The Last Shot Analysis

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Road to the Pros: The Facts Through the years, myths and paradoxes have been developed regarding the journey to being a professional athlete. Myths including the chances children in poverty have over more fortunate ones to be successful athletically, the chances to be professional athletes between races, and the incorrect goals mainstream media sets for young kids in poverty. These flawed assumptions stem from outliers like Clint Dempsey, LeBron James, and Michael Oher. Over time, it has been athletes from two-parent, financially-comfortable homes who’s chances for success are higher, like Michael Jordan and Chris Paul. The balance between races succeeding in professional sports careers is not equal, as a player, executive, or coach. African-Americans…show more content…
According to Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, “These results push back against the stereotype of a basketball player driven by an intense desire to escape poverty. In “The Last Shot,” Darcy Frey quotes a college coach questioning whether a suburban player was “hungry enough” to compete against black kids from the ghetto. But the data suggest that on average any motivational edge in hungriness is far outweighed by the advantages of kids from higher socioeconomic classes.” As time goes on, the competition to reach a professional level in sports has been getting tougher and more advanced. As the competition progresses, so do the needs of the athletes for the necessary coaches, diets, workout regimens, and most importantly, support systems behind them to be there for them. Unfortunately, the level of skill and work ethic an athlete has won’t always dictate how far he or she goes in their sports career. According to Peter Keating, “Athletes and fans invest so much emotion into sports that we convince ourselves that they possess some kind of transformative power. We believe that skills always trump circumstances. But that's a myth. With funding for school athletic programs on chopping blocks across the country, it's important to understand what the numbers actually tell us. Yes, your talent is important. But your very first teams -- your family and your earliest support structures -- matter…show more content…
According to Stanley Eitzen in the third edition of his book Fair and Foul: Beyond the Myths and Paradoxes of Sport that, “African American are severely underrepresented in positions of authority in sport,” Eitzan wrote. “Writing about the racial imbalance in hiring, white sports columnist Bob Kravitz remarks that ‘something here stinks, and it stinks a lot like racism.’” When it comes to the athletic side of things, African-Americans have the edge. According to Stephen Lintner, “It is also statistically more likely for African-Americans to make it professionally; 1 in 3,500 black males go professional versus 1 in 10,000 white males who make sports a career. On top of that, two-thirds of African-American males between the ages of 13 and 18 believe they can earn a living playing pro sports (more than double the percentage of whites).” Between 1994 and 2004, a study ran by Joshua Dubrow of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Jimi Adams of Arizona State University found that an African-American child from a low-income family has 37% lower odds of making the NBA than an

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