NFL
By: Brock Vierra
Kendrick Perkins made a disturbing comment yesterday about the race for the NBA’s MVP award. Perkins made claims that there’s a racial bias when it comes to the award and the goalposts continually get moved for black players compared to their white counterparts. This stems from a discussion where it appears to the majority of NBA fans that Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets will win his third straight MVP award whereas Perkins believes Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid is being wrongfully denied the honor, partly because of the color of his skin.
Now I have seen racism, I have experienced racism and I’ve witnessed white privilege be used in action. Harmful racism doesn’t come from someone calling you a slur on the street. Though that behavior is harmful, true harm happens behind closed doors. It’s not having opportunities, being denied entrances due to certain things for your skin color disguised as other things like dress code where the dress code only targets a certain group of people and so on. White privilege isn’t actually having privilege due to being Caucasian, it’s about not having to overcome the setbacks that have affected minorities and marginalized people in the past.
So it came as a surprise to me that out of all the examples possible to be used to show racism and white privilege in the world of sports, Perkins used the example the doesn’t exist. The NBA isn’t perfect. I’m sure there still is a good ole boys club between some owners but the league has made tremendous efforts to root out the bad apples. Owners have been forced to sell teams due to racist behavior, the league has one of the highest percentages in terms of coaches and executives of African descent across the world of sports, and the MVP race though sometimes questionable when it comes to not giving a certain guy a unanimous vote, has, for the most part, hit the nail on their selection.
Nikola Jokic should be the MVP. He’s averaging a triple-double and contributes to at least 44 points per game to his team via points and assists compared to Embiid’s 42 alongside the fact that the Nuggets are first in the West while the 76ers are third in the East. I would also like to add that during his MVP run, Jokic has never had an All-Star teammate, and last season, Jamal Murray missed the entire year while Embiid had James Harden.
But Perkins stated that since 1990, the only players to win MVP that were outside the top 10 in scoring all came from European dissent. Jokic, Steve Nash, and Dirk Nowitzki are those players and this claim that they got the push because their white is also incorrect and idiotic. Nash was the league leader in assists while he guided a roster full of scorers in Shawn Marion, Amar’e Stoudemire, Raja Bell, and Boris Diaw to one of the best records in the NBA. For Nowitzki, he was the main playmaker on the number-one team in the NBA. It isn’t exactly rocket science.
It should also be stated that there’s another member to that list and his name is Magic Johnson but neither here nor there. What Perkins is stating is very serious because there are incredible repercussions if untrue which is bad because what Perkins is saying is untrue. We can’t see an athlete mention a story for which they were victims of racism without them being called Jussie Smollett. Now, this isn’t to the level that incident was but it’s the same principle.
It’s okay to think Embiid deserves the award. It’s okay to go to bat for him. That’s what we do in the sports media world but to discredit a player like Jokic due to his skin color is both somewhat ironic and incredibly asinine. I think ESPN and First Take should have an honest conversation with Perkins because his use of race and race-bating takes away from all the hard work made by various people who attempted to equalize the world in which we live. This is a game that we can all see being played out. Argue about the game, not about the things behind the scenes that don’t exist because when you do and when you are wrong, it allows real, damaging narratives to be painted that prohibit the upwards mobility of minorities in sports.
