Sports Illustrated has named its 2020 Sportsperson of the Year: the “activist athlete.” As you might expect, four of the five athletes it chose to personify that image have done nothing to enact change outside of spouting Black Lives Matter talking points and promoting “social justice.”
The five athletes chosen by the once prestigious sports magazine were headlined by reigning NFL MVP Patrick Mahomes and NBA star LeBron James. The other three selected were WNBA player Breanna Stewart, tennis star Naomi Osaka, and Mahomes’s teammate in Kansas City, Laurent Duvernay-Tardif. Sports Illustrated also gave LeBron the Muhammad Ali Legacy Award.
It’s a great honor for LeBron, a proud purveyor of Chinese propaganda. His big claim to fame for this year’s award is fighting voter suppression, the faceless phantom that preoccupies Democratic politicians. Mahomes, Osaka, and Stewart all get boilerplate accomplishments, promoting Black Lives Matter, social justice, racism, and women’s equality.
Duvernay-Tardif is the only one who is actually worth honoring. The Chiefs offensive lineman chose to sit out the season, deciding to work as an orderly to help hospitals handle the influx of coronavirus patients. He is the first active NFL player to have graduated from medical school.
Accomplishing nothing with performative activism has been the hallmark of athletes in 2020 after the death of George Floyd. Media outlets have tripped over themselves to shower the WNBA in praise over the opposition of players to Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, as if an unwatched, liberal sports league can influence elections in the state of Georgia. Mahomes’s most notable moment in the activist spotlight came when he was booed by his own fans for a fraudulent “act of unity.”
No one personifies this kind of activism quite like James. LeBron poses as the face of social justice in sports, all while dismissing the Chinese atrocities that help pay his NBA salary and his Hollywood film and Nike endorsement deals. While more worthy honorees like soccer player Mesut Ozil lost his job, thanks (in part) to speaking out against China’s concentration camps, LeBron openly defended China’s crackdown on protesters in Hong Kong.
The “activist athlete” doesn’t change minds. Nor, with the exception of Duvernay-Tardif, did any of Sports Illustrated’s selections really change anything. Millionaires talking about oppression is nothing new: Everyone from Democratic politicians to Hollywood celebrities fulfills that criterion.
For a magazine that has fallen on hard times, it’s only appropriate that Sports Illustrated has gone from celebrating athletes who helped rebuild their cities after hurricanes to the celebrity slacktivism of proud hypocrites like James.
