I think the critical difference is that said basketball player doesn't open their demonstration by challenging the audience's intelligence explicitly.

I don't want to personally say whether the joke in the article is in good taste or not, and I don't want to assess whether programmers' egos are too fragile or sensitive. I don't think that's productive.

I do, however, want to emphasize that when read by a broader audience than just the community of Haskell programmers, due in part to Haskell's reputation, the joke lands as off-color, as the G*P comment demonstrates.