Gilbert Arenas Dog Whistles By Calling For NBA To Remove Euro Players

The NBA is undergoing a scoring inflation. That's obvious to anyone who watches a game or checks a box score. Teams are averaging 115.2  points per game this season, compared to just  96.3 in 2011-12.

Most critics blame load management and the lack of consequences in regular-season basketball for the waning effort players show on defense. 

We agree.

However, former NBA guard Gilbert Arenas was more specific in his blame this week. According to  Arenas, European players are at fault for the negative trend.

"I know what they can do [to stop the scoring]. Get rid of all the Europeans," Arenas said on his podcast.  

"You go to college and learn defense. What college do Europeans go to? They don’t go to college whatsoever. They have no athleticism. They have no speed, no jumping ability. They are a liability on defense."

You might wonder how Arenas could make that argument, given the facts. 

For example, Giannis Antetokounmpo is a European player. Antetokounmpo won NBA Defensive Player of the Year in 2020. Rudy Gobert is also foreign. He won the award three times. 

Victor Wembanyama currently leads the league in blocks. As a rookie, Wembanyama is already among the most impactful players on defense. 

Plus, most of the players who are most notorious for not trying on defense are American-born: Damian Lillard, Trae Young, James Harden, Ja Morant, etc.

But then you realize that Arenas isn't talking about Euro players, per se. He even clarified his comments later, saying "Rudy and the Greek Freak [are the exception]" to his criticism of Euros. 

Arenas is talking about white players, like Nikola Jokic, Luka Doncic, and Jusuf Nurkić – all of whom are frequent targets of Arenas on his podcast.

"European" has become a code word for white players in the NBA. Especially for Arenas, who earlier this year half-jokingly encouraged more violence against whites on the court:

"They are takin the league from our people," said Arenas. 

"They" refers to white people. "Our" refers to black people. 

See, American-born white players have had little influence on the game over the past 30 years. Yet the influx of European players of late caused Jokic and Luka to rise atop the NBA.

Arenas is not the only former or current black player to respond to the success of white Euros with hostility.

Last year, ESPN analyst Kendrick Perkins argued that Jokic could not win the MVP award without assistance from prejudiced white voters. 

Draymond Green complained that Jokic has "not caught the same flak of not winning a championship as American players, and I don’t understand it" during a podcast conversation with – wait for it – Gilbert Arenas. 

Montrezl Harrell called Luka a "bitch ass white boy" to his face on the court.

The star wing of the NBA would be exclusively black if the league omitted European players. 

Arenas is dog-whistling, to use an oft-used phrase from the culture war: "They have no athleticism. They have no speed, no jumping ability." 

He's stereotyping white players and blaming them for the lack of defense in the NBA. It's gross and obvious.

Still, voices like Arenas are more of a symptom of racial hysteria than a cause. 

Politics, Hollywood, and the social and corporate media perpetually tell black Americans that white people are their enemy and have the power to undermine their community.

Such fear porn naturally builds resentment and a reluctance to accept white people in primary black spaces, like the sport of basketball.

Activist and social media influencer Dr. Umar Johnson explained that feeling when he recently tried to disqualify Eminem from the conversation of the greatest rappers of all time:

"No non-African can ever be the best of anything African. It's an insult to the ancestors. It's an insult to the race, and it's an insult to every black person," said Johnson.

"Eminem has all the privileges of a white male and all the privileges of being in the hip-hop community, so we got to be careful about letting non-Africans into our community."

Arenas feels the same way about white players as some black rappers do about Eminem. The hell with inclusion. 

Then again, according to former WNBA player Sheryl Swoopes: "black people can’t be racist."   Swoopes made that argument on Arenas’ podcast  (it's always on Arenas' podcast) last week. 

So don’t you dare call Gilbert Arenas’ wishes to assault white players and remove them from the NBA "racist."  That would make you the "racist," according to the podcast.