I was listening to Mikey Miss on the ride home today and he was discussing foul shooting with his producer, Tyrone Johnson, who now doubles as the co-host of Sixers Outsiders on NBC Sports Philadelphia. The entire conversation centered around white players vs. black players and Mike’s assertion that white players typically have upper tier mid-range jump shot and free-throw percentages.

I didn’t think much of it at the time, but then I got home and logged on to see this clip on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/notkerouac/status/1062428149177303044

That 30-second clip doesn’t really do Mike any favors.

You’re just gonna have to trust me when I tell you that the conversation went on for something like five minutes after that and didn’t have any kind of nasty offensive racial undertones. It felt like a scene from White Men Can’t Jump more than any kind of truly sinister shit.

Mike was basically suggesting that white kid playground and YMCA culture features a lot of guys shooting jumpers and mid-range stuff while black kids grew up working on their handles and individual skills and finishing ability at the rim. I don’t know if that’s true in EVERY SINGLE CASE, but every court I played on in three different states featured white kids like me getting burned off the dribble while at least being somewhat effective from 12-feet on the offensive side of the floor. We definitely weren’t the first players chosen in the pick up game.

Anyway, Mike and Tyrone went down the list of the NBA’s best free-throw shooters, two of which I think were white – JJ Redick and Danilo Gallinari. The other eight were black guys, led by Philly favorite Malcolm Brogdon. The whole exercise was kind of derailed when they realized that there really aren’t a ton of white players in the NBA to begin with, so of course the the numbers aren’t going to be representative of anything at all conclusive.

But I didn’t think Mike was saying anything in the vein of, “black guys can’t shoot,” he was just playing along with the age-old stereotype that the only thing white guys can do is shoot. Tyrone didn’t seem to be remotely offended, though I obviously can’t speak for him.

I’ll put the full audio up when it’s posted on the 97.5 website later. But for now, just stop being offended and outraged by everything you see and hear. Nobody got pissed off when Joel Embiid talked about Googling “white people shooting three pointers,” did they?