Scrappy White Guys: Not Just For Baseball Anymore

NBA.com released its annual GM survey, and there's a cornucopia of fun little items, like the fact that nobody would want to build a franchise around Kobe, but they want him taking the last shot. Tucked in at the bottom is one vaguely worded question: "Which player does the most with the least?" The answer seems to depend on pigmentation.

HoopSpeak has crunched the numbers on a few years' worth of responses to this questions, and it seems white (or at least non-black) players tend to score awfully high.

The NBA is four-fifths black and the top three vote getters are not of that group. Kevin Love leads the pack and Steve Nash makes the list out of habitual obligation.

In 2010-2011, four of the five leading vote getters were not black. In 2009-2010, six of the seven leading vote getters were not black. In 08-09, it was four of six. The names change, but the pattern remains: A disproportionate amount of Caucasian players get cited as wringing their potential for all it's worth.

Kevin Love, it must be pointed out, is 6-foot-10 and 260 pounds, with a better vertical than just about anyone else in his draft class, and is as white as the driven snow. Now maybe all these guys who have received votes in recent years — Marc Gasol, David Lee, Mehmet Okur, Hedo Turkoglu, etc. — are just getting by on pure basketball IQ. Or maybe fans and media aren't the only ones who subconsciously equate black talent with innate ability, and the men who actually sign and trade players aren't immune.

So white guys "do the most with the least?" [HoopSpeak]