Comments on: Stereotypes

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Greeks pretty much called everyone non-Greek hoi barbaroi and had no shortage of stereotypes about them.

By: Chris Rasmussen

Chris Rasmussen — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I can see his point in the basketball context. Completely different styles of play played in America and outside of America (I prefer the European style of play) and some prominent “foreign” products have been considered soft (more willing to be jump shooters than physical post players, etc…)

Don’t blame Luc Longley. Toni Kukoc is your culprit.

By: Andrew McManama Smith

Andrew McManama Smith — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been a huge NBA fan ever since I came to the states, and I can say that Luc Longley wasn’t a weakling at all.
Many of the European players do seem whimpy compared to American players. European centres and forwards (the tallest players, think Yao Ming) often are jump-shooters instead of “tough” post players like Shaquille O’Neal. Paul Gasol and Dirk Nowitzki seem much less tough when compared to Tim Duncan and Shaq.
Horever I thought Australians and Canadians didn’t have that same reputation, especially since Luc Longley got into some very memorable fights, but I guess I was wrong. Maybe to Americans it’s foreign or not, and they’re not famous for sublty, now are they?

By: ogged

ogged — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Kukoc, Divac, yeah. Until very recently, non-American players played a notably less brutal style of ball. If you hear of a stereotype of foreign players having bad hands, that’ll be Longley’s fault.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It’s certainly a broad brush. However, the vast majority of foreign players in the NBA are European, and their style of play is considered “soft” when compared to the increasingly physical American style. Maybe as more Australians and other non-Europeans enter the league, distinctions will be made.

By: SomeCallMeTim

SomeCallMeTim — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Longley had a bit of a reputation as a punk. Often, when big men with obvious potential don’t meet with expected success, people claim that they are soft and lack toughness around the rim. You can see this is claims today about Ming and (to varying degrees) about Webber.

By: paul lawson

paul lawson — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The ‘Otherness’ prevalent, in many contexts in American media, is a particular creation of a pathological insularity. World Series Baseball? Sorta. But what if the Cubans were permitted to play, as a regional team? Hhhhmmm. At the 1776 ‘handover’, the band of the Cornwallis army played an old ‘air’—’The World Turned Upside Down’. The lesson that might have been learned, by the victors, was not. Consequently, we have ‘us’, and the rest of the world,we others. Sad. The fearful 6% attempt to define their ‘place’.

By: Andrew McManama Smith

Andrew McManama Smith — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Come on Chris, there are loads of Canadian, Brazilian, Argentinan, African and even a few Mexican players in the NBA. I’d figure less than half of foreign players are European.

By: lalala

lalala — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Longley did have a reputation for not working out hard enough. He was a big, meaty guy, but he had visibly less muscle definition than just about anyone else on the team at the time. So he might not have been seen as soft in the sense of “blow him over with a puff of wind” but I do think he was (somewhat legitimately) seen as soft in another sense.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Yeah, what they said. This has nothing to do with a general stereotype of foreigners and everything to do with a difference in the style of play.

By: nick

nick — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Um, I think that ‘foreign’ is actually a way of saying ‘non-black’, since I don’t think Hakeem Olajuwon ever faced that stereotype. At the very least, it defines the center position in terms of Shaq, rather than Divac. And there was certainly talk of how Yao had to ‘toughen up’ in the NBA.

The Athens Olympics showed that international basketball (like international ice hockey) is a very different game to its American league equivalent—many would say that it places greater demands in terms of shooting ability over brute force in the paint. (A similar analogy might be to English football and its Mediterranean cousins.)

A slightly better distinction might be made between those—of all nationalities—who have gone through the US college system to the NBA, and those who didn’t.

But what if the Cubans were permitted to play, as a regional team?

Well, the Puerto Ricans beat the US national team in the Olympics, with second-tier players.

By: tad brennan

tad brennan — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

re Chris on the barbaroi:

I remember John Burgess at Princeton telling me a story about a kid who waited his table at a taverna in Greece, got part way through a multi-lingual conversation, then turned to his dad to ask “pos to lene sta xenika?”

I.e., how do you say that in foreign?

Given that kids in that situation have to learn a smattering of French, German, English, Italian, etc., you can hardly blame them for thinking that there are two languages, i.e. greek and foreign. Which dialect of foreign you use is largely a matter of whether the foreigner does or does not wear socks with their sandals.

By: mpowell

mpowell — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The stereotype of foreigners in the NBA are largely shaped by early examples who were primarily European. And players like Tim Duncan, despite being born in the Virgin Islands, are not considered foreign. Generally, foreign players are regarded as those who do not play collegiate basketball in the US. They have been regarded as ‘soft’ b/c the style of basketball played in the US is much more physical than elsewhere. European players have come from a league where much less physical contact is allowed. Different kinds of players will excel in such an environment and even those that can adapt to a more physical league will need time to do so. Obviously, any stereotype should not be presumed to cover all cases, but this particular stereotype does observe a very real difference in the type of player raised playing basketball in the US style versus the international one.

And one note to all those internationalist out there: The US team has not fared as well in international ball recently, but if you created an international team of non NBA players and after a couple months of practice threw them into the NBA playoffs, they would get beaten up pretty good.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It would probably have made more sense if he’d said “international big men.” The international style of basketball, which is dominant in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and South America produces big men who are finesse players, usually with a good shooting touch (even Yao has more range than any other player near his size). The stereotype holds for African (and Afro-Brazilian) international big men as well, though. There aren’t many African-born big men in the NBA right now, but there are several at the college level, and they tend to be finesse players as well. Olajuwon is a bad example, because he came into the league during a time of dominating, powerful centers, and before the number of international players in the league was anything like it is today.

By: SomeCallMeTim

SomeCallMeTim — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Um, I think that ‘foreign’ is actually a way of saying ‘non-black’

Except that people still wonder if Tony Parker is soft (black but French). I think, if you’re good enough and tough enough, we assume that you are really an American who was wrongly born in a foreign land.