Kevin Love: Yeah, He's Like Larry Bird; He's Not Just a White Star

On Sunday night, George Karl compared Kevin Love to Larry Bird.

More precisely, he said after Love followed a 50-point effort with a 30-point, 20-board explosion, that the "poor man's Larry Bird" label might have to lose the "poor." Eyes were rolled accordingly, and Deadspin, ever spot-on, memorialized the occasion with the headline "White Basketball Player Compared to White Basketball Player."

The umbrage, or just fatigue, was of course totally appropriate. There's a long history of the NBA searching for Great White Hopes, usually some brave knight who can bring the supposed hustle and integrity of the college game to the thugged-out pro ranks.

That's why Adam Morrison was not only so unfairly celebrated as an NBA prospect, but also compared, rather brainlessly, to Larry Bird. Their games have nothing in common, but symbolically, Morrison could reclaim the sport in the same way Bird and the Boston Celtics once did—or rather, held out as a last outpost in their battles with the flashy Showtime Los Angeles Lakers.

These comparisons, mawkish, short-sighted and embarrassing for all involved, have become an annual ritual. We've even seen it applied hopefully to Dirk Nowitzki, who 1) is not really part of the American dynamic of race and 2) is part of the post-Dream Team generation of international players who grew up on Jordan, Barkley and the rest and 3) has his own culturally derived set of touchy issues involved when it comes to racializing the game.

Dirk won a title when, actually, he finally accepted his inner finesse dude and went a way that Bird probably would have scoffed at. They are fair-skinned and they nail jumpers. That's about it. And for Dirk, as for a college kid with questionable pro potential, the Bird comparison is a burden, a fan projection.

But let's backtrack and look at the specifics of the Kevin Love situation. The Deadspin headline could just as easily have read, "White Basketball Coach Compares White Basketball Player to White Basketball Player," since Karl (wacky, but no fool) is unmistakably part of the equation.

Heck, why not throw in some adjectives to capture the real flavor of the statement, even if it breaks the bounds of headline writing: "Respected White Basketball Coach Compares Increasingly Dominant White Basketball Player to the Most Dominant White Basketball Player of the Modern Age." Suddenly, we're left with a reputable compliment that needs unpacking, not a lazy generalization.

Again, Bird and the Celtics have been, at times, brandished as an identity politics cudgel. In Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, the dude in Larry's jersey is the epitome of entitled, obnoxious whiteness. Jordan, already a corporate megalith by the time of the filming, is the people's champ.

Let's not pretend, though, that whiteness always exists as WHITE POWER or some other virulent construction. Love is too young to have grown up idolizing Bird, and Karl too smart to either literally compare their games seriously (Love is a power forward with range, Bird a playmaking triple-double threat who is underrated in his positional fluidity). But Love certainly knows of Larry Bird as the Hall of Famer who happened to be white, and Karl sees him as a reminder that white men can jump, or at least ball.

Bird, as much as he has been used as symbol of division in the past, is at this point the opposite: proof that there's still a space for white dudes like Kevin Love in basketball. He won't transform, or reclaim, the game. Quite the contrary. He's just happy to be there, to be a peer of African-American stars who were always expected to excel.

It's a delicate question, sure, but I am pretty sure George Karl is saying that Kevin Love is now, like Bird, a player so good that he has transcended the novelty of his race. That's what Bird meant around the league; what fans and media did with him was their business.

It's telling that in college, the most common player comparison for Love was Wes Unseld and his outlet passes. Not only is Unseld black, this was a purely basketball-driven judgment that made no attempt to make more of Love than he was (at that point).

Nor was he shoehorned into a role because of his race. Kevin Love became his own player, a dominant force, and only then did Karl throw the Bird comparison out there. It wasn't the backdrop for Love's ascent, but an honorary title trotted out only when he had clearly made it.

Congrats, Kevin Love. George Karl is happy you are the kind of player who can play without us caring that he has light skin. It's easier for all of us that way—especially Love, who deserves to be marveled at on his own terms.