The Boxscore Geeks Show: Mutombo and Rebounds

This Week's Show

We talk Dikembe Mutombo getting his much deserved first ballot, Wisconsin's heartbreaking loss, and rebounding biases.

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This Week's Poll

Show Notes

Dikembe Mutombo makes the Hall

As I've recounted before, Dikembe Mutombo was a no-brainer Hall-of-Famers. Thankfully, the voters put him in first-ballot.

Wisconsin just misses the title

In the semi-finals, when they upset Kentucky, Wisconsin showed the value of outrebounding your opponent and second chance points. They kept it up in the first half of the finals, but it didn't last as they lost to Duke.

Unathletic white athletes

Ty Willinghanz linked me to a post about "unathletic" athletes in the NCAA tournament. Needless to say, it fell to the classic "white people are unathletic" bias. Sorry, a seven foot tall person is one of the best signs of being an athlete!

Sports show the innocuous side of this pervasive myth. As Vox has talked about, the myth of African Americans being "superhuman" has issues in police brutality. A story we sadly can't even go several weeks without occurring.

Rebounds are important

As mentioned, the Wisconsin Badgers almost got a title, and a huge part was rebounding. As my foray into calling DeAndre Jordan MVP material, this season has shown, people still seem to undervalue rebounds.

In the past players like Bill Russell and Bill Walton got a lot more mainstream credibility. This made sense, as players got to vote for the MVP. When writers got to decide the MVP, points got a bigger boost. It makes sense though, as classic boxscores pretty much just showed points.

Tack on Michael Jordan hitting the NBA and being a dominant scorer, and the landscape of how we judged NBA players changed a lot.

Shout Outs

Of course Dikembe Mutombo (@officialmutombo) and his patented finger wag get a shout out!

Max Landis (@Uptomyknees) gets a shout out for the amazing video on Triple H "Wrestling isn't Wrestling."

Brian shouts out Hood Slam Wrestling in Oakland, which he said, was, in some ways, better than Wrestlemania!

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