Heads up Basketball: a love story.......tonight includes Coach Rupp

[mktmaker]

I don't follow the basketball board as much during football season, so this series may have been discussed at length.

As I understand it...Basketball: a love story is 61 20-minute episodes.

I have seen ones about:

* the ABA. The first slam dunk contest was amusing...the guys didn't know what to do. 7'2" Artis Gilmore (who has a lot of history with the state of Kentucky) was first. He just picked up a ball with each hand and walked to the basketball and dunked them both.

* Howard Garfinkel's 5* camps (featuring Hubie Brown, Cal, and Pitino

* one episode featured Pitino and Billy Donovan at Providence

* Birth of the Bruins




Anyway, tonight (Sunday) at 10 EDT is episode 3. ESPN 2.

Part of it will be about Coach Rupp. I doubt it will be good. I saw a review which mentioned that Rupp didn't get a black recruit until 1970.

 

[mktmaker]

Shameless bump.

 

[uk78]

Was on before. Kentucky fans are not going to like the Rupp episode as it focuses not on his records but of course 66 and suggests a quote where he used the "N" word, etc. I guess there could be some truth to all of this but it ignores that players he coached in the Olympics and other venues.

 

[mktmaker]

...and worse....North Carolina was glorified.

Before that 1966 title game, UNC had never (nor any team in the ACC) had an African-American player.

 

[mktmaker]

 

[Kentucky fan 1989]

View embedded media

Somebody show ESPN that.

 

[JPScott]

Well that was a disappointment. I was hoping that ESPN by now would at least be able to provide a more balanced story based on the facts but they failed miserably.

From taking an inaccurate headline from 1961 which should have been a Rupp positive & turning it into a negative, to repeating claims as fact (I.e. saying Rupp had said ‘No five black players could beat Kentucky’) with no factual basis, ESPN has assured a new generation of casual fans who are ignorant of the facts.

 

[mktmaker]

So...according to Episode 3:

UCLA is glorified.

North Carolina is a place of enlightenment.

But Kentucky is stuck in the Jim Crow South.

 

[Kentucky fan 1989]

So...according to Episode 3:

UCLA is glorified.

North Carolina is a place of enlightenment.

But Kentucky is stuck in the Jim Crow South.

to Quote Will Ferrell....

 

[mktmaker]

This has been a lifetime fight for me.

Do any current Kentucky fans care about this?

 

[FtWorthCat]

"I used to care, but things have changed." - Bob Dylan

He died 40 years ago. Was he as racist as the national media likes to portray him? Certainly not. But he would be judged as racist by today's standards? Absolutely. It was pretty much another hit piece, that faked being objective by having guys like Pat Riley weigh in. It did point out that one of Rupp's players, C.M. Newton, truly integrated the SEC at Alabama when he started five African Americans.

I disagree that it made UNC look enlightened though. Coach Smith said they always brought Charlie (he preferred to be called Charles) Scott in the locker room before the UNC band played "Dixie", which they did before every game at the time. Scott admitted that he hated it when the band played that.