Lonnie Walker, the freshman phenom from Miami was drafted in Thursday night’s NBA Draft by the San Antonio Spurs with the 18th overall selection. Numerous draft analysts called this the steal of the draft and were sure he would go higher on this big night than number 18. Well, the week of the draft, Lonnie Walker did an interview with Sports Illustrated where he seemed to be enamored with Adolf Hitler. There are some really tough hills to die on, but dying on the “Hitler wasn’t that bad of a guy” hill has to be high up there with all time bad hills. You can watch the interview here:
In the interview with Sports Illustrated, Walker is quoted saying “Hitler was a great, powerful leader” and I am just not sure I fully understand the great part. Hitler was powerful in the sense he killed millions of innocent people for no other reason than to just do it. Lonnie Walker and I must have taken different history classes where we learned about Hitler and what he did because my teachers didn’t really reiterate his greatness. Just that he was the worst human in the entire history of the world.
I don’t know about the rest of the NBA teams, but if I hear a guy start talking about how great and powerful Hitler was, I’m probably going to get cold feet about drafting this guy. No matter if you are the next Michael Jordan or Lebron James, being a big time fan of the man who committed the largest systematic killing of all time is a pretty apparent red flag. I would understand if maybe you liked Napoleon Bonaparte or Ivan the Terrible, but Hitler? That’s gonna be a no from me, dawg.
Every NBA player wants to be different; Kyrie Irving thinks the earth is flat and Baron Davis claimed he was abducted by Aliens, but none of them are as wild as Walker’s Hitler love. Lonnie Walker even goes as far to compliment Hitler’s poetry, which is apparently still read by many people today (FALSE). Either way, I am personally excited to see what Walker does in the NBA next season and how Pop is going to take this guy under his wing and change his views on World War II.
-Johnny Rambos
