On Steph and the Oscars

On Saturday night this happened. On Sunday night this happened.

What do they have in common? Griping and sour grapes from people who should know better, making feeble attempts to protect selfish legacies.

First, the Saturday thing. Steph Curry broke his own record for 3-pointers in a single season – with 28 games remaining. He is shooting a three point field goal percentage better than most NBA players have for layups and dunks. It is in short, one of – if not THE – most impressive season in all of sports history. Not just basketball, but in all human sporting endeavor.

The Sunday thing was the 88^th Academy Awards. And of course this year, there was a big hue and cry about #oscarssowite – the rather uncomfortable fact that all nominees for actor and director were white. In a biting monologue and throughout the show, Chris Rock, AKA, “the man with the toughest job in the world,” did a pretty damn good job humorously laying waste to the racist Hollywood system and the white privilege that keeps it churning on.

If you are blessed with sight, and you came to both the Saturday thing and the Sunday thing as a normal person, you could only come away knowing both to be true: Steph Curry is a transcendent and brilliant player having the season of all seasons, and Hollywood is very racist. There really is no other honest position to take.

But some, blinded to this reality by their own sense of legacy and privilege, have.

With Steph, old guard stars like Oscar Robertson, Isiah Thomas and Stephen Jackson have weighed in and claimed that Steph couldn’t do what he’s doing, “back in the day.” That relaxed rules about physical play and a commitment to better defense would stop him in his tracks 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. These basketball chirping elders are of course doing what many chirping elders tend to do: refuse to acknowledge that a younger savant has come along and torched their talent and their memories.

Isaiah Thomas for example, a two-time NBA champion, hall of famer and 12-time NBA all-star, standing 6’1” and 180 pounds, averaged almost 20 point per game during his career – a career solidly located during that bygone NBA era of tough defenses and physical play. Steph Curry is a 1,000 percent better shooter than Thomas; has exponentially better ball handling skills and is bigger and faster than Isiah. Yet, Thomas says Curry couldn’t excel in his era? If I didn’t know better, I’d say that is the ravings of a lunatic.

But, despite his abysmal record as a coach, GM and owner, Isaiah is not a lunatic. He knows what he’s doing. He’s employing an argument as old as argument itself. To bask in the safe harbor of a point that is utterly unprovable. Just as kids squabble about who would win a fight; Godzilla or King Kong, Isaiah is casting shade on Steph because he knows that until someone actually invents a time machine and transports #30 back to 1989, he’s safe in his accusations. Thomas, or Robertson or Jackson or other retired stars can sit back and cast aspersions, because they can’t really be taken to task.

With the Oscars, the tactic is a bit different, but the sentiment is the same. Hollywood Royalty, Meryl Streep, Michael Cain and Charlotte Rampling, when confronted by the claim of racist Hollywood all took turns ham-handedly saying that either A.) Whites suffer too, or B.) Prejudice against minorities is overblown.

Here the attempt is not so much about preserving memories of greatness and glory, but more about attempting to preserve the status quo and cutting down competition.

Streep, Rampling and Cain are served well by an entertainment industry that goes out of its way to make acting, directing and producing opportunities much easier for those of their same skin tone. Further, these great actors don’t want to have to answer uncomfortable questions about how their path to fame and fortune was made much easier than that of blacks, Asians and Latinos. In an industry that celebrates the fantasy and fiction of the humble everyman waiting tables by night and auditioning by day overcoming long odds to become an Oscar Winner, no one currently supplying air to that dream balloon wants to confront the truly impossible odds of black actors and directors making it big.

Before pro sports integrated, many insiders knew that the glory of all-white teams in basketball; football and baseball were fool’s gold. It’s the same for Hollywood today. Do you really think that Marisa Tomei for My Cousin Vinny; Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman, or Kevin Costner as director for Dances With Wolves would have taken home Oscar gold if Hollywood was truly open to everyone with talent? Really?

Indeed, this past weekend brought us ample evidence that for some, if history and reality are not on your side, better do your best to rewrite history and create a new reality.

So here’s to you Steph Curry and Chris Rock. Steph, keep shooting and keep pushing Isaiah and Robertson further down the list of all-time NBA greats and Chris, keep telling the truth and pushing Cain and Streep further into oblivion.