Expect The NBA Media's Anti-White Crusade Against Jokic To Continue | Bobby Burack
The NBA season returns Tuesday night as Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets raise their championship banner. The moment should be an exciting time for the league. Jokic is officially the best player in the NBA. He is only 28. The Nuggets are positioned to compete for championships for years to come.
Yet the excitement around the team is minimal. There are multiple reasons for that. The Nuggets are a small market team. The roster is built from within. The city is not a hub for star free agents.
But those reasons are all secondary. The lack of enthusiasm around the Nuggets is racially motivated.
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For the first time since the mid-1980s, a white person is the best player in the NBA. The collective league media does not like that. They made that clear last season.
Last March, Jokic was the prohibited favorite to win the league MVP. Statistically, he was the best and most valuable player in the league. The award would've put Jokic among only four players -- along with Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and Larry Bird -- to win the award in three straight seasons.
However, it was at this moment that the media cast Jokic as the white antagonist of the NBA.
ESPN analyst Kendrick Perkins -- who, by all accounts, is a racist -- accused MVP voters of an anti-black bias.
According to Perkins, Jokic did not deserve the regular-season award in 2023 for a disappointing postseason in 2021. Yes, you read that correctly. He added that 80% of voters are white and their racism is an open secret in locker rooms.
There was, however, one problem with Perkins' tirade: it was inaccurate.
White people do not account for 80% of the voting pool. They make up about 55%, well below the national average.
White players also rarely win the award. Specifically, only five white players have won MVP over the last 34 seasons. That is just 14% of the time.
Further, Perkins didn't provide even a modicum of proof that a pro-white bias exists.
In fact, the only year to which we can trace a racial bias is last season when voters voted for Joel Embiid, a black player, over Jokic to prove there is not a bias in favor of white players.
Perkins cost Jokic the award by daring white voters to show they weren't racist and black voters to show they were not sellouts.
It was gross. Though predictable.
Still, Perkins was not the only commentator irritated by Jokic's stellar play.
Jokic led Denver to a Finals victory on June 12. The next day, a 73-year-old career-long race hustler named William C. Rhoden posted an overtly racist article on ESPN.com dismissing Jokic's accomplishments by calling him the latest installment of the "Great White Hope."
Rhoden complained that white writers declared Jokic "greatest of all time” due to their over-excitement for an above-average white player.
Now, you might ask yourself which white writer argued that Jokic is better than Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, or Magic Johnson. We wondered that, too.
See, nowhere in the article did Rhoden cite a single example of a white media member calling Jokic the GOAT. He couldn’t find any examples to support his thesis.
Yet instead of scrapping the piece like a real any credible outlet would, ESPN published a 1,200-word essay that argues with strawmen.
(In the same piece, Rhoden suggested that Larry Bird was "only great for a white man.")
Then came Mark Jones.
Jones' job as a play-by-play commentator is to be an objective voice of the NBA for ESPN. However, when it comes to Jokic -- or Luka Doncic -- he is anything but objective.
Jones, who once falsely accused white police officers of scheming to shoot him, trended during the NBA Finals after a bizarre series of tweets criticizing Jokic with not-so-subtle hints of racism.
There is a Reddit page dedicated to Jones’ posts about Jokic.
Some of the highlights include Jones sharing a post that calls the entire Jokic family a product of white privilege and one suggesting J.J. Redick is a racist for arguing in favor of Jokic winning MVP.
OutKick host Dan Dakich contextualized Jones' coverage of Jokic at the time:
Elsewhere, Bomani Jones stated "You can never be 100% sure , and thus any question about Jokic's possible white privilege is fair.
Stephen A. Smith said a white person should never question Perkins' commentary as a black man.
Domonique Foxworth commented that while there is no proof white voters are racist, it is “not ridiculous” to accuse them of racism until they prove otherwise.
Got that?
White people are both racist and privileged until they show the country they are not. That is at least according to the sports media.
That type of filth overwhelmed the NBA conversation last season, all because a white player elevated himself above the rest.
The treatment of Jokic is eerily similar to how the NFL media treats Josh Allen. Both players have been culture war'd as white villains.
Nearly every NBA television analyst is now black, most of whom are territorial about a white player infringing on a black league. And for decades, every major star was black.
Simply put, Jokic is a frustrating outlier.
So as long as the demand for racism in sports outstrips the supply, expect the media crusade against Jokic to continue. Starting tonight.