There are basketball teams too slow to win a championship. There are teams too small to win one. There are teams too soft, too old, too dependent on jump shots, too careless with the ball, too weak defensively, too shallow off the bench, or too poorly coached to survive four playoff rounds.
But too white?
That is not basketball analysis. That is racial shorthand dressed up as commentary. Stephen A. Smith looked at the Lakers’ new top three of Luka Dončić, Austin Reaves, and Walker Kessler and said it plainly:
“Where the hell do the Los Angeles Lakers think they’re going with a bunch of white dudes? This ain’t golf. This ain’t baseball. Hell, it ain’t even soccer. What do y’all think this is? This is basketball. In NBA history, when have you seen your three most prominent players on a basketball team all be white, and that takes you to the promised land? Somebody got to say it, so I’m saying it. You ain’t going anywhere being led by three white dudes in today’s generation of basketball.”
He did not walk it back. He called the trio “White Dude Central” and doubled down on his own show days later. Kenyon Martin backed him up on Gil’s Arena, saying “you play four white boys, you ain’t gonna beat nobody.” Bomani Jones got his joke in about the Lakers not being this white since Minneapolis. Markieff Morris, to his credit, talked about actual basketball, saying the roster might be “soft as hell” and needs more dogs in the West, which is a real critique with nothing to do with skin color. Nobody got fired. Nobody got suspended. The show went on.
Thirty-eight years ago, a Greek immigrant’s son named Jimmy Snyder, known to every degenerate handicapper in America as Jimmy the Greek, sat down for a lunch interview in Washington and said Black athletes were superior because slave owners had bred the biggest men to the biggest women, going back to the Civil War era, and that white men would eventually have nothing left in sports if Black coaches kept rising. CBS fired him within forty-eight hours. Brent Musburger called it shocking. The NAACP demanded his head and got it. His career never recovered.
I want to be honest about what does and does not connect those two moments, because the honest version of this argument is the only one worth making.
Jimmy the Greek reduced athletic success to race. He promoted a pseudo-scientific theory that slaveholders deliberately bred captive people for size and strength and that this explained Black athletic success generations later. It was historically and scientifically indefensible.
Stephen A.’s comment is different. It is not eugenics. It is not pseudo-science. It is a smaller, lazier claim built on precedent rather than biology.
It is still bad analysis. It still hangs a player’s ceiling on his race instead of his game.
Jimmy the Greek argued Black athletes were inherently superior. Stephen A. argued that a team led by three white players could not reach the promised land. Different argument. Same mistake. Both substitute race for basketball. Reverse the tape and the double standard becomes obvious. Imagine a white analyst looked at a team with three Black superstars and said, “You’re not winning anything being led by all these Black guys. Name the last time that worked.” That analyst would be unemployed before dinner, and rightly so. Nobody would defend it as a roster construction opinion.
Former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho made exactly that point to Stephen A., arguing that attaching a player’s ceiling to his race is the very logic that held Black quarterbacks back for decades, logic Stephen A. himself has spent years fighting against. Jeff Teague echoed the criticism on his own podcast. That is not a hypothetical complaint. It is the entire story. The standard shifted. The underlying wrong did not.
Either a player can play or he cannot. Either he can shoot, defend, rebound, pass, think, compete, adjust, and perform with the season on the line, or he cannot. Black, white, red, green, or purple does not make the extra pass, fight over a screen, protect the rim, rotate on defense, or hit the shot late in a Game Seven.
The irony is that NBA history settled this argument a long time ago. Larry Bird could play. He won three championships and two Finals MVPs as the best player on the floor for the Celtics, going shot for shot with Magic Johnson in the greatest rivalry the league has ever produced. Dirk Nowitzki could play. He carried Dallas to the 2011 championship through Kobe’s Lakers, Kevin Durant’s Thunder, and LeBron James’ Heat, winning Finals MVP with one of the most unstoppable signature shots basketball has ever seen. Nikola Jokić can play. He has already won three regular-season MVP awards, a Finals MVP, and delivered Denver its first NBA championship. He has redefined what a center can be. Steve Nash could play. He never won a championship, but any argument that requires pretending a two-time MVP could not play winning basketball because he was white has already lost. Rick Barry could play. He won a championship and Finals MVP with Golden State and still owns the highest career free throw percentage in NBA history. Pete Maravich could play. He never won a ring, largely because of circumstance, but he influenced generations of guards with creativity that was decades ahead of its time.
Jerry West, John Havlicek, Bob Cousy, Dave Cowens, Kevin McHale, and Bill Walton could all play. Every one of them won championships. Every one is in the Hall of Fame. Steve Kerr won championships as both a player and a coach. Bill Laimbeer did the dirty work on two Detroit championship teams.
Phil Jackson, the old Knick, was a rugged rebounder and defender whose playing career was modest compared with the coaching dynasty he later built. Eleven championship rings on the bench remain the greatest reminder that basketball rewards those who figure out how to win, not those who fit a stereotype.
History also exposes another flaw in Stephen A.’s argument.
For years basketball people insisted Europeans could not lead teams to championships. They were supposedly too soft. Too finesse. Too unathletic. Too dependent on jump shooting. Then Dirk won. Then Pau Gasol won twice. Then Giannis Antetokounmpo won. Then Nikola Jokić won.
Winning has a funny way of killing stereotypes. The modern NBA has outgrown the premise altogether.
Luka Dončić is Slovenian. Nikola Jokić is Serbian. Giannis Antetokounmpo is Greek and Nigerian. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is Canadian. Victor Wembanyama is French.
The old American racial boxes are not merely outdated. They are intellectually obsolete. So what are we actually talking about when we discuss the Lakers? If Luka, Reaves, and Kessler cannot win together, tell me why. Tell me the perimeter defense is thin. Tell me Reaves is better suited as a third option than a second. Tell me Kessler protects the rim but could struggle defending in space during certain playoff series. Tell me Luka dominates the ball too much. Tell me the bench lacks depth. Tell me the Western Conference is loaded.
That is basketball analysis. “Too white” is not.
Championship basketball is decided by two-way balance, shot creation, defensive versatility, rebounding, spacing, health, coaching, chemistry, and execution. Those are basketball traits. They are not racial traits. A team can absolutely be too slow. Too small. Too old. Too thin. Too dependent on one player. Too weak defensively. Too shallow. Too poorly coached. It cannot be too white.
Jimmy the Greek reduced athletic greatness to race, and it cost him his career. He was cancelled before cancel was a thing. Stephen A. reduced roster construction to race, and it became another television segment. The inconsistency is worth discussing.
But the basketball answer has never changed.
The basket does not know what color the hand is that releases the ball. It only knows whether the shot went in. JS
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