You Can’t Beat Nature

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* What happens when you have a showdown with nature, nature wins. Nature has been separating species by means of race as Darwin noticed with finches. All that is happening is nature is asserting her will.

* What you won’t hear, except from me, is that “Let the good times roll” is an especially risky message for African-Americans. The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society.

* Not long ago, Steve asked us what the Left’s next big concerted push would be, since their World War Gay & Tranny offensives succeeded.

I think that we are seeing the answer now. It’s not something new & exciting like normalizing pedophilia or incest or polygamy like many predicted.

Instead it looks like they are going back to their OG issue: White racism.

Maybe we are looking at a ratcheting cyclic pattern: Lead with race stuff to establish moral bona fides, follow that up with woman stuff & end with sexual preference stuff.

We’ve seen it before in the 60′s: Civil Rights –> Women’s Lib –> Stonewall. Then again in the 90′s: PC Culture –> Rape Culture hysteria –> ACT UP.

And someone could make the case that the recent World War T victory was the and of another cycle that started in the 2000′s with the launch of the White Privilege concept.

Each time, the Left pushes the envelope of anti straight white Christian male rhetoric & demands further & further.

The Civil Rights demands for treating blacks equally morphed into a demand for special perks & privileges through affirmative action & a refusal to notice black misbehavior through Political Correctness. Now Black Lives Matters is demanding that whites allow blacks to do & have whatever they want, without interference from white (or even black) authorities in any manner.

I can’t wait to see what other treats this next cycle has in store for me.

* One time I was at the White House Correspondents Dinner (when Colbert notoriously addressed W.) and was lucky to meet Justice Thomas. I mentioned we shared an intellectual hero in Thomas Sowell, and the immediate reaction from the judge was “Oh he’s a wiz at math!” A couple years later I read The Bell Curve and then The Bell Curve Wars and emailed John Derbyshire for his opinion of Sowell’s opinion included in the latter. His response was to the effect, Tom doesn’t know the math enough to know what follows what on the matter. From that I deduce that the black intellect is prone to oversights in subtle ways more complicated than brute IQ. On that note, consider this passage from Santayana’s Scepticism and Animal Faith I just recently enjoyed:

“Belief in experience is the beginning of that bold instinctive art, more plastic than the instinct of most animals, by which man has raised himself to his earthly eminence: it opens the gates of nature to him, both within him and without, and enables him to transmute his apprehension, at first merely AESTHETIC, into MATHEMATICAL SCIENCE. This is so great a step that most minds cannot take it. They stumble, and remain entangled in poetry and in gnomic wisdom. Science and reasonable virtue, which plunge their roots in the soil of nature, are to this day only partially welcome and understood. Although they bring freedom in the end, the approach to them seems sacrificial, and many prefer to live in the glamor of intuition, not having the courage to believe in experience.”

I think that passage is worth rereading, and hints at all sort of contexts we are currently living midst. Smartphone nation could be considered consonant with an evolution in criminal science, as Steve has said. But what we are seeing from blacks is more akin to an aesthetic intuition, in the sense that these murders and shootings would fit snug a dramatic script, and drama is not usually rational. This stuff is out of some apocalyptic movie. With the native judgment we know they enjoy, we should now know what such cinema as the two videos that sparked the latest incidents moves particulars of that certain population to do. It seems life can imitate art by anticipating it.

* A Democratic National Committee staffer was beaten and shot dead as he walked home. I’ll bet the guy who murdered him was a black man riled-up by all the recent scheming on the part of the Democratic National Committee. They seem to think they’re immune to the effects of their own machiavellianism.

* Sometimes when the police try to arrest someone who is armed and actively engaged in a crime, they shoot at the police in an attempt to get away. Shots were fired causing the call. It might have been gang related, a robbery gone wrong or an altercation that got out of hand.

I don’t like it when the President jumps to conclusions knowing little more than the parties involved.

* Restraint, whilst being the solution demanded by liberals, Leach and Obama, is not the answer for blacks. Blacks only respect strength and the threat of violence. Restraint is liable to increase violence. To understand black behavior in the US, you need to study it in Africa. Since blacks have been interacting with whites in South Africa for 350 years, it would be a suitable place to do this. Of course nobody wants to touch it, because invariably it would lead to Apartheid being rehabilitated. Many politicians and media elites know this.

Black on white interaction is culturally doomed. The best you can achieve is a form of implicit Apartheid, much like the way Israel deals with Palestinians within Israel. Most blacks need simple uncomplicated jobs. The black high-performers which the media like to rub in our faces, are mostly AA creations meant to shame and intimidate whites. They add no real value to black society. Most simple jobs have been offshored, so Trump’s ideas, if implemented, are likely to improve the wealth and self-esteem of ordinary blacks. Then in the black areas black police officers keep the peace, but the rules need to be different from white areas, much more in accordance with traditional African tribal law, since blacks psychologically cannot cope with the moral and legal demands of European and US law. This psychological overload is the source of much of the black violence against cops. That was the reason why white South Africa kept traditional tribal law in place in black areas. Everything else is a train wreck.

Obama and the Soros-elites are just creating an environment where blacks can live out their grievances, offences and hatreds against whites. This is what the mostly western revolutionary elite (run by the usual suspects) did in South Africa as well. The idea is to max. chaos and intimidate ordinary whites into relinquising power. Yet they have no solution for the incompatibility of blacks with white legal systems, because it is not what they are after.

* Black Panther leader urges creation of ‘black’ country: Alabama part of ‘nation-within-a-nation’

A leader in the People’s New Black Panther Party is urging the creation of a new country within in the U.S.

Babu Omowale, the national minister of defense for the People’s New Black Panther Party, told radio host Aaron Klein his group and others are working to establish a government in a nation within a nation. The five states that would make up the new nation would be Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina.

“We just need to start migrating back to those states and taking control of the economics in those states. If black people move in, most definitely white people will move out. So it’s not a hard process for us to have our own country within a country,” Omowale told Klein. The comments were first reported on Breitbart News, a conservative website.

Omowale later elaborated saying the short-term steps would be to work to control economies and politics in each of the areas.

Omowale’s comments came amid growing tensions over the police-involved shootings of two black men followed by the slaying of five Dallas policeman last week.

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One Law for Jews, Another Law for Gentiles

Most of the world is tribal and tribal morality is inevitably dual — there’s one morality for how you deal with members of the tribe and another morality for how you deal with outsiders.

Judaism is tribal morality (with the God of Judaism mandating differing codes, for instance, you do not lend to a Jew at interest but you can lend to a goy at interest). There’s one code for how you deal with your fellow Jews and a more relaxed code for how you deal with outsiders.

Westernized Jews tend to be the most polite and ethical Jews in their behavior towards non-Jews, depending upon how many generations they’ve been to the West, the more generations the more westernized, while Jews who come from parts of the world such as Eastern Europe and the Middle East which had terrible relations between Jew and goy may be more ruthless in their dealings.

The most prominent exception to tribal morality is WASP morality aka universal morality. When I was growing up a WASP, there was no notion that it was OK to treat outsiders any differently than your own group. This mono morality is why WASPs create the best countries (England, Canada, United States, Australia, New Zealand) with high social trust while Israel is a low-trust society.

Marjorie Miller describes the Israeli concept of ‘freier’:

A freier, in Israeli eyes, is a shopper who waits in line to pay retail. It is a driver who searches for legal parking rather than pulling onto the sidewalk with the other cars. … The fear of being a sucker turns driving into a bumper-car competition and makes grocery shopping as trying as arm wrestling.

… ‘In London, the culture is to give way, be a gentleman, don’t compete,’ said Peri, the former editor. ‘But an Israeli is the opposite. If you are stronger, why should you give way to someone weaker? In a debate, the British will say, ‘You have a point.’ In a debate here, no Israeli will admit he has been persuaded to change his mind. That shows weakness.’

Americans often find the Israeli attitude intolerably rude. Israelis, meanwhile, find Americans to be the biggest freiers of all. They are naive idealists. … Americans are perceived as innocents who follow the rules and who believe a person will actually do what he promises to do. ‘An American is willing to trust until someone proves to be untrustworthy,’ Shahar said. ‘Israel is much more like the rest of the world, where the basic assumption is that people . . . should not be trusted until proven trustworthy.’

When compared to Greeks, Italians, Persians and Arabs, Jews are not noticeably less ethical in business.

When “white shoe” Wall Street firms did not want to hire Jews, it was because in large part they wanted to keep up their standards and this depended upon employing WASPs rather that tribesmen with dual moralities.

When you hear about a major scandal on Wall Street, it’s rarely Presbyterians and Anglicans getting in trouble.

Adam Kirsch writes in Tabletmag:

In this case, there is no avoiding the fact that the Talmud is heavily biased in favor of the Jew against the gentile. The mishna in Bava Kamma 37b says, “With regard to an ox of a Jew that gored the ox of a gentile, the owner of the belligerent ox is exempt from liability. But with regard to an ox of a gentile that gored the ox of a Jew, regardless of whether the goring ox was innocuous or forewarned, the owner of the ox pays the full cost of the damage.” In other words, a gentile doesn’t even benefit from the rule about an innocuous ox costing only half the damages; his ox is automatically considered forewarned and so responsible for full damages. But a Jew’s ox can hurt a gentile’s ox with impunity….

Rather than remedy this injustice, however, the Gemara attempts to justify it. According to Abbahu, God “arose and permitted their [the gentiles’] money to the Jewish people.” The reason for this, he explains, is that after the Flood, the sons of Noah received what are known as the Noahide commandments—seven laws that are binding on all human beings, including laws against theft and murder. Because the non-Jewish peoples did not obey these laws, God punished them by allowing Jews to take their property. (Although one might note that the Israelites notoriously failed to uphold their own laws on many occasions.) Rabbi Yochanan gives an alternate explanation, based on the legend that God offered the Torah to all the peoples of the Earth, but only the Jews accepted it. Thus the other nations deserve to have their goods taken by the Jews.

No matter how much they justify it, however, the rabbis can’t ignore the fact that this principle would make Judaism look pretty bad if it were widely known. That is the message of a story about a pair of Roman officials who were once ordered by their emperor to learn the Torah. When they had finished, they said, “We have examined the entire Torah and it is true, except for this matter that you state with regard to an ox of a Jew that gored the ox of a gentile.” “But,” they added, “we will not inform this matter to the kingdom”: These Romans realized what kind of an impression this favoritism would make on a non-Jewish audience, and agreed to keep it secret.

As the Koren Talmud shows in its always useful notes, later Jewish commentators were equally concerned to palliate this inequity. Many of them held that the law about Jewish and non-Jewish oxen was only promulgated because, in the ancient world, non-Jews were usually pagans with no sense of religion or morality. In later times, when the gentiles that Jews dealt with were mainly Christians and Muslims, who had their own monotheistic beliefs and upheld the Noahide commandments, this law did not apply. Alternatively, Maimonides suggested that since gentile laws did not punish the owner of a goring ox the way Jewish law did, gentiles were treated accordingly and not given compensation when one of their oxen was gored. Still, however you explain it, this is one of those moments when the Talmud reveals the limits of its ethical imagination—which is exactly why later Judaism recognized the need to go beyond it.

Tribal morality is how the world works.

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The Return Of Tribalism

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* So many decry tribalism today, but it’s just about all people have left, and that’s why it’s coming back with a vengeance.

* This is a key insight. The declining importance of religion means that people don’t really identify that way. High geographical mobility means, first, that your neighborhood is more like a hotel room than your home—Paul Kersey memorably called modern suburbs “drifter colonies.” But it also means that your contact with your family is dramatically curtailed. It also means that your contact with the people you grew up with is dramatically curtailed. The homogenizing influence of mass culture, imposed legal uniformity, and neighborhood disruption ensures that there is nothing for most to identify with at a sub-national level.

Because of they way we are wired, we are going to take sides and fight each other. Our elites think they can keep that urge channeled into sports, loyalty to your job and co-workers, and ridiculous, abstract ideological conflicts over “muh freedumbs” and “social justice.” The way to bet, however, is that they lose control and more normal genetic interests re-assert themselves. Or, maybe that’s what they want. They seem to be happy with the Nazi freak show in the Ukraine.

* Growing up I always heard through the media that blacks had been stereotyped as criminals by the movies and television. Is this really true? I know that in the past two decades, tv shows ignore reality and feature white criminals almost exclusively, e.g. CSINY, Law and Order, etc.

Additionally it even came out that the producers of COPs manipulated the content to ensure blacks are not over overrepresented. And we know feature films have turned to the blond, English-accented guy as the villain of choice.

I also know if you go back far enough in films, blacks are hardly in the movies at all. And if they were cast, it was usually as servants or maids. In fact blacks claimed that at a certain point in time, the media ignored them altogether and made it appear they didn’t even exist.

I now have been watching some classic over-the-air tv channels with reruns of Perry Mason and other shows from the 1950s-1960s. And from what I can tell most do not show blacks at all, let alone stereotype them as criminals. Heck, I even saw an early 1960s Twilight Zone were a town was going to hang a man and the preacher was trying to convince them to not hate. The preacher WAS black and guy about to be hung WAS white.

Of course the only exception I can think of is Birth of a Nation from 1915. But was that the lone exception?

So my question is this. Did blacks ever get stereotyped in the media as criminals, and if so, when? I sure can’t find it. Is this whole media-stereotyping-blacks just another myth like the blacks-are-overrepresented-in-the-infantry or the Tuskeegee-Airman-never-lost-a-bomber-they-escorted memes that get repeated until people take them to be true?

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Steve Sailer: Hillary Denounces Bill’s Golf Club as “a Case Study in Ripping Off the Little Guy”

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* I can’t figure out which would make a better skit. Hillary & Hussein steadfastly proclaiming how difficult it is to untangle the Dallas shooter’s motives, while in the background he tries every trick in the book to show them it was black racism (culminating with him scrawling out a black power message in his own blood with his dying breath), or Hillary’s underlings doing everything they can to hide the fact of Bill’s Westchester Club membership from her, while Bill ducks her and she loudly denounces the club.

* If foreign funding for mosques were outlawed we would have 15% of what we have now and they would not be as large and elaborate with schools and community centers. Charities and individuals in Saudi Arabia fund many of the toxic ones. They are magnets for Muslim migration into your neighborhood or town so get the hell out if you see one being built. Especially a large one. The Muslims aim to fill it up.
Obama’s ghouls at the Dept of Justice go after (lawsuits) communities that block them such as one in Tennessee. All part of the semi-Kenyan, crypto Muslim’s pro-Islamic agenda.

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‘Kill All The White Babies’

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When Was The Last Time You Saw A Depressed Mexican?

I don’t ever remember that. I don’t think I’ve had any bad personal experiences with Mexicans.

You can learn from every group.

From blacks and Jews, you can learn the beauty of group solidarity.

From blacks, you can see the benefits of spontaneity.

From whites, you can learn how to create a great country.

From Mexicans, you can appreciate their happiness and hard work.

From Christians, you can appreciate their love.

From Ashkenazi Jews, you can appreciate their brilliance and intensity.

From Australians, you can learn mateship.

I’ve rarely seen latino or asian homeless. These groups seem to take care of their own.

The Los Angeles Times:

Once the home to Jewish, Italian, Japanese and diverse other people, Boyle Heights by the time that El Mercado was born was increasingly becoming a predominantly Mexican American neighborhood. Some activist groups have taken increasingly harder and louder stands against certain kinds of developments – including art galleries – that they see as opening the door to gentrification.

In Boyle Heights, the most striking examples of change have surfaced on the western side of the neighborhood closer to downtown L.A. – near Mariachi Plaza and a Gold Line station – where a wine bar, coffeehouse and bakery draw young, American-born Latinos.

Boyle Heights has not seen anything remotely like the gentrification that other neighborhoods, including Silver Lake and Highland Park, have experienced. But many of the residents have long felt that it’s a neighborhood on the brink of a major change; For years there has been talk about transforming the 14-story Art Deco Sears, Roebuck & Co. building on Olympic Boulevard into a complex of condos, retail space and restaurants.

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ESPN: Miko Grimes uses anti-Semitic language to blast Dolphins’ brass

I see nothing remotely anti-Semitic in this woman’s tweets. How is “jew buddies” anti-Semitic? If she wrote, “fraternity buddies,” what thought crime would that be? How about “white buddies”? “Black buddies”?

I hate to see a proud black woman taken down yet again by the Jew media.

ESPN: Miko Grimes, the wife of former Miami Dolphins and current Tampa Bay Buccaneers cornerback Brent Grimes, blasted Miami brass on Monday, using anti-Semitic language that she later tried to clarify.

In a tweet referencing Dolphins owner Stephen Ross and executive vice president of football operations Mike Tannenbaum, Miko Grimes tweeted:

Gotta respect ross for keeping his jew buddies employed but did he not see how tannenbaum put the jets in the dumpster w/that sanchez deal??

— Miko Grimes (@iHeartMiko) July 11, 2016
The family of her husband’s current team — the late Buccaneers owner Malcolm Glazer — Bryan, Edward and Joel Glazer and Darcie Glazer-Kassewitz — are the descendants of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania and lost family members in the Holocaust. Malcolm Glazer also contributed to the construction of the Palm Beach Synagogue before his death.

Miko Grimes later clarified on Twitter that her intent was not to offend Jewish people, tweeting: “Think I’m gonna tweet racist remarks in an attempt to offend TWO PEOPLE? Lmao!! Why would I? Why would I want to offend ‘Jewish’ ppl?”

She went further in a statement to ESPN:

“When I wrote ‘jew buddies’ I was speaking about how a lot of communities (Jewish, Christian, gay, sometimes fraternities and sororities) will hire their ‘own people’ for jobs before others. That’s a fact! Why people find facts offensive is strange to me. And now im a racist? Lmao! How?”

She added: “If what I said is racist or anti-Semitic, why isn’t it also racist to only hire their own? America is just an easily offended, fake reacting, bunch of cry baby a– p——! Anyone that thinks I’m a racist needs to build a f—— bridge and get over it. I’m not a racist, I’m a realist.”

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Vagina Monologues Eve Ensler: ‘It’s time for white people to reckon with racism’

According to Wikipedia: “Ensler was born in New York City, the second of three children of Arthur Ensler, an executive in the food industry, and Chris Ensler.[5][6][7] She was raised in the northern suburb of Scarsdale.[7] Her father was Jewish and her mother Christian,[8] and she grew up in a predominantly Jewish community…”

Eve Ensler writes:

is time for a collective reckoning, a moral accounting, a radical self-appraisal and calling out, fellow white Americans. Our explicit and implicit participation in crimes against black people has gone on for too long.

What allows us to justify murder? What selfish gene prevents us from intervening in the face of blatant injustice? What history of lies and distortions have we sold ourselves that keep us in our isolated boxes of superiority and denial? What truth would we have to tell about ourselves to unravel these strangulating tentacles of racism and violence?

I was a cop – but I still don’t know how to survive a police stop
Michael A Wood, Jr
Read more
What systems would we have to abandon or lose or claim as bankrupt?

Which one of us hasn’t seen the outright slaughter going on in the recent videos of police shootings, and the videos before them, and the lynchings before them?

Who doesn’t know the history of the very intentional policies that created abject conditions that so many black people are forced to live in: the poverty, the lack of opportunities, education, jobs, the exclusion? Which one of us doesn’t understand the daily terror that occupies the lifeblood of every black woman, man and child in America which inhibits their ability to breath, live and thrive? Which one of us hasn’t noticed the prisons filled with millions of black folks who are held and incarcerated at a rate 14 times higher than whites?

And if we don’t see or know these things, why the hell don’t we? Why have we created and allowed such a distance between us and the black people around us? Why have we inured ourselves to their suffering, their sorrow, their fear, their desires, their dreams?

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The New York Times and the Left Have Blood on Their Hands

Dennis Prager writes: It was very appropriate that on Friday, the day after the massacre of five Dallas police officers, The New York Times devoted nearly the whole top half of its front page to four enormous photos of the death of Philando Castile, a black motorist killed by a Minnesota police officer.
Of course, the paper was printed prior to the Dallas murders; and even The New York Times might not have so prominently featured the Minnesota killing on its front page had the Dallas murders occurred a few hours earlier.
Nevertheless, it was completely appropriate. The New York Times has been in the forefront of the left’s hysterical, hate-filled attacks on police officers and whites.
Also appropriately, on the day of the Dallas murders, the Times published two white-hating, police-hating pieces.
One was by Michael Eric Dyson, a radical black professor of sociology at Georgetown University.
The Dyson column is nothing more than a racist hit piece on “white America.”
An example:
“At birth, (whites) are given a pair of binoculars … Those binoculars are privilege; they are status, regardless of your class. In fact the greatest privilege that exists is for white folk to get stopped by a cop and not end up dead when the encounter is over.”
Dyson wrote these words based on the police killings of two blacks last week, about which he knows nothing except the narrative of the (left-wing) media and what he has seen on some grainy phone videos.
And not once does Professor Dyson mention that the Minnesota police officer was Latino. Why would he? That would suggest that Latinos, too, are given racist binoculars at birth. But Dyson would never say so, because it is white America he loathes.
Nor does he note, or perhaps even know — because of his left-wing binoculars — facts such as these:
In 2015, of the 990 people shot dead by police, 93 were unarmed and 38 of them were black. Of the 505 people shot dead by police thus far in 2016, 37 were unarmed and of them 13 were black. Given that blacks murder and rob more than whites — they committed 62 percent of robberies, 57 percent of murders and 45 percent of assaults in the 75 biggest counties in the country in 2009 (despite comprising about 15 percent of the population in these counties) — an unarmed black is less likely to be killed by police than an unarmed white.
Does Dyson, a professor of sociology, not know these statistics? Does he not know that, statistically, whites have more reason to fear being murdered by a black than vice versa? If he doesn’t, he shouldn’t be teaching sociology. If he does, students should be aware that he is a left-wing, black nationalist propagandist, not a teacher.
The same day the Times published Dyson’s piece, it published a second anti-white, anti-cop, hate-America piece by the mother of Michael Brown, the young black man killed in Ferguson, Missouri. That black grand jurors and even Obama’s Department of Justice found the policeman who killed Brown was acting in self-defense after being attacked and thus justified him in doing so means nothing to The New York Times. So it published the grieving mother’s anti-cop hate.
The blacks and whites of the left have led much of America, especially black America, to believe that cops are generally racist, that there is “systemic” racism and that whites are privileged and racist. It’s all a lie that has had — and will continue to have — murderous consequences.
America has become the least racist multiracial, multiethnic country in world history. This drives the America-hating left crazy. That’s why leftists manufacture fantasies like “microaggressions” — non-racist statements that the left labels racist, foolishness like “white privilege” and the dangerous rhetoric of “Blacks Lives Matter.”
Just yesterday The New York Times published the results of a study conducted by a black Harvard professor of economics that shows that “when it comes to the most lethal form of force — police shootings — the study finds no racial bias.”
“It is the most surprising result of my career,” said Roland G. Fryer Jr., the author of the study.
One assumes that this Harvard professor has never read Heather Mac Donald or any other conservatives who have been writing this for years.
The New York Times — as the flagship publication of the left — and the rest of the left have the blood of police on their hands. And not just cops’ blood — the blood of the blacks murdered because of police reticence to vigorously patrol black areas. What is known as the “Ferguson effect” was created entirely by the left.

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‘[Tim] Duncan’s retirement was as quiet as Kobe Bryant’s was colorful and protracted.’

The Onion: Tim Duncan: An NBA Legend Rides Into The Sunset At A Safe And Prudent Speed

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* Plus, unlike K. Bryant, Duncan’s was’t a financial and sportive burden on his team’s shoulders for the last years of his career, and an altruistic player who improved team play (as opposed to disrupting it “at whim”).

* People with two-digit IQs prefer Kobe; those with three-digit IQs prefer Duncan.

* Perhaps now he will venture out of the closet. That’s according to his ex-wife.

* Duncan also had a classic white big man playing style – solid fundamentals, classic post moves, used the backboard a lot, etc. – which you rarely see anymore, even among white players. The European big men tend to be wing players who prefer the outside shot. The classic style is tried and true and can still be devastatingly effective, as Duncan showed, but it’s become unfashionable. Players would rather hoist long range bombs all day if they aren’t or can’t go for a dunk.

* I was really impressed with Duncan and the Spurs when they beat the Heat in the 2014 finals. Duncan could have retired after that tough loss to the Heat in the 2013 Finals, but Duncan and the Spurs came back with a vengeance and effectively ended Miami’s little Dream Team in the summer of 2014.

* One thing I’ve noticed about NBA players: they started behaving more like beta males around the time they started all coming into the league with tattoos in the mid to late 1990s. You have the Barkley, Shaq, and Kenny trio on TNT, and and then you watch the later generation on TV, and the latter all seem off to me. Kobe especially, when he’s interviewed every word and gesture just screams insecurity to me. And then you had Allen Iverson, the kind of kid whose clothes screamed aggression but in reality it’s all a cover for social awkwardness.

Compare how MJ interacted with the media to LeBron.

In contrast, Barkley & co. will never fake laugh at each other’s jokes, if someone says something stupid they’ll call it stupid. And then they’ll occasionally get mad at each other, but it never lasts more than a second.

I watch the tattooed generation interact with one another, and it’s a completely different dynamic. They fake laugh at each other’s jokes and seem overly sensitive to one another’s egos.

* Duncan was a great player and a great public face of the NBA: quiet, gentlemanly, no scandals. Unfortunately, he came in during the “street ball”/steroid era of the NBA, and then Kobe really stole his thunder with his prima donna antics and the team up with Shaq and Phil. So his greatness wasn’t really the first thing you noticed about the NBA; he probably could have lured a lot more whites back to the game, if he’d been the league’s #1 face.

It was also too bad for the NBA that Duncan didn’t play in a bigger media city, but he preferred small-town San Antonio anyway, given his quiet persona. I hope his outward persona reflected his inner personality as well, and we aren’t given a swerve in ten years like with OJ or Bill Cosby.

That said, Duncan is an excellent example of how basketball really is an individual sport. The Celtics under Rick Pitino were banking on landing Duncan with the #1 pick, but the draft lottery kicked to San Antonio, and the Celtics didn’t get the franchise player he was. Duncan’s humble, team-first persona would have been a great fit in Boston.

Once they lost out on Duncan, Pitino’s tenure was a disaster, and it took the Celtics a decade or more to be decent again. With Duncan, Pitino would have probably won the division or conference or the title and would have had a long career as big-name NBA coach.

Basketball truly is an individual sport.

Also, the NBA draft lottery is actually an admission by the NBA that they can’t stop teams or players from throwing games. So they just threw up their hands and just made it less of a lock that if you threw a season you got the #1. But the draft lottery plus Jordan’s double-secret suspension plus the fact that many players live paycheck to paycheck seem to point that the NBA probably has a lot more shady games than the news media is reporting.

* The Zapruder film for this conspiracy is the 2006 NBA Finals. The Dallas Mavericks won the first two games behind Dirk Nowitzki at the height of his powers. Then the Heat, who appeared to be simply overmatched, ended up winning the last 4, primarily because any Dallas player who looked askance at Dwyane Wade was called for a foul during those 4 games.

The common thread here is that David Stern, the NBA commish at the time, hated Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. I wouldn’t blame anyone for wondering if that was connected to the officiating.

And I am not a Dallas fan, just a basketball fan with two working eyes.

* Not only did the Mavs get called for everything, but the Heat players were getting away with blatant stuff, particularly on the perimeter (like stepping underneath the feet of Mavs shooters).

* You bet. You nailed the year – 2006. In the Eastern Conference finals, the Detroit Pistons had the league’s best record and were shooting for their second title in three years (they beat the Lakers in 5 in 2004 and lost to the Spurs in 7 in 2005.)

Every time Dwyane Wade drove to the hole, and I mean every time, the whistle blew and Wade got free throws. The Pistons were a great team, they moved the ball on offense, they played great team defense and they should have won. But no, the refs gave the series to the Heat with Wade and Shaq. Screw that. Most rigged NBA series ever. And it carried over into the finals against the Mavs.

The Pistons had set an NBA record by holding five straight opponents under 70 points in a game. Five straight. Nobody could score on the Pistons until that Eastern Conference finals and the David Stern mandate that the Pistons could not be allowed back to the Finals for the third straight year.

The hell with David Stern.

* You “think” the Pistons were jobbed in game 6 of the 1988 finals on the phantom call against Laimbeer? OF COURSE THEY WERE JOBBED! It was a terrible call, especially at that moment!

Riley had guaranteed a Laker repeat after ’87 and the whole world wanted to see “Showtime” do it again. Problem for the NBA was that the Pistons were actually the better team in that series.

(Of course, the Pistons won it in ’89 and ’90. They might have won again in ’91, but by then the NBA was determined to get Chicago and Michael Jordan to the finals. Maybe the Bulls really were better by ’91, but the NBA sure did not want a Piston three-peat.)

If you watch the ’88 game 6 again anytime soon, notice the funny business with the reversal on the play when the Lakers miss a shot, Magic grabs the offensive rebound, and then Dennis Rodman steals the pass and is headed for an uncontested dunk to give the Pistons a three point lead with 30 seconds left, only to have the play whistled dead (because the refs want to see if there was an errant shot-clock reset just before Magic’s rebound. The result? Lakers ball out of bounds, followed by a foul call on the Pistons.)

The only way for the Lakers to win in ’88 was to get every possible break from the refs.

And they did.

That Lakers team did have a following though. I was at the first finals game at the Pontiac Silverdome, and the Lakers had Jack Nicholson, Rob Lowe and the Beach Boys all in attendance. I don’t know if Dyan Cannon was there, but there were a lot of beach blondes who looked like her there.

The game was in Metro Detroit.

That’s a following.

* The one game suspension of Green game 5 hurt Warriors a lot and was bullshit. LeBron was the initiator and aggressor; he should have got the only technical. Golden State choked more than Cleveland won the series.Curry and Thompson missed open threes galore. Maybe the laws of basketball haven’t changed after all ?!

The last few minutes of game 7 were brutal. Everyone was feeling the pressure bigtime. Don’t remember seeing that before much.I thought Kyrie was MVP not LeBron . LeBron is incredible athlete but showed again he is better when he is not “the guy”. More Scottie than Michael.

Kerr got outcoached in game 7 as has been mentioned in press. Ezeli and Varejou were brutal on d and were left open on o and didn’t do shit. Varejou got big playing time at end. Why? Thought Kerr might turn into Phil but now not so sure.

* Possibly rigged. 3 games that I watched and blew my mind how bad the officiating was: 2000 Blazers vs. Lakers, game 7, 2002 Kings vs. Lakers, game 6 (this one is the gold standard), and as was pointed out, 2006 Heat vs. Mavs, game 5. Thinking back, and I am biased on this as a Pistons fan, I think the Pistons were jobbed in game 6 of the 88 finals against the Lakers on a phantom call against Laimbeer, sending Jabbar to the line to win the game.

* Tim Duncan was incredibly self-aware. He was probably the only NBA player of his generation to reflect intensely on the best way to approach the game from a psychological viewpoint.

Heck, he even co-authored a chapter on egos and egotistical behavior.

It was no surprise that he was able to build such a winning culture with his coach. He literally wrote the book on it. It may even be helpful for new NBA rookies to read his thesis… if they could even read at a college level.

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