Wednesday, January 20, 2010

This has to be a Prank (UPDATE: Good God, It's Not)

It's brilliant performance art, if it is.

The All-American Basketball Alliance announced in a news release Sunday evening that it intends to start its inaugural season in June and hopes Augusta will be one of 12 cities with a team.

"Only players that are natural born United States citizens with both parents of Caucasian race are eligible to play in the league," the statement said.

[...]

Don "Moose" Lewis, the commissioner of the AABA, said the reasoning behind the league's roster restrictions is not racism.

"There's nothing hatred about what we're doing," he said. "I don't hate anyone of color. But people of white, American-born citizens are in the minority now. Here's a league for white players to play fundamental basketball, which they like."

Lewis said he wants to emphasize fundamental basketball instead of "street-ball" played by "people of color." He pointed out recent incidents in the NBA, including Gilbert Arenas' indefinite suspension after bringing guns into the Washington Wizards locker room, as examples of fans' dissatisfaction with the way current professional sports are run.

"Would you want to go to the game and worry about a player flipping you off or attacking you in the stands or grabbing their crotch?" he said. "That's the culture today, and in a free country we should have the right to move ourselves in a better direction."

There's no AABA website and I so far only Augusta, GA has been offered a team -- I can only assume this is a dig at Augusta National Golf Course, which has a notorious racist past that the club has tried to shake in the last decade.

Someone call the Yes Men. I'll be flabbergasted if this isn't some kind of prank.

[via M]

MORE: Sweet Jesus, this is for real. Consider me flabbergasted.

5 comments:

CJ said...

Want to really trip them up?

Request DNA testing. Why would it trip them up? Because their going to find out everybody's got the mix in them.

CJ said...

Maybe the Augusta team will be named The Masters.

Arayan Masters of American Born White Men Who Can Cry But Can't Jump

Jb said...

How about the "Augusta Masters Race"?

CJ said...

I like it.

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