The Weekly Beignet: Guest Hoes and Sports Tea

Dearest gentle art hoes,

I’ve come to bear the mantle of responsibility; a weight unlike that in which Atlas struggles upon his shoulders. Our illustrious founder and baker of the Croissant, Rachel Baiman: first of her name, queen of the fiddle, protector of the realm and the Art Hoes, is departing on a trip cross multiple continents tour and has left me, Sir Nelson Williams, as regent of our fluffy and delectable pastry/column for at least this issue; an honor I accept with much joy and reverence. I am no stranger to the Croissant. I’ve been a gentle follower since Rachel’s first issue and was tickled to be mentioned last month because of my indoctrination of Rachel into the “Pucking Around” hockey romance series (written by Emily Rath) which then seeded a budding interest in sports by our dear Rachel.

I truly relish this recent development for Rachel because I have felt quite lonely as a devout art hoe who also loves his sports. My mom was and still is a lover of sports which meant I played all of the major American ball sports until I started attending my super artsy, academically rigorous magnet high school where I would eventually trade in my cleats for ballet slippers which only transferred me from a “sports” athlete to a “arts” athlete in all honestly. The thing about going to an egghead high school and then going to college at one of the most prominent sports school in the country, #GeauxLSU, is that you begin to deconstruction why you like sports outside of the cultural expectation that everyone should. At the end of the day, I landed on the fact that sports incapsulate things I enjoy in both academia and art: skill, dedication, strategy, immense background (we love lore of any kind) and gossip!

Now gossip (or “the tea” for those who like AAVE) has had a revolution over the last few years from being a nasty little word associated with bad behavior to being regarded as a cornerstone of communal information-sharing and a societal good; at least if you listen to the amazing podcast, “Normal Gossip” hosted by Kelsey McKinney, you would think of it in that way. While correlation of “tea” and sports seems furlong, I am here to say that the sports world both in terms of industry and sporting itself is highly influenced by the gossip and the tea and the drama. Who’s being traded, who’s getting the max salary cap, what locker room rivalry is brewing, who’s dating another player in the same league, what scandalous thing that head coach do: all gossipy little things that can reshape the framework of a team; sports organization or an entire sport for the matter. This will particularly become evident as the most anticipated sporting event of the year, the Olympics, starts next week. How could you gather the world’s greatest athletes and not also have some juicy, scandalous, think piece inspiring drama and tea? Impossible I would say! Rachel will be covering Olympic things so I will not steal her thunder there but I wanted to drop at least two pieces of American related sports drama that I have been chewing at the nib of lately. One involving a creature not unfamiliar to the art world, nepotism, and the other being something we all can rally against: a bad hater.

Nepo Babies: Like Father like Son?

Unless you have been leaving under a metaphorical rock or pushing a mythological boulder up a hill, you would have at least heard the name: Lebron James. His name might as well be listed under the definition of basketball. He has played in the NBA at this point longer than he’s not been in the NBA (he was drafted at 19 and is now 39) and is without a doubt one of the greatest of all time (GOAT for those not familiar with the term. While becoming the face of basketball, LeBron found the time to have a family and has three children but the one we will be talking about today is LeBron “Bronny” James Jr.

Now being literally named after your hall of fame father is one thing but following in his footsteps and shadow is another. While the art world is familiar with varying degrees of nepotism and how it can propel one past barriers to entry and such, the sports world is a little more “selective” if you will. In the way that art is “subjective”, sports are about numbers, stats and ability; the objective best move forward and the rest lose. With that being said, you have to be “the best of the best” to become a professional athlete and NBA is not an exception but the standard in this. I’ll include a diagram below to show you how few D1 college basketball players make it to the NBA and that’s not even talking about what their fates might be post draft day. What I am saying is it’s a tough league to get into with brilliant athletes around from top to bottom.

Now back to Bronny, he really is following in his father’s footsteps as he was drafted this past June to the Los Angelos Lakers (his father’s team for those who don’t know) as their second round pick; No. 55 to be drafted that night. So you might think “wow, he must have been an all-star college player to be drafted”, right? Well . . . not really if we want to talk about purely numbers. I’ll keep short and say that Bronny averaged 5 pts a game with every other important in basketball being below 3 per game (rebounds, blocks, steals). To put this into perspective, the big college basketball tournament that happens every year (March Madness) features 68 teams and the best player on each of these teams easily triples Bronny’s stat line (I’m not going to do that actual research for this statement but it’s pretty much true; email me about it if I am grossly misrepresenting the data here). So why was Bronny picked over truly hundreds of other talented young players who had better stat lines and years more experience playing at the highest level of basketball in the US collegiate basketball? Well, we can’t say for sure but we’ve seen similar stories in the art world, am I right?

Why be a hater?: McKayla Skinner and the US Women’s Gymnastic Team

The US women’s gymnastic team for the last decade has been an absolute beast. Period. From winning the first team gold medal in 16 years in 2012 to being the most gold medals amongst a US team in 2016 to all of the world championships the team was garnering in-between Olympic Games, the results don’t lie but further push the narrative of the elite performance and culture of the team. They are the best of the best and anyone who gets called up for the team truly is that . . . which is why it’s weird that former US Olympic gymnast, McKayla Skinner would say something like “Besides Simone (Biles), I feel like the talent and the depth just isn’t like what it used to be . . . Just notice like, I mean, obviously a lot of girls don’t work as hard. The girls just don’t have the work ethic.” *insert rolling eyes emoji*

If you don’t know who McKayla Skinner is, I would say that’s fine. She doesn’t have the same mainstream name recognition as Aly Raisman, or Gabby Douglas or Simone Biles (queen) but she was an excellent gymnast. She won golds in World Championships and was an alternate for the 2016 and was on the 2020 team where she won her solo medal: silver in vaults.

Now this tea is bitter for a variety of reasons but one of the asinine parts of it is her degradation of the 2024 team except for Simone Biles. You don’t punch above your weight class and McKayla obviously knew better than to try and critique the most decorated gymnast of all time but she still miscalculated her shade severely. She herself wouldn’t have even competed in the finals of vault for her silver medal if Simone Biles hadn’t dropped out for her own health. Suni Lee, who is part of the 2024 team, was also on the team the year McKayla competed and won a gold medal overall. The other members of the team are decorated national and world championship medalist. Again In an individual focused sport like gymnastics where there are championships and olympic trials before one can make a team, you just have to be the best and these women were just like Skinner was so why take shots at your fellow athletes? Crazy as one would say. Perhaps Simone Biles had the best response to the video.

With love and beignets,

Nelson