The Klu Klux Keyboards

It should be obvious that this isn’t a plea to condone the behavior of message board a**holes who clog up Yahoo! and CBS Sports articles with racist rants about black athletes. Those people deserve to spend their days doing power squats over a blowtorch, and their efforts are certainly counterproductive for the plight of the honest hater*. It’s tough to defend an argument against when racism can be thrown around as an accusation and quickly turn the tables, but it also doesn’t help when the people making the accusations use terrible examples.

For example, a common misconception of this year’s NBA Finals was that everyone suddenly loved the Mavericks, when it was actually just a case of “anyone but them” for James and the Heat. It could have been the Denver Nuggets, Portland Trailblazers, Houston Rockets, or just about any other team aside from the Lakers and us haters would have pulled just as hard for them. So the implication, like Plaschke makes, was that this was a case of white vs. black, or Dirk vs. LeBron, which is unfortunate because it wasn’t, at least not to the intelligent mass that I’ve written this for.

Ironically, though, I have seen the argument that we shouldn’t cheer on Nowitzki because he’s German. I suppose if the argument is turned to one of nationalism and patriotism that makes it better? Again, I hate talking about racism because the path for mistakes is wide and bumpy. But I also hate that we’ve made it so easy for people to infect the great joys that we get from sports.

*Can we also please retire the word hater now? I’m so sick of hearing and using it.

(Via TMZ)