The White Wash

This posting is about a rare phenomenon in the world of basketball today. This phenomenon is almost as rare as not seeing Britney Spears’ vagine when she gets out of a car. The phenomenon is called the White Wash. Many people probably don’t even know what the white wash is. A wikipedia search of white wash gives us Whitewash, or calcimine, kalsomine, or calsomine is a type of inexpensive paint made from slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) and chalk (whiting). Other additives have historically included water glass, glue, egg white, Portland cement, salt, soap, milk or flour. Sadly this is not what I am talking about. The white wash I am talking about is when a team has five white (American Born) players on the floor at the same time. I told you it was rare.

The last great NBA team to actually employ a white was the 85-86 Celtics. They would go Danny Ainge, Scott Wedmen, Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and Bill Walton all on the floor at the same time. This is the team that I argue is the single greatest NBA team of all time. They went 68-14 and more importantly 40-1 at home. Going 40-1 at home will never be done or topped again. No one has a home court advantage as the Celtics did back in the old Boston Garden. This super team would regularly employ the white wash and still went on to having the best record in the NBA and bringing the Celtics to their 16^th NBA Championship.

Why do I bring this up today you might be asking yourself? The reason is I don’t think a single NBA team could even do a white wash never mind one that might actually be able to compete. (Quick Research shows that no NBA team can throw out a white wash) I can’t remember where the stat came from but White Americans only make up 6% of the NBA at this point. The leading White American scorer is Mike Dunleavy Jr. at 17.7ppg which puts him at 52^nd the league. At this point the chance of getting an NBA team to throwing a true white wash together on the court is seriously 0%.

So the real point of this column is to coin a new term. The new term is the Euro Wash. As many people have recently realized but there has been a steady influx of foreign NBA players in the last couple of years. The last three MVP awards have gone out to foreigners (Steve Nash (Canada) twice, and Dirk Nowitski (Germany)). Now Euro Wash doesn’t mean that they have to be from Europe but just not born in the United States. (It was the only way I could get this to work out.) A quick look (I mean spending less then 10 minutes of research) leads me to believe that 3 NBA teams can currently throw out a Euro wash and still compete at a relatively high level. Those three teams are the San Antonio Spurs, Los Angeles Lakers and Toronto Raptors. Their lineups would respectively be:

San Antonio Spurs

Tony Parker

Manu Giniboli

Tim Duncan

Fabricio Oberto

Fransisco Ellson

Los Angeles Lakers

Sasha Vujacic

Kobe Bryant

Vladimir Radmanovic

Ronny Turiaf

Pau Gasol

Toronto Raptors

Jose Calderon

Carlos Delfino

Jorge Garbajose

Andre Bargnani

Rasho Nesterovic

While in reality only the Toronto Raptors should count, all of those players were born outside of the United States. Kobe Bryant was born in Italy because that is where his dad was playing professional basketball at the time and Tim Duncan was born in the Virgin Islands. If I had to pick one of those three teams in a game against either of the others it would be the Los Angeles Lakers. Kobe and Gasol are just too good. Its sad to say that is the closest a team can get to a white wash in today’s NBA.

But the subtle underlying point of this post is that the White American NBA player is becoming a thing of the past. (Steve Nash is Canadian and therefore doesn’t count) Now I am not a racist by sense of the word (Some seem to believe that being an Italian from Boston that I genetically predisposed to being a racist but that is not true.) but the only hope of a White American NBA superstar is Kevin Love, the freshmen at UCLA who could very well be the College Player of the Year this year. (I think Tyler Hansborough of UNC or Michael Beasley of Kansas St. are more deserving but Love is mentioned along with them when the award is discussed) He is big and strong and knows how to play the game of basketball. He has a chance to be something great and until then the only other hope of a White American being an NBA All-Star lays on the shoulders of Chris Kaman but lets be honest with Andrew Bynum becoming a beast and Shaquille O’Neal returning to the Western Conference, Kaman has no chance of ever being an NBA All-Star.