Quote:
Originally posted by theboys
In all the years I have played, coached, and simply watched basketball, I have never seen a referee call a game a particular way due to race issues, regardless the color of the official or teams involved.
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I have seen it and believe me it hurts. I'm not going to go into details about the particular game where I saw it, but I can tell you that I was not the only one who thought racism was an issue. It has been well documented. The pain still rumbles around in my stomach. I have the most tremendous admiration for people who really do suffer under racist situations and manage to rise anyway. I don't think I have the strentgh of character to rise above it. But the coach who lost that game, gave the most amazing locker room talk afterwards. It was to the effect that the girls had to keep their chins up, and let the world know that they were better people than those refs. They must play tomorrow as though they had won this one, and then everyone would see the rights and wrongs of the situation. Most of all, they must not see themselves as less, simply because a couple of guys who didn't know them thought they were less.
Racism is alive and well in all parts of the U.S. and continues to affect people. Does that mean the Seattle coach was right that his team is being hurt by it? Not necessarily. But even if he is right, the only response that works is to play so well, so clean, so legalistically correctly, that the refs absolutely cannot call anything. Whining about it just simply doesn't help.