Whitlock: Nikola Jokic’s NBA dominance teaches Kendrick Perkins and Draymond Green the perils of open borders and globalism

Draymond Green and Kendrick Perkins don’t know it, but they are the first “openly MAGA” basketball players. LeBron James is still in the closet, but he will join Green and Perkins as an “America First” hoopster when Bronny James is toiling in a faraway foreign league.

MAGA NBA players are annoyed that foreigners are taking over a league black American players once dominated without a rival. With Serbian star Nikola Jokic on his way to his third straight MVP trophy, black players no longer dominate, which is making them publicly grumble.

“European players have not caught the same flak of not winning a championship as American players, and I don’t understand it,” Green complained during a podcast conversation with former NBA star Gilbert Arenas.

Perkins, an NBA player turned ESPN broadcaster, added: “When it comes down to guys winning MVPs since 1990, it’s only three guys that won the MVP that wasn’t top 10 in scoring. Do you know who those three guys were? Steve Nash, Jokic, and Dirk Nowitzki. What do those guys have in common? I’ll let it sit there and marinate; you think about it.”

Perkins is playing the very popular race card. He’s insinuating that voters favored Nash, Jokic, and Nowitzki because of their white skin. Perkins thinks he’s in alignment with Black Lives Matter. The former Celtics center believes Philadelphia center Joel Embiid should be the favorite to win MVP this season.

Perkins does not know what he does not know.

Black American basketball players are losing their grip on the NBA because the league has gone global. In another 10 years, a marginal American big man like Perkins would never put together a 15-season, $57 million NBA career. He would be out of the league in less than five seasons, pushed out by a more talented foreign-born player.

There’s a ton of animus and jealousy directed at Jokic at the moment. Perkins accused the Denver Nuggets center of “stat padding.” Jokic is averaging a triple-double this season – 24 points, 11 rebounds, and 10 assists. It’s an incredible feat for a 6-foot-11 post player. Previously, only super athletic guards – Oscar Robertson and Russell Westbrook – have averaged a triple-double for an entire season.

But the whining about the MVP race goes much deeper than the Joker.

Here’s my list of the top eight MVP candidates: 1) Nikola Jokic; 2) Giannis Antetokounmpo; 3) Joel Embiid; 4) Luka Doncic; 5) Jayson Tatum; 6) Ja Morant; 7) Shai Gilgeous-Alexander; 8) Domantas Sabonis.

Six of those eight players did not grow up on American soil. Jokic is from Serbia. Giannis is a Nigerian raised in Greece. Embiid is from Cameroon. Doncic is Slovenian. Alexander was born and raised in Canada. Sabonis, a Lithuanian, is the son of former NBA player Arvydas Sabonis. Domantas was born in Portland, but grew up in Spain when his dad retired and moved the family to Malagas.

Just two of the NBA’s top eight players this season are American-raised.

The NBA’s open-borders policy works just the same as Joe Biden’s. The people getting squeezed first are black Americans.

Green and Perkins are too uninformed and too reliant on social media for information to realize what’s really going on in the NBA. American labor is being outsourced to foreigners in the name of globalism and a new world order.

They’re so blinded by racial idolatry and left-wing identity politics that they’d rather have their American-born children and grandchildren compete against the entire planet for American jobs than compete against white Americans. They believe they will accrue enough wealth to protect their descendants from the harsh reality of globalism.

What about working-class Americans? What happens to them?

What happens to people like my parents? People who elevated and provided for their offspring with manufacturing jobs that have been shipped to China and Mexico?

Open borders and globalism weaken the working class and devalue American citizenship. All the illegal aliens crossing our southern border undermine the power and influence of an American citizen’s vote.

By the time Draymond Green and Kendrick Perkins fully grasp what’s happening in the NBA, it will be far too late to course-correct. It’s no different from the deal black Americans struck with Lyndon Johnson and the Democratic Party in the 1960s. We exchanged fathers for welfare checks, belief in God for belief in government, and the patriarchy for the matriarchy.

With no family structure for support, we pivoted from fighting for equal opportunity to demanding set-asides, quotas, charity, and equal outcomes. We don’t fight like men. We whine like women and children.

Every outcome we don’t like is racist. So, of course, Nikola Jokic’s MVP three-peat is racist. What else could it be?

No way the growing foreign dominance of the NBA is a reflection of the weakness of black America’s matriarchal culture. Let’s continue to bury our heads and pretend there are no negative ramifications from our collective abandonment of God’s natural order.

Let’s blame racism. Let’s continue to demonize the only country any of us want to live in. Let’s keep pretending Donald Trump is the root of all evil and that Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Michelle Obama can save us.

Let’s keep following the tall Useful Idiots who can shoot a basketball. Brittney Griner-Draymond Green 2024!