Why are there hardly any good White American NBA players?

Gymnastics is one of the hardest sports to compete in. That's probably THE top sport to test your physical abilities in the Olympics.

Basketball hasn't been popular in China as it is in America until the early 2000's. Black people have played basketball longer and at an earlier age. The work and time the Chinese have put into the sports they dominate in is probalby the same as blacks in America for basketball.

 

Americans are bad at soccer, are they less athletic than Europeans/South Americans?

Way to generalize regarding DNA. Does certain DNA make people smarter than others then?

I agree, its rare to see a 6'7 Asian who is athletic and coordinated to play high level basketball. But NBA players are freaks of nature in general anyways. How many Lebrons and Durants are there in the world? They are freaks of nature physical specimens.

But I will say though, for the average Joe, let's say 5'10' - 6'1 normal dude on the street; Asians are NOT less athletic than similar sized White or Black guys.

 

I think I saw a study back in the day that found that the majority of world class sprinters were of West African descent, and the majority of world class marathoners were of East African descent. Like you say, only the most elite of the elite. But it sticks out when you see an all-black 100M Olympic final, or Ethiopians or Kenyans winning the big marathons year after year.

 

Don't know I really want to go down this road. But, slaves brought over would be the ones who lost wars, captured and sold into slavery. I'm not sure how you select for the most athletic by picking among the vanquished. And, you wouldn't just sell the most able, you'd sell all the slaves you could and the less able would simply fetch a lower price. Now you have the rigors of coming over and then of field work. That'd select for the young and healthy over old and infirm, but not really the freakishly athletic over the pedestrian. Once in the New World, the most able-bodied would again be the people who can work the longest, not the highest jumpers or fastest runners. Nor were field slaves falling dead between rows of cotton because their athleticism was only average. Between the abolition of slave imports ~1800 and the civil war, there was some intentional breeding going on. There may have been some selection for certain traits there (probably not footspeed and jumping), but much of the focus was just on producing many children to provide future supply to the market. It seems a little unreasonable to think 60 years of some intentional breeding can change the profile of the whole African American population though.

 

White people don't play a lot of tennis either. At least to the extent that you will introduce your child with a racquet at age 3-5 pay thousand $ every year or get loans to send him to an academy in California (where most american tennis players get sent to), or Spain,France (where most European players get sent to) where your kid will live with a family etc.
That's why most tennis players come from families that are already involved heavily usually in a professional manner with tennis. The VAST majority of pro tennis players are sons and daughters of coaches or owners of courts,academies etc.
It all has to do with opportunity at a very very early age and with parents that push their kids very very hard and most of the times train them themselves.No matter how athletic you are if you start learning the sport at a late age you will never go pro. (in contrast with bball).
It's simply a very different kind of sport.

Another example is Lithuania. Lithuania a very small country has continuously produces top level bball players over the course of decades. The whole country has less population than the great Houston area.
But why does Lithuania produces so many good bball players? Do they have some kind of genes that separate them? The other Baltic states haven't produce almost any good pro except from now with Porzingis.
Or is it because in Lithuania everyone plays bball and loves the sport and so the good talents are given the opportunity and the education to further their carreer? Are Lithuanians more athletic and more tall than all the other Europeans?

 

The selection b/c of slavery is certainly possible (see my post a couple pages back), though I don't know of any scientific study. Researchers and funding agencies tend to shy away from this topic for obvious reasons.

 

Scouts only look at vertical jumping ability and prototypical height requirements and less at how basketball athletes impact the game. Lucky players like Steve nash, Bobby Sura, Chandler Parsons were given chances....

 

I did overstate in saying that it was unlikely there was a difference in the averages, which relates to the slavery idea. It's more correct to say that I don't know. But if you're just talking about elite athletes, the greater diversity is enough to explain why so many are black.

 

This is the answer.

 

Jimmy the Greek Snyder from CBS back in the day:

"The black is a better athlete to begin with because he's been bred to be that way — because of his high thighs and big thighs that goes up into his back, and they can jump higher and run faster because of their bigger thighs. This goes back all the way to the Civil War when during the slave trading, the owner — the slave owner would breed his big black to his big woman so that he could have a big black kid."

That obviously didn't go too well for him.

On wiki, slave breeding seems to be more about women. Fertile women who could have the most children. "The purpose of slave breeding was to produce new slaves without incurring the cost of purchase, to fill labor shortages caused by the termination of the Atlantic slave trade."

Perhaps more than selective breeding it was about black children growing up in this hard labor environment their whole lives essentially training their bodies for physical activities that require certain muscle's to have been worked out. All the while, white children were growing up lazy and fat? I of course don't mean all. But you see it in wealthy peoples throughout history. They all ended up getting fatter and unhealthy.

Slave accounts:

"In the antebellum years, numerous escaped slaves wrote about their experiences in books called slave narratives. Many recounted that at least a portion of slave owners continuously interfered in the sexual lives of their slaves (usually the women). The slave narratives also testified that slave women were subjected to arranged marriages, forced matings, sexual violation by masters, their sons or overseers, and other forms of abuse.

The historian E. Franklin Frazier, in his book The Negro Family, stated that "there were masters who, without any regard for the preferences of their slaves, mated their human chattel as they did their stock." Ex-slave Maggie Stenhouse remarked, "Durin' slavery there were stockmen. They was weighed and tested. A man would rent the stockman and put him in a room with some young women he wanted to raise children from."

 

I don't think it's a stretch to say most modern black men have genetics tied to these "stockmen."

I mean look how easily 1 man can spread his seed through generations. Look at someone like Genghis Khan. 0.5% of men in the world, about 16 million individuals alive today, carry this dudes genes.

 

Yeah, you just don't respect black people.

 

What do you mean? What does this have to do with respect? You don't know me.

I understand if you are offended. This is a sensitive subject. But, were approaching 2016. It's time to get over it and have serious discussions instead of running away at any mention of a racial topic.

 

AAU is terrible for developing players. Everyone pretty much full-court presses the whole game and the teams with the most athletic/physically strong players usually win. It's mostly a showcase of one on one abilities as opposed to team basketball. That's probably why European players are developing into better skill players since most kids playing in AAU are just developing one on one skills. I will say that confidence is never lacking with American players since they do play a much more physical/rough style...

 

Gabby Douglas won the gymnastics individual (and team) all-around gold medal at the most recent olympics.