The NBA is a league that repeatedly says they want their players to weigh on social and political issues. But by limiting the causes that players can represent on the back of their jerseys, the NBA is showing that this is not really the case. They don’t trust their athletes to speak.
Some NBA players weren’t happy with this development. Jaylen Brown of the Celtics didn’t think the options were deep enough. He felt that the list was limiting. Mike Scott of the 76ers said: “It was just a bad defeat, a bad choice. They didn’t give players the opportunity to express our opinions on the matter; they simply gave us a list to choose from.” His teammate Josh Richardson added: “I think it’s difficult to try to limit what people hear and how people can speak to a list of 15-20 sayings.”
The list included phrases such as “Black Lives Matter” and “I Can’t Breathe”, as well as caliber entries for stickers such as “Justice”, “Equality” and “Vote”. The NBA has limited most of the sentences to Black Lives Matter’s mantras, although “Group Economics” somehow managed to make its way onto the list.
Richardson said, “There are many different things that are thought of, many different things that you want to be portrayed, and if it’s not on that list of words they’ve given us it’s almost as if it doesn’t count as much.” On this he is half right. The NBA is not only devaluing the causes that have not made the cut, but they are also devaluing the causes of the list making them the only possible options.
The NBA does not trust its players to choose worthy causes. Giving players a pre-approved list – one that reflects only safe and easy choices in line with the goals of a movement and a heavily invested and interested league, shows that it is only about giving players the opportunity to talk and capitalize on more at the moment for good advertising.
It also allows the NBA to cover up its cowardice, without even risking a future “NBA Rejects Jersey Message Calling to Free the Uighurs” title.
The NBA debacle in Hong Kong has already shown that NBA players and coaches can’t trust what’s right when there is money on the line. Now, the NBA is saying that they can’t even trust their players to promote the causes that matter to them during the renewed season. The value of NBA players who express their opinion on social issues will be further reduced by this decision. League leaders have no one to blame but themselves.
