That 13% difference in the audience demographic is doing some heavy lifting to support your premise there.

Not really. Given the demographics of the players, we would only expect 1 or 2 white players in the top 10, so it doesn't take much difference in either athletic talent or popularity, even just random chance, to drop them out of the top 10.

That's why I suggested it would be better to look at the top 100 and not just the superstar top 10.

That 56% difference between black and white players is quite a number though, why are these sports teams not hiring more white men?

shrug

Probably because basketball is much more popular in the inner cities, where black people tend to live, rather than in the suburbs, where whites tend to live. You don't need much space or equipment to play basketball compared to football or baseball. It's a city sport.

So I expect that there are proportionally many more black guys trying out for the NBA than white.

I was the one who pointed out that there is a racial discrepancy in the NBA superstars, but I used that specifically to argue against the racist woke idea that any and every discrepancy in outcome must be racism or some other -ism. I think it is unlikely that the NBA, which is still owned and managed mostly by old white dudes who think CRT is some sort of medical treatment for when you have a heart attack, are biased against whites because of their skin colour. It's possible, I guess, but I wouldn't put money on it.

It must be racism that's to blame, right? A disparity in outcome between races must be because of racism

I'm not the one who thinks that every disparity in outcome must be caused by racism! Perhaps you should read my earlier message in this thread again -- the mere existence of some disparity does not imply racism or some other prejudice.

Maybe it just means that black dudes love basketball than white dudes, or white guys are too busy playing baseball or hockey to bother with basketball. Maybe it means that there are more 6'6" and taller black dudes because of genetics.

Or simply from cultural effects: little Kareem plays street basketball because his family follows the NBA, while little Eric is spending all his time on Instagram, so even if they both grow to be 6'10" Kareem is athletic and tries out for the NBA while Eric decides his pronouns are xin/xiz and wants to be called Princess Trixiebell Starfox.

If you go out of the inner cities, there are probably more white rodeo riders than black. I don't think that's because rural America lynches any black guys who wear cowboy boots and rides a horse. Well maybe back in the 1950s, but not today. I think its because of the distinct subcultures in America.

because race isn't real, after all.

A simple idea of race as in "black" and "white" isn't real. (Yes, I know, that's the language I've been using too. Sue me.) Unlike sex, which is binary (male and female), race isn't binary. There aren't two human races, or three, or ten, or a hundred. "Race" is closer to not just one spectrum but a thousand distinct and independent spectra all tangled together into a giant incomprehensible ball of genetics, ethnicities, tribes and cultures.

With the possible exception of a few tribes deep in the Amazon rain forest, or the New Guinea highlands, we're all mongrels. Over the ten thousand years or so of human history, every tribe, "race" and culture has interbred with all the other tribes and "races" they've come across.

And that is why twins, born of the same mother to the one father, like Lucy and Maria Alymer are possible.

Meghan Markle has just as many Irish Celtic ancestors as American Black ancestors. Why doesn't she count as Celtic instead of "black"? Her skin is paler than many tanned "white" people.

About 10% of pale skinned British people, and most Irish, are descended from the black-skinned, blue-eyed "Western Hunter Gatherer" genetic group. Are they black because their ancestors are black? If so, we're all black.

Here are two actresses, Louise Beavers and Fredi Washington from the 1934 film “Imitation of Life”. Can you tell which one is white? Here are Vin Diesel and Colin Powell, the dark skinned actor on the left is white and the light skinned general on the right is black.