Killing the Big Man

Last week little Nate Robinson blocked Yao Ming. Most people will call it clean, many will argue otherwise. Either way, nothing was called and the block is on the books. If you still don't believe it, you can watch the 200 videos people posted on YouTube. In being a bit of a Yao Ming apologist, being blocked by a smaller guy happens all the time. I know I stuffed some guy at the gym who was taller, but I guess he wasn't like 2 feet taller.

I then looked at the comments posted. Most consisted of the "LOLZ! stupid giant chinaman get stuffed, GO NATE DOG" along with the "Get a life, the Knicks lost and still suck" replies. There were also had related videos such as "Eddy Curry Destroys Yao Ming". The comments were even more hilarious. The video was about a year old so there was stuff like "Proof Eddy will dominate the L in a year", "Emerging as the #1 big man", pure comedy gold. The replies were just as good, "Great, That was one of his 6 points in the game", "Get a life, the Knicks lost and still suck", that one seems to come up a lot. After reading those comments and seeing the title of the Curry video, I first thought "Man, that shit is almost as racist as Kramer". I mean let's face it, Curry isn't destroying anything except the future of the Knicks. Then I watched the Kramer video again, laughed my ass off and thought "Damn, I got to be kidding myself, it's not even close, but it's still racist".

Then I looking up stuff on Google when I was presented with a torrent of more Nate Robinson embarassing Yao tripe. It was then I realized, "This shit isn't racism, people don't hate Yao cause he's Chinese, people hate him because he's a centre". It should have been so obvious. Looking at other big men, it's no wonder why they dump the hatorade over Yao. As much respect as Dwight Howard has in the league and in the rags, Amare sans knee is still getting more love. Sure, he plays on a better team, but Howard is putting up 20-20 games. It's simple though, Amare is routinely throwing down highlight reel dunks whereas Dwight plays a very deliberate (read: boring) low-post game. And both these guys are niggers. ("Oh it shocks you doesn't it, it shocks you... what lies buried," that honestly was one of the greatest moments in the history of internet media)

I wondered how I could've overlooked this. I, being one of the Iverson generation of hoopsters. When I was a young buck, we'd all be on the court impersonating our favourite guards. "I'm just like Starbury, you can't stop me" (What a mistake that turned out to be) or even "Oh I just went (Damon) Stoudimire on you". No one ever pretended to be Hakeem or even KG. Olajuwon won two freakin' championships! That's basically the root of the problem. Because of MJ, the backcourt and swingmen are the glam positions. People believe big guys aren't ncessary to carry the team. Of course, since MJ, championship names like Shaq and Duncan keep coming up (That's another problem altogether, the fact that Duncan is about as exciting a rotting corpse). The search for the next MJ has been a lot more exciting than the search for the next Kareem. The sorts of names on the headstones of "next MJ" graveyard are littered with highlight reelers like Vince Carter. While the neighboring cemetary has luminaries such as Marcus Camby and Eric Montross buried there.

No doubt there's some hate of Yao because he's yellow, because he's not from 'round here, because he doesn't speak english very well. But I don't really think it's any more than people wanting to see him go down because he was picked #1 with a lot of hype. In the meantime we'll all have to put up with videos of Yao being blocked by a guy who had so many attempts in the dunk contest last year he made "Birdman" Chris Andersen look like he just eased into things.

(I don't care how short and how much people love what he did, 14 attempts, that's getting to WNBA levels...)