Matas Buzelis:“My mom always put me in the best environment for basketball. I was trying to find a team. If there was too many white people, she wouldn’t put me in there.” Lonzo: “She can go be in the Lakers front office.”
Wait this guy is just a white guy from here? I’ve never heard him talk and assumed he came from overseas cuz of his name.
Yep from a bit outside Chicago
But originally Lithuanian (heritage) and plays for the LT national team. Amazing basketball history in such a small country.
Shoutout all the Americans with Lithuanian heritage
India has over a billion people and not a single elite basketball or soccer player.
It’s more than just population size.
Does India care at all about those sports?
But yeah population isn’t that big of a deal. Look at Norway.
Think they mostly care about cricket and field hockey
They crank out cricket GOATs like clockwork. There’s some teenager absolutely lighting the cricket world on fire right now. I only know about him because of Rodger Sherman’s kick ass newsletter though.
Have you ever seen Indians when they watch India vs. Britain cricket matches? They go WILD. I don’t understand the game at all but man, they beat the British and celebrate like they nut every play.
It’s hard to become great at basketball in India unless you’re part of the small minority that has wealth. They don’t really make courts and stuff even to the extent that poor countries in Africa do.
Obviously they do build places to play sports hubs where they have successful athletes but it kind of goes hand and hand. Luol Deng as an example made basketball for more accessible in South Sudan which correlates with them growing in talent. On the flip side he left the country young and had chances to learn so he could make it
We have gyms in every city. And the 4th largest GDP. India a few hundred years ago was on average taller than 90% of the world. It’s mainly how when the British stole 75 TRILLION (not billion. Trillion) dollars from us and starved us, our bodies changed to become short, unathletic, and skinnyfat. Im not saying this as some like civil rights protest btw, it’s all true. But as we regain wealth(-ish, India still broke ash even if GDP is high) our bodies will soon go back, espescially northerners. Like look at me, born and raised in US all my life, Im 5 inches taller than my dad and 7 inches taller than my grandpa, and foot taller than my grandma.
So if you dont wanna read allat: Yes india short ash, give it 25-30 years, they gonna become a lot bigger and athletic, and soccer dominance (at least in asia), is quite possible, and we can have a few bball players soon.
Yeah I know some big strong dudes from the punjab but like most Indian dudes I know, it’s all cricket. Some soccer but cricket is king.
Just make shit up and add some imaginary numbers, that will definitely make your country good at basketball
Isn’t more of a protein thing? Isn’t most of the population Hindu so their protein intake is pretty low comparatively so that stunts growth and what not.
I think the median male height of 5 ft 5 hurts India more when it comes to producing basketball players
Most studies have that figure closer to 5ft 6 if not a little more from what I see. That’s within an inch of China who has produced NBA talent. But shockingly China cares about basketball more and has facilities where youths can play
Nah, it’s same as China; such a large population that you end up with a high absolute number of tall people, despite a low overall average.
Population is an absolutely huge deal. But if there’s no interest in a sport, that doesn’t matter. The USA with the same interest in football as Norway, would have a much better national team
Probably should have said isn’t as big instead of isn’t that big. National interest is much more important than then nation’s population size. A country can become really good at a few sports if they really care about them.
Now if you want to be really good at all the sports or most of the sports like the USA then you will need a lot of people.
Also with sports with prohibitive physical traits like NBA basketball shorter on average countries are just gonna be at a disadvantage from the rip. Average height is 5’5” for men in India.
Also they just don’t give a fuck about basketball as a culture.
Am I wrong that even in Olympic sports they just aren’t as fast twitch? Like, certain countries just have wayyyyy higher incidence of certain types of athleticism.
Nah go watch a cricket match and tell me those dudes aren’t fast twitch. They’re also very good at weightlifting and wrestling. I think their national sports aren’t the ones most people watch but they’ve produced some serious athletes but soccer and basketball don’t seem to be priorities.
I think fast twitch was probably the wrong word – I guess I just meant that certain sports seem to be dominated by certain countries even when their population is much smaller (both distance running and sprinting, as examples).
[ Removed by Reddit ]
Sunil Chhetri erasure.
Because South Asia is obsessed with cricket and nothing else tbh
Hinsdale iirc
Bros lucky to be alive, them the trenches
Think shit is sweet huh? Im from Hinsdale lil bro, I’m like that
Knew a Hinsdale Central gal. She was for the streets.
Never feared for my life until that one time I got off at the wrong exit and passed the Ferrari dealership across the street from the McLaren dealership in Hinsdale. Rough area.
Born in the South Loop
He’s from Chicago. Parents are from Lithuania, both played professionally there.
The Chicago area has a lot of Lithuanian people and many of them play basketball.
Grew up in the Chicago burbs and we played an all Lithuanian AAU team and got our shit kicked in
Lol playing Lituanica growing up was a rite of passage in the Chicago burbs I guess
Damn so Lithuanians are the Albanians of Chicago? (Speaking from an NYC perspective)
Idk what the Albanians in New York are like but the ones in Chicago are NOT like the Lithuanians bro
Thats moreso the serbians from my experjence
Love your username. Interesting that you picked Serbian. For me it was Polish. I am a Pole myself and my high school was like 25% Polish speaking.
Polish would probably be the dominant white nationality, not Lithuanian. Can’t go anywhere in the suburbs without hearing some Polish.
Yeah he’s from the US and played in the prep school circuit in high school. One of my good friends from college played against him a couple times in high school and said Matas was an absolute bucket.
There are nights he is a bucket in the NBA. Super underrated as a player.
Kosta Koufos had the same thing going on.
My brain short circuited the first time I heard Nikola Vučević speak
Vuc is European though, isn’t he? I know he went to HS and college in SoCal but didn’t he grow up in Europe?
Yeah, but he basically doesn’t have an accent anymore.
And apparently he didn’t learn English until he moved to the US for his senior year of high school
Reminds me of Christopher and Jonathan Nolan. Five year age gap. So when they moved to the US from England, Chris was like 15 and Jon was like 10. Which is why Chris still has an English accent, but Jon has an American one
Yeah that crossover age is one of those cool quirks but so many people use it for racism which is frustrating (to understate it).
I’ve still never heard him speak so I didn’t know he didn’t have an accent. Figured he sounded like Sabonis or something, clearly fluent and has spent a lot of time in the US so the vocabulary and delivery are very American but still has a bit of a European accent.
Now I need to find a Vuc interview
wait no way
dude’s from Ohio, played with CJ McCollum in HS
He’s the rare American white guy who still has a very European sounding name.
Makes no sense at all, you think a name like “James Whitmore” or “Mark Price” aren’t European sounding names?
Most of them do, it’s just that many have English names
I just had the exact same reaction. And didn’t come out of college, which made me assume international even more
I thought Chet Holmgren was some flavor of Eastern European until like 8 months ago
and he totally looks like Klay
Yeah grew up in Hinsdale, wealthy Chicago suburb.
Lil Buzevert is an American playground legend.
me too lmaoooo
Stephen A. Smith doing the Leo DiCaprio pointing at the TV meme
I’ma be real. Stephen A’s quote only blew up because he’s a black guy this sub already doesn’t like.
Bill Simmons said it first and nobody cared. Off the top of my head he said something like “no NBA team has won with two white guys as their best players since the 50’s. Do the Lakers think they’re overriding 80 years of NBA history?”
Mchale and bird? Parrish wasn’t better than mchale, neither was dennis johnson.
So I went back and listened and it was actually three white guys, and he does bring up McHale and Bird.
Full quote -
“The last time a team with three white guys as their best guys won a Championship was 1958 St Louis. If you go two white guys its Bird/McHale or Cowens/Hondo. Can Luka, Reaves and Kessler overcome 3⁄4 of a century of NBA histroy?”
And to be clear I wasn’t making an argument either way. Just pointing out how there was a severe lack of backlash when Simmons said it compared to Stephen A saying it.
The pigment/36 piece
It’s just odds. If you made a superteam out of the 3 best white dudes in any era you’d have a contender. There’s just far less of them so it’s rarer they end up on the same contender. If Cuban hadn’t let Nash walk there’s every chance they win a ring.
How about a team made of the 5 best white dudes all time -
PG - John Stockton
SG - Jerry West
SF - Larry Bird
PF - Dirk Nowitski
C - Nicola Jokic
Give me Nash with a modern leagues green light any day over Stockton.
Stockton would have also benefited with a modern green light
People sleep on stocks J. The man could shoot.
anything but vaccine shots ig
Maybe. But why take the hypothetical over the one we saw get it and win 2 MVPs?
Because one of them can play defense and one of them would be absolutely bullied on modern matchup hunts. Stockton’s 3 year peak of 17 ppg 14 apg 3 steals on 2 defensive teams, a steals title and 3 assists titles was better than Nash’s MVP years, he just happened to do it when Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson were at their peak.
I think it depends on the team a bit but on this one the defense of Stockton might be more valuable than the efficient volume scoring of Nash. Obviously both are just absolutely insane playmakers so that part isn’t really in question either way.
Yeah, Stockton is great, but peak Nash was way better. Stockton never can close to winning an MVP, let alone 2. The highest he ever finished was 7th.
I wouldn’t even bother with the mvp argument. Nash was so fucking good in the 7sol offense the entire sport changed.
I mean Nash is my fave player but that offense was set up to maximize him. It’s a little of an unfair argument to Stockton. But I would take Nash yes
The one thing you can’t say is give me.
Give me… PISTOL PETE!
stockton had better defense
Does that team really benefit from a PG scoring? 2-5 can stretch the floor and 3-5 can play in the block at elite levels. Anyway, Stockton is actually about as good a shooter as Nash and the better overall player.
It’s a bonus. And if I can watch Nash and Jokic fight for who can set the other up more I’m locking that in. Give me a broken nosed Nash in the playoffs over everyone besides magic and curry.
NBA 1st team all Offense
I would put Luka over Dirk
PG - Luka Doncic
SG - Austin Reaves
SF - Kon Kneuppel
PF - Cooper Flagg
C - Nikola Jokic
6man - Alex Carusso
Im kinda not sure if this team can win a championship with how lacking their defense is
I would put Chet at the 4 and Flagg at the 3 probably. Flagg isn’t quite good enough to hang here yet but he will be in a year or 2
I don’t know man, Jokic and Luka together on offense would cook. Defense just needs to put up some resistance and that offense is enough.
Simmons has always joked about race dating back to his writing days so there’s a level of comedy he brings to it. Hell he invented the Reggie Cleveland All-Stars in his articles about white players who have black sounding names or vice versa and it was always in jest. Stephen A on the other hand seems to say some of these things to intentionally rile people up even if that’s not what he intended in this case
For whatever it’s worth SAS is a very intentional person. He knows what he puts out and how it will be perceived.
We got a new 3/5ths rule?
Bird/McHale/Walton in 1986?
Cmon now he was 6th man not 3rd best player
Legit asking since I wasn’t around to see it and he was the #1 on a previous championship team.
Ah no worries. It was the end of his career by then. He woulda been in all time all time discussions if he didn’t get hurt :(
Shame what injuries did to him. Just watched an interview with Robert Parish and he said the days Walton’s legs held up and he could practice, he’d dominate Bird, McHale, and Parish and wreck practice. Just was only once every couple weeks due to his health.
Kind of a faulty premise though - when’s the last time a team had their 3 best players be white, period? It’s not like teams keep doing it and it keeps not working.
The only one in recent memory to me is the 12-13 Timberwolves, but there wasn’t exactly a second star there after Love. It was AK’s last productive year in the NBA, Pekovic was super one dimensional, Rubio put up putrid shooting percentages. And Love missed basically the whole season.
“The exception that proves the rule”
That Parrish was not, I’d assume the guy you replying to just put the wrong date cus Bill would know that
Right, but the league has become more European where there happens to be a lot of white people. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this changes over the next 10 years.
The US happens to be a lot of white people too. The Europeans/Canadians coming over aren’t a majority white are they?
We haven’t had a US MvP since Harden and only one has been white.
The league is more European but it’s not to the extent your saying. And also Wemby and Giannis are European and are black so I don’t think it’s changing too much.
If I was a GM, I’d don’t think I’d worry that much about the stats and trivia when I have Luka mf’in Doncic on my team. But if you pointed out there isn’t enough defense and length to make up for the two star’s weaknesses, I’d listen to you. If you said that those two stars turned the ball over too much for how much they hold the ball, I’d consider adding a Mike Conley or Jrue Holiday.
Maybe TJ McConnell?
Mike Conley is old now
I’ve seen the movie, with the game on the line, they find some pride and play hard d
You can talk shit about your own people all you want. Stephen A fucked up by talking about a different race.
Maybe it’s different with the younger generations but that has always held true. Comedians make careers out of joking about their own people.
Reddit is white coded. They have a very distinct indifference towards black people and their views. This indifference turns to vitriol whenever those black people/figures say things they disagree with. Look at the NBA players this sub hates, most of them are deemed problack and because white people don’t understand problackness they shun it. I say this as a white guy who has observed this sub for a few years now.
One is a observation of fact, this one indicates white people are inherently bad. Imagine a white player saying this about some PoC group. Theyd be calling for his head. AA get racism immunity though, shits crazy.
yea and no teams won with a star player as short as brunsen in like 40 years. shit changes lol
Lonzo’s “that’s fair” is hilarious comedic timing
Didn’t even have time for a conscious thought, pure instinctive reaction 🤣
Lavar said the reason UCLA sucked with Lonzo because they had him on the floor with too many white boys lol
TJ Leaf was nice tho
Man I forgot about TJ Leaf. TJ McConnells younger big brother.
They went 31-5 and finished ranked 8th in the country… they’d gone 15-17 the year prior and 21-12 the year after. That is still the best UCLA team since 07-08. Wild to say they sucked.
Consider the source
Lmao
Bro i thought he was a European HES FROM HERE
From Chicago 😤
Julius Pepperwood
LMAO
Brother, most Europeans dont play like him. He has swagger on the court.
Sneaky athleticism too? For real though he has some mean dunks
I’ve seen him dunk, that shit ain’t sneaky at all!
He’s white, so it’s sneaky
The dunks are how I know he ain’t from overseas. Theres just something about American players and yamming it.
Not sneaky. Bro has legit hops.
Nothing sneaky about it lol.
You can’t convince me that’s not Eli Manning doing another prank video
For real when I was scrolling down my home page and skimming I swore this was some old footage of Eli lol
Buzi Vert
Can’t believe Luka Reaves Kessler have been reduced to their skin color.
All those 3 have more than proven themselves capable
Just accept it’s a White Boy Summer, buddy.
I prefer Snowtime lakers.
Followed by a black boy winter.
Black Ice ™
The black ice was just minding its business
Won’t someone think of the white people 😢
DOJ investigation incoming.
DOJ going to declare that the Laker’s roster are refugees at this rate
some people tend to rent free like so
You ever notice how even white athletes laugh about it? I promise you it’s not that big a deal. Sports are the ultimate meritocracy. If you can play nobody will care if you’re purple.
White basketball players actually hang out with Black people and know how to take a joke
White basketball players are also usually some of the only white people to know what it feels like to be the only white person in a room
I would tell him to lighten up, but I don’t want to steal pelinka’s motto
You’re gonna be super pissed when one of those 3, probably Reaves, inevitably jokes about it themselves
Reaves already did, though I’m pretty sure he was serious here lol
I mean, joking about it is fine. I’ve got plenty of Snowtome/Tres leches/white man can’t jump references saved up for the season.
But to be written off on national media just because of their skin color seems like something Dr.King would not approve of.
This guy 😂😂😂🫵🫵🫵🫵
Let’s all point and laugh 😂😂😂🫵🫵🫵
Reddit the heck on! 😂🤣
aii now you ruined it
Chill it’s just jokes and this is a white dude saying it
Kessler has not proven himself as the player the Lakers valued him as yet. He definitely could but he hasn’t proved himself yet.
He’s done nothing other than be the defensive anchor for the worst defense of the last few years lmfao
Get ready to listen to Coldplay buddy
+2
stop playing the race card
are we being serious
Racism towards white NBA players is NEVER going away lol
It’s funny- lighten up (pelinka’s motto)
I play basketball in the morning 🥲
I hope that Wilson being here and pulling some of the attention away from Buzi Vert pushes him to the next level
I always thought this sub was like 99% hoopers… guess not
Lot of soft people in this sub never touched a basketball
Matas tellin the truth and it hurts
buddy they are joking…don’t actually try to make this into an us vs them thing.
Redditors and nuance. Not a happy marriage
“That’s fair” lmao
Why does he look like Klay Thompson and Eli Manning had a baby?
I’m actually kinda offended someone thought of this before me lmfao
I was coming here to ask if he and Klay Thompson actually share the same face or if I’m just stoned
His mom studied at the Larry Bird School of balling
His mom will NOT put up with any game disrespecting.
Watching this sub reacting to this clip here compared to
this
Is absolutely wild, complete clowns
That thread acted like SAS said the most racist horrible shit and it proved how there’s so much racism against white people and it’s so hard being white and oppressed, and yet for this clip it’s
“lol comedic timing haha”
“this sub” doing a lot of heavy lifting
Overlap in these two threads is probably way lower than you think
And this is a feature of social-feed algorithms, not a bug
Reddit bots go crazy anytime they can tear down a black man
Inb4 angry colonisers
I truly didn’t realize the demographic of this sub until they started posting about this shit lol. There is a depressingly low percentage of this sub that actually plays basketball
It’s Reddit bru. Games are played on spreadsheets
https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1ukwseu/removed_by_moderator/
Look at the difference in responses compared to here, that was the SAS thread talking about the lakers all white lineup
I mean…
Never thought about it, but being offended by white basketball jokes gotta be the most dead giveaway you never hooped a day in your life. I was a token white dude, except I couldn’t shoot. Worst on the roster. The jokes I heard as “a shame to my people”
Celtics would be proud of the lakers lol
So does Lonzo do this full time now?
Why are they so close to each other on the couch lol
Is it just me or are there dumb bots in here lol. They keep making the same comments even on the same thread. Dumb robots.
Buzz needs to lose the pencil stash. It ain’t there yet for you, homie.
The redditors are about to call her a race traitor 😂
Isn’t the joke misguided? The Lakers are being made fun of for having a lot of white players, but Buzelis was saying that his mom was avoiding teams with white players… So it’s the exact opposite, and Lonzo’s joke makes no sense. 🤷♂️
Nah. Lonzo’s joke makes sense. He’s trying to say his mom should join the Lakers FO so that way, there’s someone to dissuade them from just going for white boys and adding a bit of racial variety