Fans, drafters develop schemas from seeing prior trends in NBA history.
Stereotyping — it’s something we all do to a slight degree. It’s not because we’re inherently racist, but more so because our brains are incapable of processing each individual person. We develop what social psychologists call schemas, or preconceived mental shortcuts, to store social information.
When we begin to act or treat people differently because of schemas, a problem arises. Many NBA draft experts have treated white prospects differently in their evaluations. Jimmer Fredette is described as deceptively quick defensive liability with high character and a high basketball IQ. Bismack Biyombo is described as freakishly athletic. These characteristics may be correct in some circumstances, but we must evaluate NBA prospects case by case. If Biyombo were described as deceptively smart, we’d have an issue. How could the leading college scorer in 2010-11 be deceptively quick? He must be blatantly quick to score 28.9 points per game.
Chinese people are better at math. It’s a common stereotype, but Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in “Outliers: The Story of Success” that there is a clear nongenetically correlated explanation. The Chinese number system allows each number to take less than a quarter of the time to say. An example is “seven” being “qi” in Chinese. When we reach the teens, the Chinese language goes to a simpler format. “One-two” equivalent in Chinese is “twelve” in English, “one-three” is “thirteen” and so on to “two-one” for “twenty-one.” Chinese youth are not better at math; they just excel with a simpler system. Chinese students learn their numbers more quickly, leading to quicker early math development.
Black people are better at basketball than white people — completely false, but we develop schemas from seeing a predominantly black NBA, 78 percent in 2009, and implant that idea in our heads.
Once it’s there, it’s there. You actually begin to believe it. One of my friends from high school was a phenomenal basketball player who certainly could have played at the high school level. He took up swimming instead because he believed at Spartanburg High School, a fairly evenly distributed school racially, a white individual didn’t have a chance of playing a prominent role on the high school basketball team.
We’re all born equal. We have taken IQ tests at the age of five and across the board, all scores will be equal until we enter school. We become easily influenced and manipulated that innocence disappears and those schemas arise. One student has had generations of family go to Harvard so he works his tail off in school because that’s what he’s supposed to do. Another has never had a family member graduate high school, let alone college and it has a psychological effect.
We must learn that no one comes out of the womb set on any path. We’re all aware of the nature versus nurture debate. My roommate and I debate it often. I’m mostly playing the devil’s advocate to his strong siding with the nurture side because in reality, taking a side is ridiculous. There are certainly some genetic tendencies that make Seth and Stephen Curry, the sons of Dell Curry, shooting standouts at Duke and Golden State. But our lives are in our own hands. We have potential to play in the NBA or excel in math regardless of what we look like or where we come from. We control our own destinies.