Vanilla tastes bland

By Harvey McGuffin
I remember when ...

White people.

Sure, they may be commonplace in suburban restaurants or various levels of government or the state of Wisconsin, but when I was younger, I remember when there was one place they were not allowed. And that place is in the running for college basketball’s Naismith Award, bestowed to the best player in college basketball each year.

But J.J. Redick and Adam Morrison are both very white. Pasty white. Dead-of-winter white. "Full House" white. And that just grizzles my grizzle.

Gonzaga’s Morrison leads the nation with 29.0 points per game, and Redick follows closely after at No. 2 with 27.8 a game. The poetry reader makes 44 percent of his three-point attempts but more distressingly makes 50.7 percent of his shots. Casper seldom misses, which is precisely why everyone hates him and throws Jack Sikma Starting Lineup figures at him when they attend Duke games.

The Zaggy makes 52.4 percent of his shots, which is better, and what’s worse is that the bastard is a junior. He could be back next year, spreading his whiteness all over courts in the Pacific Northwest. And his mustache makes him look like Alex Trebek, after being hit by a bus.

It’s bad enough that a Croat-Australian (who now lives with his anglo bretheren in Wisconsin) won the damn award last year, but this is becoming a trend. Back when college basketball was pure, the award would go to the likes of Ralph Sampson, Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Johnny Dawkins, David Robinson and Danny Manning. Then Larry Johnson, Glenn Robinson, Marcus Camby, Antawn Jamison, Tim Duncan, Elton Brand, Kenyon Martin and Shane Battier. They brought us into the new millennium, when things started just fine with Jason Williams, T.J. Ford and Jameer Nelson.

Did someone in the peanut gallery just say Christian Laettner? Go to hell.

I don’t mind if that pretty-boy-who-reads-poetry-while-banging-coeds-in-Carolina makes a ton of outside shots. I don’t mind if Dirty Sanchez in the Pacific Northwest is busy drawing comparisons to Larry Bird (who was not white), but I get a little nervous when both of them go for 40 points on the same day, the way they did Saturday. This is America. This isn’t Macedonia.

At this rate, the James Naismith will go to one of these two pale-skinners, and the winner will then deliver an eloquent speech thanking everyone (including God, who is a damn huge fan of college ball) and go on to make millions of dollars to observe NBA games from the bench. Back when the world was right and kids weren’t running around having babies and the cell was someplace you went you got a little too liquored up at Mancino’s on a Friday night and picked a fight with the nearest jukebox, the black athlete was ruling the roost of college basketball. It’s just what was. To go back on that ... well that’s just plain racism.

There are things I’ve grown to expect in this life. One is that you’re never too old to give that damn jukebox a piece of your mind. Another is that no matter what you say, the missus will hate you for it. Third, the best player in college basketball is a 6-foot-something-nice black man who can dribble, shoot the three and slam it home on your face. What’s next? White defensive backs in the NFL? How about white goaltenders? White bowlers? Please.