Sam Dekker, former Wisconsin Badger and soon-to-be NBA player, spoke a deep, deep truth on Tuesday.
He said something so basic that it probably shouldn’t even be news, except that it's something very few athletes ever really want to say.
“What players do you look to? What are the guys that you say, ‘I’d like to pattern my game after him or these people together?’” HuffPost Live host Marc Lamont Hill asked Dekker on Tuesday afternoon.
“Well, there’s a few,” Dekker said, obviously knowing what he was about to say, but questioning how exactly to say it. “Um, you know, there’s always, there’s always, me, um, the way I play, being a white guy, a lot of times you get compared to other white guys.”
Bingo.
“Which isn't fair because your game isn’t necessarily like a particular white guy,” Hill correctly noted.
“I mean, if you go down that line, guys like Gordon Hayward, Chandler Parsons, you know, guys of this era right now that are pretty athletic who can get up and down, stretch the floor, shoot the ball, put it on the floor,” Dekker said.
But don't go down that line, Sam. Don’t fall into the racial trap. You don't even really play like those guys. Who do you really play like?
“Another guy I kind of like watching is Trevor Ariza,” he said.
Double bingo, Sam.
The NBA Draft is on Thursday.