The NBA is a league that repeatedly says it wants its players to weigh in on social and political issues. But by limiting the causes players can represent on the back of their jerseys, the NBA is showing that really isn’t so. It doesn’t trust its own athletes to speak out.
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 miss, a bad choice. They didn’t give players a chance to voice our opinions on it; they just gave us a list to pick from.” His teammate Josh Richardson added, “I think it’s tough to try to limit what people are feeling, and how people can speak out, to just a list of 15 to 20 sayings.”
The list included boilerplate phrases such as “Black Lives Matter” and “I Can’t Breathe,” as well as bumper sticker-caliber entries including “Justice,” “Equality,” and “Vote.” The NBA limited most phrases to Black Lives Matter mantras, though “Group Economics” somehow managed to make its way onto the list.
Richardson said, “There’s a lot of different things that are being thought, a lot of different things that are being wanted to be portrayed, and if it’s not in that list of words that they gave us, it’s almost like it doesn’t count as much.” On this, he is half-right. The NBA is not just devaluing causes that didn’t make the cut, but it’s also devaluing the ones on the list by making them the only possible options.
The NBA doesn’t trust its own players to choose worthwhile causes. Giving players a pre-approved list, one that only reflects safe, easy choices consonant with the goals of one movement and one very heavily invested and interested league, shows that this is less about giving players a chance to speak out and more about capitalizing on the moment for some good publicity.
It also lets the NBA cover its own cowardice by not even risking a future “NBA Rejects Jersey Message Calling to Free the Uighurs” headline.
The NBA’s Hong Kong debacle already showed that NBA players and coaches can’t be trusted to stand for what’s right when there’s money on the line. Now, the NBA is saying it can’t even trust its own players to promote causes that matter to them during the revamped season. The value of NBA players voicing their opinion on social issues will be driven down further by this decision. The league’s leaders have no one to blame but themselves.
