The latest member of the NBA family to speak out on political and social issues was Stan Van Gundy of the Pistons, who made his displeasure clear regarding the current White House administration clear. He also spoke about the benefits of speaking out, and the NBA, among pro sports leagues, has seemingly taken the lead on this trend.
Where did it all begin?
Bruce Schoenfeld of Esquire provides the recent history of NBA players using their voice to be heard on sensitive topics:
The isolated actions of James and others have coalesced into something that looks a lot like the start of a movement. It is happening now for reasons that aren’t difficult to understand. The reach of Twitter and Snapchat allows celebrities to be easily heard in their own voices.
The erosion of credibility suffered by both elected officials and the media has created space for others to wield influence. And contracts in excess of $100 million let the league’s biggest stars ignore financial risks and do what they want.
But what makes this insurgency especially remarkable is that the existing power structure is helping to facilitate it. Athletes from other sports often approach Adam Silver, the current NBA commissioner, to say that they wish they played in his league. And this past September, Silver and Michele Roberts, the executive director of the players’ association, encouraged the league’s athletes to take a stand. “Critical issues that affect our society also impact you directly,” they wrote in a letter. “You have real power to make a difference.”
The last time sports really mattered in any sociopolitical sense was the 1960s. Muhammad Ali was the first athlete to use his platform to express outrage on a national scale, with outside agitation from the broadcaster Howard Cosell. At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, sprinters John Carlos and Tommie Smith each raised a fist on the medal stand. George Foreman waved a flag. Bill Walton, then playing basketball for UCLA, sat in the middle of Wilshire Boulevard to protest the war in Vietnam. “Sports presented space for America to have some of its most difficult conversations,” says Amy Bass, the author of Not the Triumph but the Struggle, a book about activism at the Mexico City Olympics.
