ESPN’s Jalen Rose Slams USA Basketball for Picking ‘Token’ White Guy for Olympics: They’re ‘Scared to Make an All-Black Team’ Represent the US
After recently finalizing their roster, the United States men’s basketball team is gearing up to chase their fourth consecutive Olympic gold medal later this summer in Tokyo.
Led by Kevin Durant, Damian Lillard and Devin Booker, Team USA is the favorite to win the gold, but ESPN’s Jalen Rose has one major gripe with the roster. The token White guy.
“Kevin Love is on the team because of tokenism,” Rose said on his ESPN show Jalen and Jacoby. “Don’t be scared to make an all-Black team representing the United States of America. I’m disappointed by that. Anybody that watched the league this year knows Kevin Love did not have a stellar season, was not the best player on his team and did not necessarily deserve to be on this squad.”
The unique circumstances of having the Summer Games during a global pandemic caused more opt-outs for Team USA than usual, leading to a few surprise roster selections. Love is well past his basketball prime, but a 32-year-old power forward with championship and Olympic experience, who can both rebound and knock down threes certainly offers value.
“I also know the favoritism that Christian Laettner was shown when he got a chance to be put on the Dream Team ahead of Shaq and Alonzo (Mourning),” Rose said of USA’s men’s basketball team from 1992. “But they made it so a college player could even get on and gave him favoritism.”
When Laettner was added to the Dream Team, he was the Naismith College Player of the Year, having won back-to-back national titles with Duke. His name on a roster next to Magic, Bird and Jordan looks worse now considering his disappointing NBA tenure. But in 1992, Laettner was fresh off an elite college basketball career.
Love helped Team USA win the gold during the 2012 Summer Olympics. He was not on the team in 2016, when an all-Black roster went to Rio de Janeiro to represent the United States of America.
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