I am not a basketball fan. I never have been, and, quite frankly, the current crop of blowhard anti-American racist multi-bazillionaires like Lebron James make it easy to stay that way. All the posturing and lecturing and finger-pointing from those oppressed folks drawing down hundreds of millions for playing a game gets a little tedious in the face of the challenges of real life. The life where you have a job every day, worry about money if the transmission goes in the car or the dog needs a vet visit or, God forbid, you’re buying food for a tween-age boy or two.

That in itself will bankrupt a middle-class family right about now.

Maybe you live somewhere where they can’t keep the lights on – like California – and/or it’s costing you twice as much as it used to for the power you have. And, insult to injury, you’re constantly painted as a selfish capitalist for expecting to have electricity when you need it, not when they decide to let you have it.

Whoop-dee-doo. Your house was worth almost twice what you paid for it, but your local property taxes reflect that increase, not your income. The property taxes are going to stay where they are even as your house devalues, thanks to the current climate. Would your city or county hesitate to drop an apartment complex, perhaps an “affordable housing” complex in your neighborhood, even if you all kicked and screamed?

I can only go by personal experience, but in our county, that answer is “no/nyet/fuggedaboudit.” Especially if the developer is well-connected and the howls of “equity/equality/diversity” are loud enough. “You churlish curs – who are you to squawk about zoning and traffic studies?!” Before you even know what hit you they’re clearing land and the debris piles are ablaze, right along with your property values. Up in smoke.

Suck it up, little guys.

Then you move up the economic food chain a ways – okay. QUITE a ways. Let’s take Stephen Curry. A basketball player who lives in CA and makes good money.

How much money?

Pretty much a boatload. I mean compared to me. $48M+ a year or $215,353,644 guaranteed over the next four years. So, “more than me.” YMMV:

The price of eggs…I’m sure he doesn’t have a clue. What he does have is that preening sort of well-moneyed Social Justice Warrior preacher syndrome that has so infected this generation of athletes.

…At 34, Curry is “absolutely” committed to winning the title again this year. But the game isn’t his only focus. Curry has raised his profile as a businessman, a humanitarian, and — slowly but surely — an activist and more vocal political leader. Look into his kaleidoscopic stare as he considers his status in the history books, and you begin to believe Curry when he declares that he can eventually “have as much influence” as Michael Jordan. And while the notoriously apolitical Jordan once said that “Republicans buy sneakers, too,” Curry has already put his brand on the line by clashing with Trump, endorsing Joe Biden, and marching for racial justice. Now, Curry is grappling with how he might expand the meaning of influence, and wondering what the f*ck he is gonna say next.

“You’re growing and evolving on the same page as these national, politicized conversations, but it doesn’t have to be sides,” he tells me, pinching at his scraggly under-chin stubble. “What I try to do is be real, but also activate conversation that is sometimes uncomfortable.”

He also didn’t roll into basketball fame after scrapping for survival on the mean streets of some inner-city and playing for a craptastic public school.

…Curry grew up a long, long way from anything like the LBC. His mom, Sonya, was an educator. She taught Stephen and his two younger siblings, Seth and Sydel, “a little street talk — remember where you came from — because that’s what my mom would always tell us,” she says. Stephen’s grandmother graduated from the first integrated class in Radford, Virginia, where Sonya was raised in a trailer and once saw a Klan member ride a horse across the outfield of a softball game. His father, Dell, grew up in a house packed with seven people, where Stephen’s other grandmother lives to this day.

But Dell played 16 seasons in the NBA, and Stephen lived in a mansion with nine bathrooms on 16 acres outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. While Curry was an NBA courtside regular in middle school, “I wasn’t in the pocket of privilege,” he insists. Curry’s parents allotted $200 in back-to-school shopping, for five outfits a year. Sonya dragged him to volunteer at his dad’s program for the computer illiterate. The family also took in kids from time to time.

…Stephen and his brother starred at Charlotte Christian, a $23,000-a-year private academy, while traveling on the local hoops circuit…

Equality is his big thing…

Steph Curry has been incredibly busy this week, trying to lead the Warriors to an NBA title in a gritty battle against the Boston Celtics. While Curry hopes to emerge a winner on the court, he is working for a more even playing field off the court.

Curry has been known for rocking some fits from up-and-coming minority designers in his tunnel walks, and he is also promoting gender equality with his custom Curry 4’s, which feature the hashtag #RetireInequality and draw attention to economic inequalities that still face many women around the world today.

…until equality starts eyeing a spot in his neighborhood.

NBA star Steph Curry issued an official opposition to the development of a row of affordable housing units that are slated to be build behind his multi-million dollar mansion.

The Golden State Warriors star and his wife, Ayesha, sent a letter to the town of Atherton opposing the project, which would see up to 16 three-story townhouses spring up in the middle of his uber-wealthy California neighborhood.

The Currys said the housing project would pose as a threat to ‘safety and privacy’ of them and their kids, nothing that the location and height of the townhouses residents leering views into their $31million mansion.

They are all virtue signaling hypocrites

— btexpress (@wturner914) January 31, 2023

The Curry’s letter to the town said, “We hesitate to add the ‘not in our backyard (literally)’ rhetoric”…

TIL: Steph Curry has apparently "been following along with the housing element update" in the affluent Bay Area suburb of Atherton, and opposes rezoning to allow a single-family mansion to become 16 townhomes due to concerns of "both privacy and safety" 😭

h/t @angelaswartz pic.twitter.com/9iVl90SBgf

— Jordan Grimes 🚰 (@cafedujord) January 28, 2023

…but they are literally saying NIMBY, whether literally their backyard (seems it is pretty close to it) or not, as are the affluent neighbors. I’ll bet they are a big blue voting block. Shocking as it may be to the lot of them, they are in point of fact getting bitten by exactly what they’ve voted for in CA. The state of CA is not going to accept the building plan without the upzoning for affordable housing.

…The family isn’t alone in its opposition to the project. Other neighbors have expressed concern about developing multifamily housing on the site in letters and public comments during town meetings.

Initially the town’s growth plan had been to lean in on backyard accessory dwelling units, but town consultants, housing advocates and others made it clear that the state won’t accept an element that doesn’t include multifamily housing.

They’re getting what they’ve been voting for.

It does beg the question: Would the Currys, if you asked them, be equally as strong advocates for your “safety and privacy” if the city then tried to move this project to, say, your backyard?

Right? ‘Tis to laugh.

It would be your duty to suck it up yet again for equity, equality, and diversity.

Curry and fellow bazillionaires would, if it were called to their attention, most assuredly cast aspersions upon your motives for opposing housing for less fortunate folks. Your side of the argument – while a mirror image of his own – would never get a hearing.

The hypocrisy. Between private jets, ocean-front mansions, perpetual double standards, lecturing, and posing, the sanctimonious haranguing of the everyday people who pay their salaries is always jarringly out of synch with what our lying eyes see them doing.

Steph Curry’s property values, “safety and privacy” are no more and no less important than mine or yours.

I completely get where he’s coming from.

But I’m pretty much over the lectures.