Hoops

Why no female commentators in the NBL?

So the best female candidate for a NBL commentary gig has gone on to "bigger and better" things. Well, there you go.

ferd:

opportunity comes to those who create it

My personal preference would be hearing female as well male commentary on all the sport I watch, but I also expect commentary on the sport I watch to be informative, entertaining and balanced. I'm not suggesting shoehorning a token woman in there who's unqualified to be there, but as a large proportion of the crowd are female clearly women watch the sport in large numbers and have something to say about it.

I attempted to read this thread and got a migraine. FWIW I enjoyed Carly Wilson's commentary and I'd be pretty happy if she became part of the NBL commentary team.

True, but I think the old white dude thing is broadly true in most Australian sports commentary.

In all honesty I just like hearing a range of smart, informed people commentating on basketball. My personal preference would be hearing female as well male commentary on all the sport I watch, but I also expect commentary on the sport I watch to be informative, entertaining and balanced. I'm not suggesting shoehorning a token woman in there who's unqualified to be there, but as a large proportion of the crowd are female clearly women watch the sport in large numbers and have something to say about it.

Good point about podcasting though.

I also think having a public female perspective on sport makes sport more accessible for women and helps destroy the myth that sport is something boys do, or that women (and men for that matter) should only play certain sport, something that I've personally negotiated in my own life with my experiences of raising my own daughter. But that's beside the point really.

BTW, CT, you did your share of pointing the disussion in awkward directions in the topic itself. I don't know if I'd agree with this being a dramatic issue, for example:

the only ones who get to commentate are old (mostly white) dudes.

ME, remember when you said that you wouldn't keep replying? ;)

If you're all arguing across each other, I'm not sure what the aim is here? Any reasonable discussion about female commentators is long gone. Any potentially fruitful discussion about broader issues looks to be beyond everyone too. They're all hugely interesting discussions, but people discuss them like it's a personal war rather than with any realistic goal. I suspect people naturally clump into ways of viewing the world which make knife-edge issues really difficult to find consensus with.

To the topic! Almost every NBL commentator is an ex-player, an ex-athlete from another sport, or a career sports commentator. There are not so many positions that the league freelances much with their selections. A while back, people would've viewed Tragardh and Rosen as bold picks. Someone like Carfino has been there for many, many years, virtually locking down one of the few positions. Female commentators who played WNBL might target WNBL positions first. Or the league might be too cautious to break much ground? Does the NBA even find primary commentary positions for women? Perhaps there aren't many coming up and getting interest?

The sideline reporters like Gelmi are great IMO - very professional. It's very possible they maximise their opportunities by being broader than just play-by-play for a second-tier sport. More jobs doing sideline commentary for basketball, tennis, swimming, etc than just AU basketball.

Not sure if it helps to consider something like podcasts. It's the market at large - anyone can start a podcast and anyone can choose what they listen to. I'm not aware of any NBL podcasts with female hosts - they aren't popular or they don't exist or some combination of the two.

Are there aspiring female NBL commentators?

Just came in here and have only read the last post. Appears to have gotten off topic somewhat..

Well it is March and there is a lot of madness on here, so yes :)

is this the march madness thread?

"No, because white privilege exists. Reverse racism doesn't."

Incorrect.

I want to see an experiment where European refugees are sent to Africa to start a new life. Then we can see how they are treated and start using the term "black privilege" and go on about that.

If use the term "white privilege" in a conversation, you've automatically lost.

White privilege is reverse racism at work. Sorry, whites are not handed everything to us. Tarring everyone with a brush because of their skin colour and saying they are privileged is BS and the worst form of racism.

#677659 cite please. You are just going off of your emotions and thoughts. "White privilege" - LOL!

Also I would mention the academic research that proves a certain group of people have a lower IQ than another group of people but imagine the bleeding hearts on here and the outrage (and the censorship and the banning).

Why are many on here saying to ME he has no evidence? Yet those same people don't have any evidence to refute what he is saying. It goes both ways - everyone here is just spouting their opinions and beliefs.

Any of the casuals reading this on the sidelines might be interested in listening to this, a podcast about naive realism which also has nothing to do with basketball:

https://youarenotsosmart.com/2015/11/09/yanss-062-why-you-often-believe-people-who-see-the-world-differently-are-wrong/

How many editors do you reckon have politely asked kobe to stop sending them letters over the years?

It's got to be at least 6, right?

I like cereal

I feel partly responsible because of what I said about decoding and responding to others

Isaac, I hope you appreciate all the page views I've concocted for you here :-)

Oh, and this is what happens when "affirmative action" is in full effect and all of a sudden you're out of a job even though on merit you are more qualified:

http://www.2point8.co.za/photography/i-have-fallen-photographs-of-south-africas-white-poor/

To all those who are so concerned about "racism" in the western world (where every colour is welcome now). Imagine if whites immigrated to Africa (not as colonialists but as migrants). Now that would be concerning. Good for one group but not the other.

Yes but no.

Imagine the reply count if the Perth Wildcats (coached by Trevor Gleeson) had an overtime game against female commentators, and it was poorly reffed. And Shawn Redhage made a flopping cameo. Cha-ching!

They're having basketball withdrawals. Getting the shakes real bad

Serious is this still going on hahaha. This is what happens when you space the finals out too far apart.

Haha what an explosive Monday.

Let's ramp up this thing incrementally until Game 1 on Friday.

COME ONNNNN

Class war, Race war now the 'modern day' Gender war....Oh dear, bring on the Grand Final series...and I don't give a shit who commentates it!!

I hope in your regular life you aren't given a soap box to stand on too often ME. Wow.

Wow.

American history revisionism, amateur criminology, the motives of Richard Noxious (can’t we just accept that he was twisted individual craving power for the sake of power) and arguments about whether intrinsic societal imbalances still exist.

I think the OP didn’t want to open up quite this many cans of worms.

In regards to the courts, the US system is vastly different to the Australian system. They even have a jury consultancy industry due to the way their jury selection processes work. Both prosecution and defence counsel get a chance to question potential jurors and object to them. The longest potential juror survey was well over 200 pages, and was used in the trial of an African American... but that was OJ’s murder trial so he was relatively privileged (read way more wealthy and powerful than all but an elite in the US).

“Did someone above say that white people take more drugs than blacks? Really? Now that's racist.”

Um what?

So without having to read through all this BS ..... did anyone really answer the question “why no female commentators in the NBL” or has everyone known the answer all along

"The point I am making is that as of 2018, white male privilege doesn't really exist."

Sadly. The inmates now run the asylum.

Did someone above say that white people take more drugs than blacks? Really? Now that's racist.

And that is meant to prove what?

And furthermore, being seen as mistreating a group that doesn't vote for you isn't about to win you their vote.

"You...don't know why a political party might consider a voting block that votes against them at a rate of at least 85% to be a political opponent? Are you dense?"

Well the normal reaction is actually trying to appeal to them like normal people do.

Will you two just bang already?

Well, yeah. Still doesn't explain what you assume Nixon's motive was.

The point I am making is that as of 2018, white male privilege doesn't really exist.

In this article they say that Nixon wanted to destabilize the anti-war and black communities. Okay, we get why the anti-war brigade, but why blacks? Just because he didn't particularly like them for some reason?

The big change came in 1964 with Barry Goldwater and ''states' rights,'' a phrase and philosophy widely seen as anti-black and opposed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, the godfather of voting rights for blacks. In that Presidential election and the seven after, no Republican gained more than 15 percent of the black vote.

Please please Stop, this is a basketball forum. I can't see any other recent posts on basketball topics

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people," former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper's writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.

"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

"No, I just don't have half an hour to try and parse that post to figure out which bits of it are new things you've said."

Your posting history would suggest that you have many half hours to do so...

You just ignored every single thing I said and reverted back to your “fatherless home bullshit, but this time introduced rap music. This is why I laughed at you in the first place instead of engaging. You are truly stupid.

That’s a strawman, dickhead. You didnt prove any hypocrisy.

“They could prove more blacks did drugs than whites.”

But that isn’t the case.

Yes, but the study (and common sense) does not say that they continue to commit crimes because of the color of their skin. There are a number of other factors, including poverty, employment opportunities, policing in certain areas, that are impacted by the color of the skin (by racists like you) and after years of this, it leaves little option but to turn to crime.

Speaking of flying over heads, my original point was that white people use drugs more than black people, but black people are more likely to be arrested than whites people for drug use/ possession. You just said that is because they have committed other crimes but have not bothered to prove that.

And then this...

Court Processing
• African Americans were more likely to be sentenced to prison and less likely to be sentenced to probation than Whites.
• The average prison sentence for violent crime was approximately one year longer for African Americans than for Whites.
• African Americans were convicted for drug charges at substantially higher rates than those for Whites.

Why would you post that NCCD link to a report that says the following in the third paragraph in the Executive Summary?

“It (the report) does not seek to thoroughly describe the causes of DMC (disproportionate minority contact) nor does it perform an advanced statistical analysis of how various factors impact disparity.”

That does the complete opposite of prove any point you think you were making!

No, I just don't have half an hour to try and parse that post to figure out which bits of it are new things you've said.