Link This is a very good and well-written article. Definitely worth a read. I thought this was a very interesting and true paragraph. <div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">"This fits into another psychological theory, which is called cross-race recognition theory," Gladwell says. "It suggests that when we mentally process the appearance of faces different from our own -- in other words, faces that we're not familiar with -- we categorize by race and color and ethnicity. But when we process faces from our own race that we're far more familiar with, we categorize by feature -- by eyes and mouth and hair and eyebrows. That's why the old adage about how all black people look the same to whites (and vice versa) is true: When we look at someone of another race, we're not remembering them by using the kinds of features that make it easy to distinguish an individual. We're just coding them as 'black' or as 'white.' My point? In basketball, the 'face' we're familiar with is black. We code black players by feature, so we can make endlessly subtle distinctions between players: There is a David Thompson 'type,' which is quite unlike a Grant Hill 'type,' which, in turn, is quite unlike a Gary Payton 'type.' But I think we code white players by category. They are simply 'white,' and we don't make the same kind of sophisticated distinctions among them. So we miss the 'White Gunner.' Does that make any sense?"</div>
<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Does Morrison play like Bird? Or are we simply fooled by the fact that both are white?</div> Very interesting.
It was an alright article, but I wish it could have gone more in depth and actually break down the similar and different aspects of the two players' games rather than just briefly touching on the general topic of racial stereotypes. I agree that Adam Morrison is compared to Larry Bird mostly because he's white though. Do people not remember how good Bird was? He was arguably the greatest player to ever play the game. The only players you could really make good cases for being better are Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, and Magic Johnson. Yet Morrison, who's not even a consensus top three pick at this point, is the next Larry Bird? At least give him the title of a "poor man's" Larry Bird.
