The Nation's far Left sports editor and Donald Trump hater supreme Dave Zirin pitted NBA players and coaches against the president as all reflected this week on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Zirin positioned the NBA "as a site of resistance against racism and Trump."
Zirin listed a series of comments that "reflect a push by very-high-profile players in the NBA to push beyond what Cornel West calls the 'Santa Clausification' of King. They also put the league in stark opposition to this administration, which spent the day tweeting admiration for King while practicing ugly racism in word and deed."
The president had stressed to CNN's Wolf Blitzer and others that "I'm the least racist person you will ever interview." He signed a proclamation expanding the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Park to "honor the memory of a great American hero, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." Yet Zirin, NBA coaches and players decried the nation and president as the enemies of racial equality.
Zirin excused away the president's "least racist" comment as "yet another racist dirge." He posted a litany of leftist exaggerations by Detroit Pistons' head coach Stan Van Gundy (see file photo above), who said:
"Sadly, though, I think the 50th anniversary of his death finds us going backwards on the issue of racial equality. The Voting Rights Act has been largely dismantled. Men of color, and even boys of color, face systemic inequality in the justice system, and we used the war on drugs to lock up a generation of black men. Affirmative action is being torn down. Police are killing men like a modern-day Bull Connor, and economic equality is headed in the wrong direction."
Millionaire athletes and coaches are in no position to point fingers in discussions of economic equality. But Van Gundy guessed that, if Dr. King was alive today, he would be in tears over where we are headed.
Zirin quoted San Antonio Spurs' coach Greg Popovich, a frequent Trump detractor who last year called him a "soulless coward. This time Popovich said, “Every time I hear somebody say they’re not a racist, you know they are.”
The Nation's screed also included a comment by Shaquille O’Neal, who said: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
Speaking of LeBron James' portrayal of President Trump as a stupid racist, Zirin claimed the Cleveland basketball star "literally took a bullet for all of us." Zirin also said it's not healthy "for a functioning left to have its eyes turned to the sports world," but the NBA players and coaches are filling a vacuum by "voicing a rage that is still finding physical expression. The NBA community has, consciously or not, taken on a serious burden because the thing about political leadership is, once you exercise it, people will begin to expect it."
Zirin sees an administration in deterioration mode and expects the NBA to "articulate our anger at the reality of racism-without-consequence in the White House."
