Tying Up Loose Ends

On the train ride from Bucarest to Budapest, we sat with a German guy and his Danish girlfriend, as I mentioned. Sherkhan and I started talking about basketball and the German guy jumped into our conversation. He said that Dirk Nowitzki was a better team player than Kobe Bryant and LeBron James.

I told him that I agreed with him on Kobe (I only half agree really, but I didn´t want to be too difficult), but that I totally disagreed with him about LeBron. He admitted that he didn´t really watch the games and the way he said it ˝The players that you like (who, Nate Robinson and Earl Boykins?), like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James,˝ led me to believe that his comment was implicitly racist. LeBron wasn´t a throw-in either, the guy argued for a while that LeBron was a selfish player. He said that Kobe and LeBron were not good team players, especially not as good as Dirk, because of his perception of black American athletes.

LeBron and Kobe could not be more different from each other. Kobe is a shooter and a scorer, LeBron is a creater. To call Dirk a better team player than LeBron is ludicrous and ignorant. Sure LeBron scores a lot, but he piles up the assists as well. I would even argue that Kobe is a better team player than Dirk because of his defensive prowess (though I believe Kobe is an overrated defender). Dirk is a better team player than McGrady, ok, but not better than LeBron for sure. But maybe that´s how black Americans are viewed by the outside world.

Last night, the woman that we´re staying with (she is about 6 degrees separated from Mike even) talked to us about the difference between socialism and capitalism in Hungary. She stopped short of saying that socialism was good, but she was really against the direction that Hungary is going. She lemented the new high-paced, stress-filled pace at which Hungarians now live their lives. She longed for the calmer winds of socialism.

She was upset that people all of the sudden have to pay for their medical care after so many years of taking it for granted. She was upset at the corruption that took place when everything was being privatized 15 years ago and is taking place in the government now. She believes that the prime minister has too much power. He is a billionare ˝socialist,˝ which sounds funny to the ears. She says that the left wing is now the right, the right is a weak version of the left and there are no good parties to vote for. It was interesting to hear some of the arguments about politics in Hungary