Spain Men's Basketball Team Controversy Photo Options

[Tung]

BEIJING - Lakers superstar Pau Gasol and his Spanish Olympic teammates have found themselves in the middle of an international controversy after appearing making slit-eyed gestures in a newspaper advertisement that some Asian groups in both North America and Asia have characterized as racist.

Gasol and the Spanish basketball team appeared in a full page ad for a courier company using their fingers to make the gestures while posing in their national team uniforms on a court with a Chinese dragon center circle.

The ad appeared in Marca, a national sports daily and Spain's best-selling newspaper. An ad showing the Spanish women's team making similar gestures also appeared in the newspaper.

I'm not sure what to say about this. I'm like in between on this. What do you guys think.

[Tung]

Yes.

“We did it because we thought it was going to be something nice, something with no problem,” Calderon told Yahoo! Sports. “But somebody wants to talk about it. It is too much of a big deal with you guys (the media) and everybody talking about that.”

“If I go to play with a taller team and I put here (raising up on the tips of his toes) it is not an offense,” Reneses said. “I can’t understand anything more.”

“Some of us didn’t feel comfortable doing it just because to me it was a little clownish for our part to be doing that,” Gasol said. “But the sponsors insisted and insisted. I think it is just a bad idea I guess to do that, but it was never intended to be offensive or racist against anybody.

“I didn’t find it very funny. I didn’t find it offensive, either. I guess some guys didn’t mind. To me I don’t want to be that way, I guess, to be doing that stuff.

“If anybody feels offended by it we totally apologize for it. We never meant anything offensive by it.”


The thing I don't get is, if Gasol was uncomfortable with doing it, why do it at all? He's a grown man, and not a 5 year old who has to listen to this photographer.

wow ... idk what to say? it depends on what they were trying to do. i dont think it was meant to be negative. it was posted at newspapers in china for reasons. if it was straight-out negative and disrespectful, then they probably wouldnt published it?

There's been talks that they were being racist without knowing they were being racist LOL