The Milwaukee Bucks backed out of their playoff game on Wednesday in protest of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The NBA then postponed the rest of the day’s playoff schedule, and in the end, nothing was sacrificed, and nothing was accomplished.
Bucks players didn’t make a sacrifice: They weren’t forced to forfeit, and Game 5 will still happen at a later date. They placed a call to the Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul (a Democrat), which they could have done anytime they weren’t supposed to be playing, even though he’s already opened an investigation into a shooting that happened three days ago.
The truth is, players don’t really care about this pandemic-interrupted season with fan-less playoffs. The purpose of their returning for the season was to put social justice first and actual basketball second. The NBA slapped “Black Lives Matter” on the court and gave the players a list of preapproved slogans to put on their jerseys to show they care. That accomplished nothing, but it made everyone in the NBA feel good.
LeBron James has continued to push his faux sincerity on this issue. James doesn’t really care about human rights because he needs cheap Chinese labor to make his Nike shoes and he has apparel to sell in China. Uighur Muslims in concentration camps, where they are being tortured, sterilized, and children being killed? James will have to get back to you on that because he needs Space Jam 2 to get into the Chinese film market later.
LeBron views this as entirely political, which is why he said Monday night that “change starts in November.” Never mind that Black Lives Matter started when Barack Obama was president, when officer-involved shootings were still happening, and that, unfortunately, they’ll still happen under Joe Biden if he’s elected president and still happen under whoever is president after that. Never mind that the police reform bill brought forward by Republican Sen. Tim Scott was torpedoed by uncompromising Democrats who would rather use police reform as a campaign promise instead of actually making progress. LeBron knows the image he’s marketing and that Nike has to play to both the Chinese and social justice markets.
This entire exercise was pointless, even if the sports world wants to pretend it will really make a difference. In the end, the only thing that was accomplished was that the league’s already-cratering TV ratings will drop even further. NBA ratings plateaued in 2015-2016, and they’ve been dropping for the last two years.
This playoff “boycott” isn’t magically going to change the facts that will be brought up by the official investigation into the shooting of Blake, it’s not going to bring about police reform, it’s not going to help beat President Trump at the ballot box, and it’s not going to convince anyone to change his or her viewpoint. Much like the national anthem protests, this is all performative, done to make the athletes feel like they’ve done something and get them some glowing media headlines.
