In responding to soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovic saying that athletes like LeBron James should avoid politics, James said he “does his homework.” If that is true, then he is a failing student.
“I would never shut up about things that’s wrong,” James said. “I speak from a very educated mind. So, I’m kind of the wrong guy to actually go at because I do my homework.”
LeBron responded after Zlatan Ibrahimovic criticized him for his activism.
“I’m kind of the wrong guy to actually go at because I do my homework.” pic.twitter.com/VyKgBrYuiz
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) February 27, 2021
Except, just last month, James apparently failed his latest reading assignment. When the Kenosha District Attorney’s Office decided not to charge the officers involved in the shooting of Jacob Blake, James called it a “blow to the heart and the gut.”
Here is what District Attorney Michael Graveley said about the decision not to charge: “Jacob Blake, while actively resisting, arms himself with a knife. … It is absolutely incontrovertible that Jacob Blake was armed with a knife during this encounter. … Most incontrovertible, because Jacob Blake, in all of the times he spoke to DCI, admits he possessed a knife.”
The idea that James always uses his voice to speak out against “things that’s wrong” is also false. When then Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey voiced his support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, James said he was “misinformed or not really educated on the situation.” Instead of backing the pro-democracy protesters, James parroted the Chinese Communist Party’s line and supported their authoritarian crackdown.
Ah, but hang on. Maybe James only said that because his Los Angeles Lakers were in China at the time. Maybe he was just bashing Morey for putting them in a rocky situation.
Except, he decided just two weeks after the incident that he was done talking about China. “We’re not politicians,” he said. “It’s a huge political thing. But we are leaders, and we can step up at times. I’m not saying at this particular time, but if you don’t feel like you should speak on things, you shouldn’t have to.” That was back in October 2019.
You see, James is not a politician (which was Ibrahimovic’s point), and he just doesn’t feel like condemning authoritarian crackdowns on protesters or continuing genocide, especially when those things are being perpetrated by the country that his merchandise sales, movie sales, and the NBA’s revenue depends on.
Sports media have honored James’s request and stopped asking him about China because they prefer when he pushes the same easy, unchallenging, boilerplate social justice message as the rest of popular culture. But he remains nothing more than a hack who only cares about his own image and his own enrichment. He is smart enough to know that he is a fraud and that no one will call him on it to his face.
