On this episode of the Unsupervised Learning podcast, Razib welcomes back Ethan Strauss, a writer who has covered sports and culture for the past decade, including in the book The Victory Machine: The Making and Unmaking of the Warriors Dynasty. More recently his writing is to be found at his Substack, House of Strauss, which is notable for offering a candid take on the cross-pollination between broader culture and athletics, notably in the piece Nike's End of Men: Why Nike no longer wants us to Be Like Mike.

Strauss and Razib first discuss professional sports and the different representation of various nationalities. Strauss recounts the generational attempt by the NBA to get Chinese representation to gin up a lucrative rivalry, and how it sputtered due to the reality that 1.4 billion Han Chinese seem to have less basketball talent than small nations like Croatia. Razib also asks about how and why baseball is popular in parts of Latin America and East Asia, and why there are so many more Dominicans in MLB than Mexicans. Strauss explains that people in sports are quite aware of differences between populations, and how it might play out in terms of recruitment.

Then Razib and Strauss explore the role of DEI in professional sports, and especially the NBA, and how it might be impacting decisions in the league. They recount the years around 2020, when a drive for representation of minorities, and in particular blacks, was prevalent across the corporate world, and how it impacted professional sports. Strauss then offers up his theory for why the Dallas Mavericks inexplicably traded away a potentially generational talent and Mark Cuban’s role. Finally, he also highlights the racism that Jeremy Lin, one of the few Asian American stars in the 2010s, faced from his fellow players.

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