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The Aussie had a few things to say about American basketball culture, his failure to stick with the Bulls and Bulls fans’ “eye-opening” treatment Derrick Rose in an article he wrote for PlayersVoice, Australia’s answer to The Players’ Tribune.
1- “It was really tough to watch how the Bulls fans and media treated (Rose),” Bairstow, who has yet to play this season for the Brisbane Bullets while he recovers from torn knee ligaments, said. “He was an awesome teammate and probably the most humble person to ever receive the league MVP.
“You could tell the injuries and the way he was treated had an impact on his love for the game.”
2- Bairstow, a 2014 NBA draft pick, also lamented being too team-focused and not playing with enough of a “professionally selfish mentality” to help prolong his NBA career. But he partially blamed the differences in Australian and American basketball culture, something he noticed while playing for University of New Mexico with countryman Hugh Greenwood.
3- “Having two Aussies playing for the Lobos definitely contributed to the team’s success. I think we brought a level of toughness and teamwork that isn’t always there in U.S. basketball culture.”
4- Bairstow said he also experienced culture shock seeing the disparity in Chicago’s rich and poor neighborhoods. “Every city in the world has some bad parts,” he said, “but Chicago had a lot of them.”
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/ba ... y,amp.htmlI like Australians. I got to know some in Iraq and Afghanistan and both they and I felt that we had very similar sensibilities and were even similar culturally despite being separated by such great distances. Perhaps it was a matter of being around people serving their country and I am unfairly comparing them to a younger Australian man who played basketball poorly. But Cameron Bairstow strikes me as not terribly intelligent.
1- No. People saw the Derrick Rose thing coming from a mile away. For many it was the first thought after he was drafted. When you come from where he comes from and do not shed the "me first" and " me against the world mentality" then it was always going to end in an estranged relationship, injuries or not. Im sure Derrick was a good teammate in the most fundamental of ways but his career always came first over team and manifested itself in damaging ways. He didn't need the people around him to reinforce that. He grew up in a neighborhood that produces people like that. That may sound harsh but anyone who has any experience in those neighborhoods knows it is true. When you have a chip that large on your shoulder, it can only weigh you down, and ultimately weigh everyone around you down. When you add money to the mix, it's corrosive.
Never mistake a quiet person for a humble person.
2- He had little hint of NBA level talent.
3- His description of what he believes he brought to the Lobos is a fairly common theme on a lot of college basketball teams and that is why it remains a better game to many.
4- I've had friends from outside the US come visit and the one thing they always said was they expected it to be "worse" based on what they hear when we might have happened to pass through an economically depressed neighborhood. The most notable aspect of Chicago is how 'normal' a violent crime ridden neighborhood can look. The level of urban blight does not approach anything close to Detroit or Baltimore, even in Chicago's poorest neighborhoods.
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