Daily Double - Soapbox Edition

1. I’ll admit, I have had some other things going on this winter and haven’t been able to devote nearly enough time to watching college basketball. But, for anyone who tuned in last night, Texas A&M and Texas played one hell of a game. I have doubted the Aggies all season long and I’m still not 100 percent sold on them being in the Final Four. However, they are clearly one of the best teams in the country and I’m saying that after they lost last night. Both of these teams have enough talent to go deep into the tournament and that was certainly on display.
   
   
2. Scoop Jackson slams down the race card with authority on your ass. That’s right. It seems that the statistics don’t bear out that NBA All-Star Weekend was worse than any similar weekend in Vegas. Nope, it is all a bunch of white news columnists with their racist agendas making a mountain out of a mole-hill. I can’t imagine where they would have gotten ideas that the All-Star Weekend would be Hip-Hop Woodstock, Scoop. It just boggles the mind that anyone would think that the combination of the NBA All-Star Game and Las Vegas would get out of hand.
   
   I will agree that none of this behavior had anything to do with an actual NBA player. It is factually correct to say that not one NBA player was mentioned in the news reports of the mayhem and lawlessness. But isn’t it a little hypocritical of Scoop to bemoan the poor press coverage of the NBA’s All-Star Weekend when he himself, on the eve of the event, celebrated all the actions that were reported after the fact?
   
   But let's get past all that. To be completely honest, the thing that drives us insane about the point that Scoop is making is do we really want to celebrate or make excuses for the culture of lawlessness that seems to permeate professional basketball players? Is it reasonable to just accept that young, black men with money will associate themselves with people who act in ways that most of society doesn’t agree with? For Scoop, and others like him, this seems to be the case that he is making. Is that not, in and of itself, a racist attitude? Because most NBA players are black and have a lot of money, they can’t help themselves; they have to be surrounded by thugs and hoodlums. Are we reading into Scoop’s argument more than what is intended? Sure, but isn’t that he is doing with others’ accounts and opinions of All-Star Weekend?