White Boys Can't Jump?

Lately in AS, we watched a documentary detailing in the specifics of race and if it was biological or social. In it, they discussed if certain races were dominate in sports because of their genetics. You've heard the rumors. Some races have an extra muscle that helps them run faster or some races can't jump as high as other ones. Well the video states that there has been no discovery of a correlation between race affecting athletic ability.

But if you look at the any of the major sports, it does seem that one race tends to dominate. In the NBA, 82% of the players were African American. In the NFL, 67% of players were also African American. In the MBL, 60% of players were white. And in the NHL, a staggering 95% of all players are white.
Look at the difference between two championship teams this year, the Chicago Blackhawks and the Los Angeles Lakers.

The difference between races in each sport is not small. In fact, it makes you wonder why are there such huge percentage differentials? If genetics has no factor on a race's athletic ability than why do some races tend to excel at certain sports by an unbelievable margin?

I believe that environment has a lot to do with it. In an interview with Joseph Graves Jr., professor of evolutionary biology, he states that

If we were to look at people from northern climates, who were indigenous residents of northern climates, they tend to be short and stout instead of long or tall and lean. And there are good physical reasons for that. If you evolved in northern climates, like the Aleut or the Eskimo populations did, heat retention is facilitated by being short and stout. If you evolved in the tropics, where the environment is very hot, then heat loss is facilitated by being long and lean. So you're going to see differences in body proportions on that kind of scale.Now, if you were to ask yourself, "Is it likely that an Alaskan Eskimo is going to become a center in the NBA?", well, probably not, because height has something to do with your performance at that position in the NBA.

Obviously in order for someone to be a great basketball player, they would need a good height for the game. There's no way a 5'6 man can hold up against someone is 6'5. I also think another huge component is the way athletes train. Those who take 100 shots a day to improve their free throw percentage would definitely become a better player than those who only took shots at practices.I also have noticed that most runners who are of African ancestry, have trained in other countries than Africa. So that doesn't necessarily mean that Africa truly produced those runners. Maybe the training did.

Graves touches on this when he says,

if you look at those sprinters of Western African ancestry, they all got their records because they trained in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, or even in the Caribbean. If you look at the Western African countries where those sprinters' ancestors supposedly came from, none of those countries have ever produced any world record holders in the sprint events.

So how much of a factor do you think race is?