King Kong in Basketball reference??
Gary Dolphin has been the play by play radio broadcaster for IOWA for a number of years now. Just earlier last year in November 2018 Dolphin was suspended for criticizing the coach Fran McCaffery, who is the coach for the basketball team at IOWA university. He criticized Fran McCaffery for playing Moishe Dailey, and implying that he was a bad recruiter. He was talking about the opponent the University of Pittsburg he said "we get Moishe Dailey who just dribbles with his head down into a double team", in the postgame segment of the broadcast. For this comment he was suspended 2 games. Then in February of 2019 he made a comment about University of Maryland big man Bruno Fernando. That game was a close one, Maryland was shooting the ball very well. At the end of the game, it was still a 1 point game. Bruno Fernando grabbed the rebound and scored. So Maryland won the game 66-65. Gary Dolphin who was calling that game said "That is some good long range shooting and then Bruno Fernando became KING KONG at the end". Bruno Fernando is from Angola which is in Africa. One way of interpreting what he said would be that he just used "King Kong" as a metaphor to saying that he was a great rebounder. Another way is "He is African" and he must be from the jungle and that is why he got the rebound, which would be obviously racist and insensitive. In my opinion, I think it was a reference that was trying to compliment Fernando as a great rebounder, but the reference was insensitive, and un necessary. Gary Dolphin is still suspended for the rest of this basketball season but will be back calling football games next year for the University of Iowa.
I agree with your opinion on this incident. Sometimes well known people say things that they do not mean to say and it ends up backlashing them, and the "King Kong" metaphor would be a good representation of this. The media also tends to eggagerate things to make the person look bad but I do not really think that Gary Dolphin meant to associate Fernando with a monkey, but rather how his playing style is "strong".
ReplyDeleteI think that it is really interesting how one can interpret a statement in two different manners. Specifically, it is interesting how people are trying to guess the Dolphin's intent. If this is a micro-aggression, I think it is a great learning point for individuals to think about their comments' ramifications.
ReplyDeleteI really like this post! I especially like how you explain what happened with Gary Dolphin, and how one comment can cost someone to be suspended. I think that this is very important to think about because if no one thinks about what they say before they say it, that can have a huge negative impact on someone. I think that the King Kong reference was completely unnecessary, as well as out of line. There are some things that just shouldn't be said, mostly because of how they could get interpreted.
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