When Lebron James blocked Stephen Curry in Game 6 of the NBA finals you can see James mouth the words "Little p***y" as he looked back at the MVP. On various separate occasions throughout the finals the fans can see that James takes a lot more pleasure in blocking Stephen Curry's shots than he does any other player. Some onlookers will argue that the reason James has this heightened feeling is because fans feel that Stephen Curry is taking over the throne as the best basketball player in the world. While this argument may contribute to some of his motivation, there are other factors to consider such as upbringing, skin tone, family affiliation, etc.
Stephen Curry's father, Dell Curry, played 16 seasons in the NBA and as a result Stephen Curry was around basketball legends his entire life. Whereas James had an absentee father who spent most of his time in prison when James was a child. In addition Stephen Curry grew up in the suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina while James was born in a lesser income area in Akron, Ohio.
Although the circumstance of growing up was much more difficult for James, his rise to fame was much faster than Stephen Curry's. James was on the cover of Sports Illustrated at 17 years old and projected to be "The Chosen One" by sports analysts. His talent was widely acknowledged. On the other hand Stephen Curry, despite the status of his father, was only able to obtain one scholarship offer from a small school in the local area. Scouts thought that he was too small to compete at a major division 1 program.
Yet still they both found their way to the top of totem pole. Their off the court lives are similar, yet it seems that Curry gets more of the attention for being the "poster boy" for the NBA. Both stars are married - granted James' wife is a little bit more low-key than the Twitter-happy Ayesha Curry. Both stars have children. Although they carry themselves differently, both players are the most competitive people.
Which brings us to the question that if both players are the most elite performers at their sport with similar current situations, why is is that one player is portrayed more elegantly than the other? Is it skill set? Is it race? Is is cultural upbringing? Are people just tired of James being the king?
All of these factors bring us to the bottom line that "white people" are the glorified people in our system and that your skin color does not have to be white as long as you can embody their behavior. Even though Stephen Curry is not white, he embodies everything we think a white person is: two-parent family, comfortable upbringing, family man, etc. Even though James is not raising his kids the same way he was raised, he will never be accepted as the "poster boy" of the NBA.
People will still envy his athletic ability but nobody will ever aspire to be him as a person. Being 6-foot-8 and dark skin is just not too widely valued unless you are a basketball player. It's sad that such a talented athlete may not get the same sort of acclaim as lighter skin players. However the truth is that we all have built-in stereotypes of certain groups of people view points based off our own experience yet live in denial of it every day. Instead of coming to this truth we blame other people for being racist not seeing that we walk around with these stereotypes every day. As a result we take away some of the off-court accomplishments of star players and just reduce them to freak athletes.
