peoples from Europe to Australia – why are we allowing our replacement; enroute to extermination?
I believe all the above places you mentioned are majority white.
But I get it. I’m a concerned Canadian as well.
Now, in many public spaces non-whites are dominant, but that doesn’t mean whites are the minority in said cities.
We are the minority in Vancouver, Surrey, Richmond, Toronto, Brampton, etc., and yes, our percentage of the overall population is dropping fast.
Canada is diversifying faster than the US is. We were over 90 percent white in 1981. Now, we’d be lucky to crack 70 percent.
The mistake the Quebecois nationalists made is putting language uber alles. They demonized the English who built much of the wealth of Quebec, and preferred to import francophone non-whites like Haitians, Vietnames, and North Africans.
Indigenous people didn’t voice that they were distinct?
“Canada is diversifying faster than the US is.”
Canada will beat the USA in becoming the 1st third-world country in the Western World. The miscegenation is astonishing!
The only reason that pathetic excuse for a country even exists is because it just happens to border the US. Anywhere else in the world and it would have been invaded years ago.
Tommy “The Duke” Morrison
He was the last good white American heavyweight.
He beat George Foreman.
The chubby Serb who won two straight MVPs is a phenomenon. The no-look passes this guy makes between a forest of legs, the shooting, the fakes, what a treat! Doncic is incredible too, draining buckets while stepping on the BLM logo emblazoned on the parquet was especially gratifying.
I always loved watching Stockton and Hornacek in the 90s, completing a great trio with the Mailman, with their goofy haircuts and short shorts. And have any of you taken a gander at Hornacek’s daughter, Abby on Fox News? My sweet Lord, what a babe!
Also in the 90s, Duke would be on the receiving end of heaps of hate-whitey vitriol. One guy in particular the haters directed their venom at and whom I liked, a real cool customer, was Christian Laettner. I recall his perfect game: 10 for 10 FT shooting and 10 for 10 FG shooting for 31 points. One of the FGs was a trey.
Duke was a powerhouse for many years. I don’t know how many NCAA championships they won but it must have been more than 1. Coach K may have been the second greatest college coach after John Wooden who coached UCLA to many titles. He was, also, like Bird and myself, a Hoosier. All American at Purdue sometime in the 1930s I think.
Coach K is truly top 2, maybe best ever. Back in the 90s he coached college teams to world cup titles against the pros of other countries.
Drazen Petrovic was a great Yugoslavian player back in the day, died in a car crash iirc. On the Bulls, Toni Kukoc had ice in his veins, and Coach Jackson once famously put him on instead of Pippen with time expiring, with the right result. Pippen was bitter many years after.
The Spaniards had some serious firepower the earlier part of this century, dominating the European game.
You mean Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski? He’s not a Hoosier. He’s from the Chicago Bungalow Belt, a graduate of my Catholic HS in Chicago, Weber.
Sorry, my “He” was not clear. I meant John Wooden, the greatest college coach, and he was a Hoosier. Yes, Coach K was a Chicagoan and did coach at Weber High School which was in the same Chicago Catholic League as my older brother’s school, Mount Carmel. There was quite a rivalry between the two schools. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe Weber went out of business.
I’ll take the player with the best mind any day. Larry Bird may have been the Joe Montana of pro basketball.
Thanks for another great article, Jim. Not to toot my own horn (well I guess I am tooting my own horn), Greg published an article I wrote called “Race Conscious & Basketball”. I believe this was before you started working for Greg so you might have missed it. I talked about other things besides Bird, but Bird certainly constituted the bulk of my article.
I think there should be more exposure on the scouts’ racial biases. I understand our physical differences, but I think a big influence on racial disparity in sports, especially with Latinos, comes from scouts having a better chance at closing profitable contracts with less intelligent prospects. A white kid would bring his dads lawyer to the negotiating table while a black or Latino wouldn’t even have a dad to discuss it with.
“A white kid would bring his dads lawyer to the negotiating table while a black or Latino wouldn’t even have a dad to discuss it with.”
Agreed. And the missing dads lawyer is a public defender.
Hahahahaha
I am sure that Bird thought of The Hick From French Lick as a term of endearment, but we would never see a black player called The Spook From Dubuque or something similar.
Larry Bird was a little before my time, so I never saw him play outside of old highlights. The quarterback position in football seems to be one of the positions dominated by White men. Does it have to do with intelligence? I know Rush Limbaugh was not a white nationalist, but he was kicked off a football pre-game show for saying the NFL was desperate for a black quarterback to succeed.
Here’s a little tribute video I just slapped together.
Hi Jim. The part about Russell and Wilt being the only other players to win three MVP awards is wrong. Kareem won six and Moses Malone won three before Bird won his first. Several others have done it since. The part about Bird being the only player to win three consecutive MVPs is also wrong. Wilt and Russell both did it.
You are correct, sir. I misread the source material. It’s been fixed. Thanks.
Thank you!
Here is Michael Jordan’s highest scoring game, 63 points, in the 1986 playoffs vs the Celtics.
The team featured Bird, Walton, McHale and Ainge. It says something that Jordan, widely recognized by analysts, players and fans as the game’s greatest ever player, couldn’t manage to beat a team against whom he played, by one important measure, his greatest ever game.
I was only a basketball fan for a couple years in high school, roughly corresponding with the Bulls’ second 3 peat, and always sucked at it. But the Celtics here appear as a precision machine that to my eyes is nothing short of formidable.
Bird scores 60 against the Atlanta Hawks, 3/12/85.
Great article, I loved the video too! Wilt Chamberlain got it right in saying that Bird plays the game “correctly”. Somewhere along the line fundamental rules of the game, for example against palming the ball, were thrown out of the window to the advantage of the less disciplined black players. Bird had pure basketball skills.
Jim should have written this article one week later. I just saw that Celtic great Bill Russell died at age 88. I watched him on TV when I was a kid. I understand there is a statue of him in Boston but I don’t think there is one of Bird. It would be interesting to compare the two greatest Celtics ever.
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