I worry about his comments from a racial perspective. The professional basketball world has a lot of respect for Larry Bird. And I think his comments will add fuel to the argument for raising even higher the eligibility academic requirements for athletes in American colleges, and even high schools. Historically, raising academic standards has proved successful in eliminating a high percentage of minority players from the playing fields. With a great percentage of these black players being legislated from competition, more doors would open for your more marginal white players to step up.
I think these marginal white players should be required to do what previous legislation has required black players to do: step up to the plate. When academic requirements were being raised in past years, black players were required to hit the books more and work harder in order to satisfy raised academic standards. While many failed to step up, many did in fact rise up to the new levels. All of us know star-quality athletes whose talents were wasted because they did not or could not generate the intellectual effort to satisfy rising academic requirements. White players should be required to do the same. They should be required to work on and polish their game skills so as to be able to compete with the best in their respective sports. They do it in baseball (starting with little league) all the time. After all, genetics has little to do with it. Just look at Larry Bird, Danny Ainge, John Stockton, and many, many more.
Again, what concerns me are the racial implications of his comments. I believe they will add fuel to the argument for raising academic requirements once again as an exclusionary measure to reduce minority presence in professional sports, and especially basketball.
