I agree, there are some of those things in sports. "Deceptive" could refer to race stereotypes. Lin does not look very strong to me (no, I don't need to see a pic of him without his shirt thanx), but I'm not looking at his face when I conclude that. So I might say "deceptively strong" myself. "Deceptively quick" is a little more iffy. There was a study about sports announcers: one thing it showed is that black athletes get compared to animals a lot more. "He's a horse," "thoroughbred" all that crap. So I never like to hear players compared to animals.
1 in 5 American males between the ages of 20 and 40 over 7' if you read the article. And it was based upon the CDC's modelling, which you may or may not accept. Of course, you'd have to have a better comparable model to say that it's not anywhere near accurate. And 17% is pretty darn close to genetic destiny when you look at the 6'6"-6'8" cohort, where their chances dwindle to 7 in 10,000. Especially given a population of 300,000,000+ human beings in the USA. I wouldn't even want to try to calculate what the chances are for someone who's 6'4". IE, the definition of extreme genetic anomaly.
Lol if anyone believes this Just go to the mall, grocery store, anything. U can do ur own research. No way it's 1 in 5. Not even close.
Yes, that 17% is destiny when the chances of "normal" people playing pro basketball are, what, 0.01%?
Torocan wasn't saying that 1 in 5 American males were 7 feet tall. He was quoting the SI article that said that 20% of 7-footers in America were playing in the NBA or something.
Does Lin look any less strong than any other PGs, so much so that he fairly warrants a regular reference to his "deceptive" strength?
Yes, Lin looks less strong than Chauncey Billups, Shannon Brown, Tyreke Evans, Derek Fisher, Kyle Lowry etc. You really need to chill. If I say Chandler Parsons is deceptively strong, are you going to say it's some kind of anti-white thing? Did you give up on saying that Yao Ming is less worthy of admiration because of his abnormal genes? I'm the guy saying everyone's genes are equally OK. You are the guy denying that.
Is this a serious "stat" that people are touting? 17%? I had a calculus professor in college who was 7'1". A total of 70 7' tall people in the US? I had another 7' dude on my college team who was not ever going pro. Let's go ahead and say bell curves with normally distributed data is a terrible way to extrapolate data.
So any PG who looks less strong than those mostly-backups that you've mentioned should be often labelled as "deceptively strong"? What criteria are you using, anyway? If Chandler Parsons was one of the very few white players in the NBA and whites had long been stereotyped as being exceptionally weak and lacking in masculinity, then yes. Absolutely. When did I ever say that Yao Ming was less worthy of admiration because of his size? What I actually said was that people can relate to Jeremy's story more because he doesn't enjoy such a clear natural advantage over his competitors. Therefore, in breaking stereotypes beyond just sports, Lin is a much more effective figure than Yao Ming. Most of what you said has been reasonable, and I agree with most of what you've said about cheering on the Rockets. But the reason that I'm getting on your case is that I think you're under the impression that you're a lot more knowledgeable about the whole racial angle than you actually are. The fact that you see no difference between a Yao Ming and a Jeremy Lin is the clearest indication of that. And I'm trying to address that.
I don't want to care about who is a "genetic anomaly" and who isn't. I don't want to root for Americans more than Chinese either. I think calling Yao "an athletic product of the Chinese communist government" is a kind of put down, one of the very things Yao had to fight against when he came here. You could just call him "an awesome human being" or even "a human being" and stop there. In this post you contradict yourself by saying Lin is in the 0.5 percentile in terms of size and "a world class athlete," but not a genetic anomaly. You also say Lin challenges "stereotypes regarding race" more than Yao, though they are both the same race, and Yao had a better career so far. Maybe you mean stereotypes regarding height. I agree with you that a lot more Americans can identify with Lin than Yao, I guess. Yao is from a foreign culture, doesn't speak English as well, etc. I'm glad Lin excites and inspires a whole new group of people. I have had a lot of involvement with Asian-Americans and Chinese in China as well. I think I'm pretty familiar with a lot of it. I guess I am just reacting to this seeming flood of Lin fans who have shown up and not merely said "I love Lin!" but also "McFail McFail!" while at the same time capitalizing on other stereotypes to claim Lin is the brains of the team or whatever. I am seriously involved with China and I don't wan't any anti-Asian bullsh!t. At the same time, Asian-Americans should be responsible and reasonable to help their credibility. People flood in here throwing bombs at the Rockets organization and CF posters: it's not the way to go.
Interesting quote about Jeremy Lin: http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/37051/the-secretary-of-education-on-jeremy-lin "People don't understand how unbelievably mentally tough he is. You've got to think about what shaped him. Here you are, the best player on your high school team. You win a state championship in California! You beat a national powerhouse! And nobody recruits you? Lots of guys would have quit at that point, or got bitter. You go to Harvard, you're the best player at least from the time you're a sophomore. You have your best games against big-time teams. You destroy Boston College. You destroy Connecticut. You're playing against other future pros and you're the best player on the court. And no one looks at you? And not only does he never get bitter, never quit and never complain, but he never says a word. All he does is keep working hard. He keeps working and keeps working and keeps working. The perseverance and the tenacity -- that's so hugely important"
That's why the LOHs really amuse me They want to bet against Lin failing? They're welcome to it.... because the odds are so against them. They want Lin to leave Houston? Hell, the way it is going, looks like Houston won't be able to afford him at the end of his contract anyway.
The fact that you have no idea what zdrav is saying is not because he is not clear. It's because you don't have any concept of what it's like to be Asian American. Your lines: "I have had a lot of involvement with Asian-Americans and Chinese in China as well." and repeated "I am seriously involved with China" doesn't build your credibility. It lessens it. It's like "I'm not racist. I have a lot of black friends!" You're betraying your true intentions by your posts, and it's "There's too many ching-chongs in here talking about Lin! Go home!!!" Instead of arguing with zdrav, why don't you take a moment to listen and do the human thing. You know, empathize.
