Talk about missing the main point. Americans of all races adopt and identify with teams that are purely (for all practical purposes) African-American, without any racial inhibition. That is ACTUALLY what’s happening in society these days, BLM notwithstanding. (Urban police forces are actually the most diverse institutions in the nation — e.g., the NYPD is actually more ‘colored’ than Caucasian. The old Irish cop is in the minority, but you’d never know that from the way the NYT reports it. There’s a huge town-gown fight shaping up between the African-American men and women on the street who actually cope with inner city problems, and the African-American campus intellectuals who blather on about increasingly abstract concepts of racism and their need for safe space).

As for the game, who cares about the pros? It’s the best game ever invented. Kids of all ages play on playgrounds. I was a 6'1" forward fifty years ago (nifty outside shot). My problem was other athletes who were better than I was, and getting the next basket — and that’s what happens prosaically among people actually playing. Who cares about the race of the guy you’re playing?

I’m going to add something about identification. I liked the OJ series, but I was none too happy about those Hertz commercials being characterized as racist. Come on. What they were was embryonic, and if OJ hadn’t turned out to be a sociopathic narcissist, he’d be applauded. These days, you see Dennis Haysbert and Samuel Jackson selling mass financial products across racial lines. I’m a big tennis fan (basketball and tennis call on comparable skills), and watch a lot of Tennis Channel. That has to have a largely Caucasian demographic — but you will see commercials with entirely Black families. This isn’t trivial stuff — that’s people putting their money where their mouth is. And race doesn’t much matter.

There’s much to say about mass incarceration. I’m a criminal practitioner of 40 years experience, public defender turned DA. We CAN do better than lock people up — but the prosaic reality is that African-Americans in custody are there largely because of offenses committed against other African-Americans — and not some racial policy.