The "great" debate: Kobe vs. Shaq Or: Everybody has real- world choices to make ITAL We reprint excerpts of this exchange to illustrate how dialectical materialism can be applied to any real-world problem as well as to stimulate thinking and discussion about the Party's relations with the bourgeoisie in oppressed nations (e.g. millionaire sports stars). END Dear Mim, I have been an avid reader of your various publications for many years now, and I generally support the line and tactics of your fine organizations. Although I have resisted many of your arguments upon initial reading, most of the time I have subsequently discovered that y'alls were right on target despite my skepticism. I guess that true radicalism is always initially disturbing to the citizens of the empire. Of course, real political advances tend to come through struggle, so I would like to point out some difficulties I have with MIM's take on the "earthshaking" Shaq vs. Kobe feud. Now, this criticism obviously isn't a dividing line issue for me. ... While I agree that NBA basketball isn't as important as smashing imperialism, I also contend that MIM's line in this case is rooted in common white chauvinist myths about the young men of the Black Nation. So even if the fate of the Lakers is mere trivia, MIM needs to wipe the settler chauvinist bullshit out of its thinking as much as possible. I'll address the science first. MC5 argues that Kobe has become a ball-hog who doesn't pass the ball enough to Shaq. Phil Jackson has ordered him to relent, but Kobe is too selfish to listen, and thus the Lakers are losing more games than they did last year. This take is pretty much the exact take one would hear on any Amerikkkan sports talk radio station. MC5, being much more sophisticated than the average sports fan, goes further by comparing the two players using a "points per shot attempt" (ppsa) statistic. Sure enough, Shaq has better stats. ... But I can even grant to MC5 that there is a one to one trade-off between Shaq and Kobe's shooting, and s/he would still be wrong when s/he busts that "Scientifically there is an answer to who is right" and that "to earn foul shots from referees, one must attempt to shoot the ball. Hence, because it counts foul shots and regular shots the way they count in the game, there is a formula that answers the question who is the better total offensive player, Shaq or Kobe: points per shot attempt." This statement couldn't be farther from the truth. In fact, a person could score an unlimited number of free throw points without ever attempting to shoot the ball. When a person misses a shot because of a foul, it isn't recorded by the scorer as a missed shot. When other teams start the famous "hack a Shaq" defense, Shaq never gets a chance to shoot the ball at all. In the ppsa statistic foul points are pure gravy; foul misses are completely excluded from the stat. The implication of this is that Shaq could go 5-50 from the line and get as much ppsa out of it as Kobe going 5-5. Ppsa is uniquely unsuitable for use in Shaq's case because it glosses over his only real weakness. And "as they count in a game," two missed free-throws are basically a turnover a key cause of bad losses! Now factor in the other weaknesses of ppsa. It doesn't know that Kobe gets more assists than Shaq. It is blind to ball-handling and screen setting. Face it MC5, you reduce basketball to ppsa the way a trot reduces gender to class. ... Well, lets see. The media already unfairly blames young Black men for crime, drugs, prostitution, guns, violence, rape, and sexism. Don't you think that they might be a wee bit chauvinistic about the NBA too? White sports fans have always mirrored their parasitic nations chauvinism in their condemnations of Black NBA players. Like the urban Pig who considers all Black men to be criminals, the suburban white sports fan has always considered the younger stars to be irrational and selfish. To them, the presence of young Black men in the league is a threatening symbol. They tend to fantasize about small white hoosiers who defy the odds and beat back the Black nation from their game's pure heritage. This kind of insulting bullshit is also liberally sprinkled with eugenics, cultural chauvinism and out-right racism. The perceived inherent selfishness of young Black men is ALWAYS the problem to the working class white hoops fan. Is Kobe really the undisciplined young Black man of the stereotype? It shouldn't matter if the myth itself is destructive to the Black Nation. But even so, give me a break! You don't get that good by sitting around. ... The white nation likes to stir up dissent in the Black nation. It likes to rumor monger and disinform. Your own security policy recognizes the way that stuff can get distorted by the bourgeoisie. So why are the sports writers so infallible when it comes to reporting on private conversations between Lakers? Is MIM saying that the sports page is the only part of the white media that tells the truth about the Black nation? That was Kobe's real break with democratic centralism, he forgot about the crazed viciousness of the white press. He should have kept things in house, as should have Shaq and Jackson. ... I once took a trip to the Basketball hall of fame up in Springfield Mass. On the wall they have an obviously racist cartoon from a mainstream media source in the 70's. In it, an insulting caricature of the great Dr. J is dunking the ball in an exaggerated fashion while his team loses a game by 30 points. In the back ground two white commentators lament the degeneration of the team game as exemplified by Dr. J. Sound familiar? I researched the subject for a paper in graduate school and found that EVERY generation of NBA stars has been portrayed as a "new breed" of young Black men who were bound to tarnish the alleged purity of the team game. In the end the white nation was forced to admit that Jordan, Magic, Kareem, Dr. J., and Wilt were great team players. Someday Kobe and Iverson will be used to bait a new generation of Black rookies. Why join in? So what's next, MIM? An expose on how Young Black "gangsters" are ruining "our" public schools due to their lack of discipline? How about an anti-rap music crusade based on the scientific truth that one can find more sexist comments per track when comparing hip-hop to Classic Rock? None of this indicts your conclusions about democratic centralism, of course. When Kobe disobeys Jackson, he is hurting the team. All NBA players need democratic centralism. Shaq may be better than Kobe, but the Lakers need them both to exercise some discipline. While I agree with MIM that the millionaires of the NBA are probably too interested in their share of the Imperial Pie, I also think that white chauvinism is un- Maoist and cheesy. I feel that pervasive white chauvanism proves Mao right in his assessment of the wavering potential of the National Bourgeoise. In the end, The Black nation should have its own basketball league. That way the nation could continue its domination in the sport without having to deal with the capitalist/ settler media, owners, and fans. Build Mim! Combat White Chauvanism! Go Big Red! -- Smucky MC5 replies: The writer does the right thing and tries to raise a scientific argument against what I said about the Kobe/Shaq thing. The writer says that every year, the media blames somebody for not playing the team game, usually the younger players. Since the stars are Black men usually, this means the media is guilty of white chauvinism. Hence, the writer says I bought the media criticism of Black men by criticizing Kobe. In terms of the statistical argument, the critic raises the idea that points per shot attempt is not perfect. On the other hand, the critic does not raise any statistic to replace it in the offensive aspect of the game. According to the critic's logic, it is possible to score more than 100% of the time, because points will be counted but shot attempts will not in the official statistics, if those shot attempts involved fouls by the other team on the shooter. This would be a very persuasive argument if it came with a way of calculating a better way of choosing who should be getting more shots. In most things in life people must act on imperfect information. We cannot wait until after global warming has happened to decide to do something about its potential causes. The Shaq/Kobe statistics feud is another example of making the perfect the enemy of the good. If a leader like Phil Jackson has to be perfect in his knowledge to enforce centralism, there is never going to be any centralism. Is it conceivable Shaq could go 5 for 50 at the foul line and end up with more points per shot attempt than Kobe? Yes it is conceivable scientifically, but not likely in the real world. It's not that simple, because a persyn does not get to take many foul shots for just walking down the court without the ball. The foul shot is granted, mostly in the context of threatening to score and his teammates are not going to give him the ball if 5 for 50 is going on. All statistics have their weak points, but we cannot punt questions on that account. The critic seems to want to avoid making a decision on the question of Shaq versus Kobe shot attempts -- apparently out of a desire not to criticize Black men in public. For this reason, the critic raises the "reductionist" cry in an agnostic way without finding a way to replace the statistical method of choosing between Shaq and Kobe on offense that I offered. Yet there is no way to avoid the scientific question: either Kobe should take more shots or Shaq should. If the critic wants, we can also phrase it: somebody should be taking more and somebody should be taking fewer a) Kobe or b) Shaq or c) the other three guys on the court. At some point there is also perfect equilibrium where everyone takes the shots they should be taking. The critic should state which of these options is the one we see in the Lakers and not avoid a judgement. Even in an all Black league of a capitalist Black nation, the question would be the same. If the two men were willing to play in a Black communist nation's league, again there would be a scientific question. There is also a question of music that the critic raises. Yes, if all other things are equal and the only difference is that rap is more sexist than other music forms, then down with rap! We certainly hope our critic is arguing that not all other things are equal, that rap has its good and bad aspects. The Los Angeles Lakers are champions in their game and receive extensive adulation. Knocking down Kobe to benefit Shaq hardly seems directly white chauvinist. It's one of those things that if we criticized Shaq and not Kobe, somebody could have said: "the older they get, the more threatening Black boys get, and hence X attacked Shaq because whites prefer to emasculate Blacks. They don't want to see anyone become established, because next thing you know they could become famous, powerful and maybe even manage and own a team." The critic has not proved that this feud has decreased the adulation (allowing Shaq to sell more books for instance) and has not proved that such a decrease would not be a good thing for the end of white domination. Perhaps if the people spent less time adoring multi-millionaire heroes on the Lakers and spent more time thinking of themselves as heroes--including participation in their own sports instead of spectating-- we'd be better off. Dissection of what goes on in the NBA may contribute to that. While young basketball players receive disproportionate criticism for not having proved themselves yet, the critic leaves out the economic facts of life: a young basketball player does in fact have to make himself a star to bring down the multi-million dollar salaries--and endorsement deals-- that experienced players do receive. To believe that this will not create a corrosive effect on the purity of the sport is wrong. 8 digit figures of money surely will produce corrosive bourgeois Liberalism and that means that every player wants to score. Very, very few top defensive players receive endorsement deals. Hence, whether it makes any sporting sense for their teams or not, agents are telling their players how to play the game. To believe that Black men making six and seven digit figures who want to make seven and eight-digit figures and endorsement deals are above the sort of individualism that even the critic admitted Kobe was guilty of by going public and disobeying his coach -- is wrong. It's setting up Black men to be gods and they will surely fall all the harder for being set up as above the laws of capitalism. Lenin said that serious parties take criticism from the outside and admit their mistakes in public. A better question would be whether or not the critic thinks it is right for MIM to criticize Eldridge Cleaver publicly as it has. We have also criticized a number of sell-outs who backed away from Huey Newton's line at its peak. Pinpointing relative measures of decadence in the Black bourgeoisie in public is not as important to the proletariat one way or another as criticizing Black Panther leaders for instance.