Obama: Basketball is a Top Priority

What the fuck? Seriously? What the hell? I mean, I understand the election is pretty much the only talking point right now. It's gripped the world, but the coat-tails of an Obama victory cannot possibly be related to basketball without some massive, unsubstantiated stretches. Scoop Jackson just came to the party with five tabs of pure crazy.

Obama victory raises social significance of basketball

Obama trades Billups for hope. Obama makes last out of the world series. Obama reveals son of Jackie Robinson. Obama victory raises social significance of basketball. Obama scores Superbowl winning touchdown for dead grandmother.

No wait; go back one.

It's been a long time coming. Too long. Yeah for that too...

you know what he's saying. My brothers. My boys.

ESPN is culturally relevant to people like me!

but this is about something different. Finally, for America's "other" game, the time has come. You ready? Stand still. Pose. Look happy. Live the moment. Smile. FLASH! Finally … the game of basketball is ready for its official close-up.

Hope won? It's more than that.

this might be, and I speak sincerely, the cheesiest bullshit I have ever read. I mean, if he was just soaking up and gloating over Obama, fine, this is the time, but to try and weasel a shitty column about an utterly fabricated issue just makes it repulsive and manipulative.

Twenty-one presidents and 117 years after Naismith invented the game, basketball has finally found a place inside the place that best symbolizes America -- inside the inside of America.

right up in the colon people. We are talking enema level inside here. I cannot stress the insideness strongly enough. Basketball is well and truly - "inside".

Other presidents have only concerned themselves with basketball when necessary, such as playing host to NBA and NCAA champions at the White House. Barack is about to change all of that.

number one priority! Fuck the economy! Let's play some hoops, finally!

That is every racist white dudes wet dream right there. If this ridiculous "prioritising basketball" presidential platform was, even alluded to, they would have all the ammo they'd feel justified hurling forever. You would never be able to yell them down. I don't even know what you're talking about Scoop.

Obama's predecessors all treated the game as a spectator, embraced it from a distance, considered it an afterthought. All the while, over the decades the sport has become more and more intertwined into the sociofabric of America, slowly symbolizing what this country really is, what it's really about.

for centuries to come, historians will mull over one basic fact - was Bush's jump shot the true liability in Iraq?

This makes Obama's election that much more revealing. His connection to basketball and inclusion of the game in his campaign is a testament to his message of change and the love he has for the least elitist sport to be held in high regard by anyone to occupy the White House.

this is so blatent. This gets published in ESPN, unbelievable. OK, my turn.

The ramifications of the nuclear strikes in Japan were felt in area more so than in Major League Baseball where - mere decades later, steroids, provided by the very same science that gave the bomb, would ruin the game.

"In any basketball game you can go from the leader, to a follower, to a team, all in the span of a few trips up and down the court," ESPN's Stuart Scott said after watching and playing with Obama. "That's the beauty of it. And that's what I noticed about Barack Obama. I think that's what basketball has taught him. He's got to be the leader of this country. But sometimes he's going to have to step back and let other people give him advice, let other people lead in moments, and he's always going to have to be a part of a team -- Senate, Congress, his cabinet, his most trusted advisers -- team.

and basketball is played by humans! Where will the similarities end? The Legislative branch of government is very much like a basketball team except in the sense that it is not in the slightest like that at all.

"He has to be involved in all of that, but mostly he has to be the leader. And that's one of the things that having played basketball is going to benefit him greatly. I think that's how basketball has shaped him."

shaped? Like, come on. He played it in his spare time, whatever. His grandmother shaped him. His time in Indonesia shaped him. His wife and children shaped him. His time in Chicago shaped him. Basketball was pretty much the 96th most important thing in his life. Shaped is a ridiculous term to use.

George Washington rode horses. George H.W. Bush played college baseball. Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon played college football. Nixon was so immersed in football, he was reputed to call Redskins coach George Allen and Dolphins coach Don Shula with play ideas. Many presidents had a passion for golf.

For whatever reason, basketball was the one sport that none of them brought with them to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

how poignant. Let us all pause for a moment to soak the majesty, of this, a defining moment, when someone who likes basketball is in the White House. We're all very emotional.

"His character is totally revealed when he's on the ball court," said Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan, a friend of Obama who plays basketball with him regularly. "Basketball reveals who you really are. You can't fake it."

wouldn't it be great if people voted like this. Like apparently CEO's! Scoop's questionable CEO associates have shown less than wonderful judgement before. This election, Scoop Jackson had nothing, nothing - less than nothing - to do with basketball. End.

"What the outside world doesn't see in (Barack) when he's playing are three things," said Duncan. "One is how much of a competitor he is. I think the country underestimated him on that. Two, how he has real courage, that he will step up with the game on the line and take the big shot when others won't. And three, how really, really smart he is. His intellectual capacity is amazing. And that translates to how he does things off the court as well."

what the hell? The outside world doesn't see these admirable qualities? Are you serious? He's the most famous person on the planet, he got elected President of the United States. People like him. I don't know what possible validation could satisfy your unreasonable criteria for evaluating what people do or do not know.

In "The Games Presidents Play," author John Sayle Watterson wrote, "Increasingly, sports have defined the presidency." If that's true, the change that occurred with Obama's victory might transcend politics and policy. Basketball could finally be looked upon as something more than just a game of escapism from the ghetto and be seen for what it honestly is -- the most democratically open sport in the country.

It could be seen as a game that "people of every creed and color, from every walk of life … young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled" can help prove, as Barack said, "that in America, our destiny is inextricably linked, that together our dreams can be one."

I'm genuinely speechless. This is fucking amazing this gets published. He's got to be giggling somewhere right?

This we hope. Because just as the country proved it was ready for Obama, it will prove it's ready for a different sport to define this presidency.

Can basketball finally find that embrace? Can it finally and truly become America's game because one person won an election?

Yes it can.

you've genuinely lost it Jackson. November 11 was the day Scoop Jackson lost sight of reality. Ground control to Major Tom style. Wow, seriously worried about his mental health.