Q&A With Schea Cotton (Basketball Legend)

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

Think Insect Breeding In Terms Of The Prodigious Number Of Offspring They Produce In A Lifetime (Many Die, But A Decent Number Survive). Think Salmon Life History In Terms Of Living Until Reproduction And Quickly Dying Afterwards. (Blacks, At Least In Evolutionary History, Produced A Large Number Of Offspring, Banking On A Fair Amount Surviving, But Died Earlier Due To Genes That Allowed Them To Mature And Reproduce Earlier [These Same Genes Lead To Early Death Today]).

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

CORRECTION: The Environment (Climate) Dictates The Type Of Reproductive Strategy You Employ. It's Not A "Coupled With A Warm African Climate" Type Of Thing. It's A Direct Result Of The Climate.

My Thoughts Get Jumbled Up At Times, Forgive ME As I Sit In This Armchair.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

Read The Following Posts In Succession. The First Two Were Taken From Mismatch: The Lifestyle Diseases Time Bomb.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

The Better The Match, The Greater The Chance Of Reproductive Success. As A Gross Simplification The Choice Can Be Seen Between Interpreting The Future World As Short Of Food And High In Competition And Hence Risky, Or As Having Abundant Food With Little Competition And Therefore Safe. The Strategy To Live In Either World Is Very Different. A Risky World Means Not Planning A Long Life, But Maturing Early So As To Reproduce So That The Individual's Genes Pass To The Next Generation.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

Now How Does This Apply To Schea Cotton, Lebron James And Other Black Americans Like Them? Well, Not Only Did They Possess The West African Genes That Allowed Them Physically Develop Early, Quickly, And Athletically Which Gave Them An Advantage Over Whites, But Their Specific West African Genes Were So Superior That They Gave Them An Advantage Over Other Black Americans (West African Descendants).

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

The Individual, Race, And Ultimately Species Have An Unconscious Drive To Survive. This Forces Them To Choose A Reproductive Strategy That Best Suits Their Environment. In The Case Of sub-Saharan Africans, An Unpredictable, Dangerous Environment Where Survival Was Uncertain Unconsciously Forced Them To Focus More On Reproducing And Less On Parenting.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

This Meant They'd Produce More Offspring, But Invest Less Time And Effort In Them. In Essence, They Hedged Against High Offspring Loss (Reproductive Failure/Race Extinction) By Simply Producing More Offspring And Betting On A Fair Percentage Of Those Offspring Surviving (A Fair Offspring Survival Rate Out Of A Large Number Of Offspring. Think Insect Breeding.)

Consequently, The Genes For This Type Of Reproductive Strategy Has Been Inherited By All sub-Saharan Africans And Their Descendants.

[ilovefrankandbeans]

its Jesus Shuttlesworth

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

I Believe I Was Intoxicated When I Wrote The Paragraphs Below. GENES ALWAYS WIN OUT IN SPORTS ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU'RE COMPETING AGAINST SOMEONE THAT ISN'T AS GENETICALLY GIFTED. So, you can have superior genes and not improve upon them and still out compete someone with inferior genes.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

People Peak At Different Points In Their Life And A Lot Of That Is Determined By Their Genes. Schea Cotton Was Endowed With West African Genes (Extraordinary West African Genes). But They May Have Run Their Course By The Time He Hit 18, 19, 20. He Was More Well Developed, More Coordinated, And More Athletic Than Everyone He Grew Up With, However, That Advantage May Have Leveled Out By The Time He Hit His Late Teens And Early Twenties (People May Have Caught Up With Him By Then).

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

Many Of You Neglect The Genetic Aspect Of Success. Many People Have Genes That Allow Them To Achieve Success Early On, But If They Don't Develop Those Genes (Improve On What Genetic Advantage They Have), Those Genes Are For Naught. The Person That Isn't As Genetically Gifted Doesn't Rest, So That Disadvantage That He/She Has Is Overcome By Their Relentless Work. Schea Cotton May Have Been A Prime Example Of This. He Was Head And Shoulders Above Everybody, But He Rested On his Laurels.

[whiteflash1323]

Remember reading about this dude in SI in '94 or '95. He was going into his sophomore year of highschool. This was before Garnett made the jump and they were talking about Cotton being the first to do it in the modern era. Don't know all the specs of his story but think he got chewed up by the system. It's cool that he doesn't seem bitter, and he comes across as an articulate dude. Hope he gets whatever he's looking for.

[ginogeno]

@whiteflash1323 Shea would have been the first, but yes the system chewed him up, there were a lot of things going on, and I think a testing scandal or something with academics is what causes his downfall.

[whiteflash1323]

@ginogeno Well, unless he left after his soph year of HS he couldn't have been the first. Garnett came out in '95, and Cotton was class of '96. But, I agree that he got fucked by the system.

[ginogeno]

@whiteflash1323 True, I just remember him supposed to go to UCLA, but his SAT numbers were so bad. He went to Long Beach City college.

[anddenex]

@whiteflash1323 - My basketball team, my senior year, missed playing against Schea when we lost against (I think Fairfax, barely, but we still lost). Our assistant coach was scouting Schea team to look at defense should we have moved forward. Our coach described him as getting tired of dunking on the other team, so he went out and shot 3 pointers. I was told later his grades hurt him from playing further, however he could have played NBA easily. This was 94-95 season.