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I don't think this is true because the population isn't evenly distributed as far as teams are concerned. Here in Western PA, if you're black and good at football you're likely playing on teams that are majority black all the way through high school, the same being true of white students. And at the high school level, the racial composition of teams isn't a factor in how competitive they are. If you're white and good at football you're not getting cut in middle school in favor of precocious black kid for the simple reason that there probably aren't enough black kids to make a difference.
Even if you're not getting cut, you're still playing against them. I've heard kids on my son's all-white middle school basketball team make comments asking how they're supposed to deal with a "casual 6'3" dreadhead" that every team from certain towns seems to have. Or in football where there's always that one kid from the predominantly black down who looks like he's 4-5 grades ahead of everyone else. My son's class doesn't have a lot of size; he tends to get put wherever the disparity is worst. I've literally heard coaches tell him his position is "wherever their biggest kid is". When he was 9 years old, he came out of a playoff game in tears, because the black kid he was supposed to be handling was taller than the refs and just absolutely trucked him every play.
Maybe they just lie about ages for a few kids to cheat the system - I know for a fact that some of those towns train outside league rules. But that sort of thing absolutely drives kids towards lacrosse or hockey. (And funny note, my son just discovered a few weeks ago that the couple of enormous black kids in his 12-15 hockey league are only a year older than him. From the first game we saw them, two years ago, I assumed they were 15. Luckily they've been on his team often enough over the last few years for him to become friendly with them.)
But the Sailer sort of argument, as I've seen it, isn't that kids are being cut, but that Eastern Europe is putting up white guys in basketball at the NBA level because in that environment, they get to compete against age-appropriate athleticism all the way up, until things are evened out in late high school or college, so a lot fewer kids get discouraged and quit or go to other sports.
I can see it either way. On the one hand, my son has massively improved his hockey skills by comparing and sharpening himself against enormous (and talented) black kids. On the other hand, he occasionally brings up quitting football and basketball to focus on year-round travel lacrosse.
Lying about ages always seemed like a second tier thing- lying about residency is the usual scam for Friday night lights to cheat on eligibility.
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Nonchalant*
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I will point out that the Euro countries which are producing the most NBA stars are also some of the countries with the highest average male heights on Earth. (The Balkan countries, Lithuania and Latvia, Finland, and Germany.) Not saying the other factors people have brought up aren’t real, but it’s worth pointing out that men from these countries do have at least one very important physical attribute working in their favor, relative to the world at large.
Statistically, maybe. I grumble.
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