Tag: Black Lives Matter

Phil Jackson has the absolute dumbest reason for not watching the NBA since the Bubble

Phil Jackson is being willfully obtuse? Shocker.

We’ve seen some pretty fun things happen in the NBA over the last few years.

LeBron James became the league’s all-time leading scorer, the Warriors and Steph Curry won a 4th NBA title, Giannis Antetkounmpo gave us one of the best playoff performances ever and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I haven’t even talked about the incredible rookies we’ve seen, the rise of Luka Doncic or the battles between Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid.

The NBA has been great. We’re in a true golden era of basketball with tons of talent in the league. I’d honestly hate to be missing out on any of this if I’m a fan of the sport at all.

Apparently, though, none of that moves Phil Jackson. The Hall of Fame head coach said he hasn’t watched a lick of NBA basketball since the league hit the Bubble back in 2020.

Why? Because, apparently, the social justice slogans on the court left a bad taste in his mouth. He said as much on Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast.

“The game had slogans on the floor and the baseline. It was trying…to bring a certain audience to the game, and they didn’t know it was turning other people off. People want to see sports as non-political.” 

You might be curious as to what the “slogans” Jackson is talking about were. It was just Black Lives Matter — the slogans the NBA decided to put on the court following the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

And that’s what is apparently stopping Jackson from watching NBA basketball these days. Black Lives Matter slogans that were on the court for a few months 3 years ago. Cool, I guess? Your loss, champ.

The further we get away from Jackson’s coaching career, the more we begin to learn about him as an actual person. One of his own former players has called him racist. And, well, let’s just say his point here isn’t helping him beat those allegations.

I’m not sure if Jackson is racist, but I am sure that this is dumb. There are lots of valid critiques one could make about the NBA over the last few years, but turning away from the league because it didn’t acquiesce to calls for escapism is just silly.

We were living in one of the most tender moments in American history. There was a slight uprising occurring in the midst of a global pandemic. An expectation of silence at that moment from a league where around 70% of the labor force is Black is just completely ridiculous and obtuse. Period.

But hey, man. Do your thing, Phil. We’ll just keep enjoying good basketball over here.

¡Escándalo racial! Policía italiana detiene a jugador de Milan a punta de pistola

Medios italianos aseguran que la policía confundió a Bakayoko con un sospechoso que había huido de un tiroteo horas antes

Nuevamente la policía da de qué hablar por una detención que suena más a motivos raciales que en verdad hacer justicia y ahora le tocó a Tiémoué Bakayoko, centrocampista del Milan quien vivió una experiencia aterradora.

Un video que se hizo viral en redes sociales muestra la detención en el centro de Milan del jugador de origen marfileño que circulaba junto a unos acompañantes en un vehículo todoterreno el pasado 3 de julio.

Mientras un agente revisa minuciosamente al jugador rossonero, otros dos apuntan con sus armas al interior del vehículo y parece que son informados que se trata de un jugador del Milan pues inmediatamente suspenden el cacheo y en el gesto del policía es evidente la sorpresa.

Las reacciones en redes sociales no se hicieron esperar pues muchos identificaron la detención por un claro perfil racial sin embargo la policía italiana aseguró que se trataba de un retén normal y que al jugador se le trató con respeto como a cualquier otro ciudadano.

“Las imágenes de la detención de Bakayoko sugieren un perfil étnico. Una práctica discriminatoria que en una persona no famosa podría haber tenido graves consecuencias”, escribió la ONG Amnistía Internacional.

Medios italianos aseguran que la policía confundió a Bakayoko con un sospechoso que había huido de un tiroteo horas antes pues tanto el vehículo como la vestimenta coincidían. ¿Les creemos?

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Jack Del Rio’s brain is full of poison, and he’d like you to have some

Jack Del Rio calling the insurrection a ‘dust-up’ makes a mockery of the American ideals he pretends to honor.

There’s not much that needs to be said about Jack Del Rio today.

If you somehow missed it, the Washington Commanders defensive coordinator put on his bravest, most patriotic face and stood up for the time-honored American value of publicly discussing an issue you’ve applied no rigorous thought to, but dang, man, you’ve felt some things deep in your gut — like a cold Budweiser on a hot day — and that’s good enough!

In this instance, Del Rio shared his perspective on the would-be insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021. He called this event, which attempted to overthrow the United States government and resulted in death and trauma, a “dust-up.”

Most people saw this as the racist dog whistle it was and excoriated Del Rio on Twitter. If you’re here simply because you want to laugh at this pathetic failure of logic, scroll down.

If you’ve come for a different reason (one other than “let’s find this author’s email and own a lib!”) then we can break this down quickly.

Del Rio is comparing the insurrection to years of protests held across the country in response to the deaths of Black men at the hands of police. It is true that in some of those instances buildings were burned — among them a CVS in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray. I walked by it the next day, thinking of the pain caused to a giant corporation and its insurance company.

Actually, no, I walked by and talked to people nearby, and they told me stories of years upon years of unfair treatment by police. Treatment that robbed them of their freedom and anything approaching the right to pursue happiness. Their accounts have since been corroborated by investigations into that police corruption, which subsequently became books and, most recently, a series on HBO.

The failed insurrection, meanwhile, was a political plot meant to prevent the installation of a new president. It was fomented by the defeated president and his supporters based on a series of lies meant to undermine the election process that has been the foundation of this country since its founding. It did, in fact, cause property damage, in case that sort of thing really matters to you.

It also left people dead. Four of the rioters died on the day of the attack. One police officer was attacked and died of a stroke. Four others died by suicide in the wake of the violence.

Some dust-up.

Del Rio trying to pin up his awful opinions with some appeal to civility is disgusting  — and not only because the civility he’s talking about has largely been denied to the Black people he’s pointing his fingers at. What hurts the most about it is that men like Del Rio keep getting jobs in the Good Old Boy world of football using precisely this kind of logic, while Black coaches have to work five times as hard just to get a sliver of a chance.

He’s just being reasonable. He’s just encouraging dialogue. This is what leaders do! He’s a fine, upstanding man, unafraid to say what he means and mean what he says!

Except that Del Rio defending the Jan. 6 insurrectionists is the equivalent of him going over to the NFL offices and fighting everyone he sees because he no longer wants to believe he’s 93-94 with a single measly playoff win in 12 seasons as a head coach.

It means he doesn’t and won’t see anything clearly anytime soon. He’s gone. And while this should cost him his job, it’s not really going to matter — most of his ilk know to stay quiet. Why lash out when you have so much of the power?

Anyway, I promised you some good tweets. Here they are.

After sporting Black Lives Matter sticker on his bag last year, Kirk Triplett takes more action on social justice issues

“Golf does a great job of contributing to the community. Maybe we haven’t always done a great job in the social justice area. I don’t see any reason we can’t.”

Last August, Kirk Triplett put a Black Lives Matter sticker on his bag for the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship.

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Triplett was prompted to show support for the cause of racial injustice because of his son Kobe, who is African- American.

“I was thinking about my son, who is 18 years old and could be driving a car in the wrong situation,” Triplett said Friday after the second round of the $3 million PGA Tour Champions major. “I wanted to make sure that’s not his responsibility to deescalate the situation.”

But Triplett knew displaying the sticker was not really taking action. An interview at Firestone Country Club and some that followed helped him discover a way to accelerate change.

One of his comments — “I actually Googled what can a white guy do?” he said — caught the attention of Hall of Fame safety Donnie Shell, who emailed Triplett and told him he had an answer to his question. The former Pittsburgh Steeler is a board member of Dedication To Community (D2C), a national non-profit that educates and empowers communities on diversity, belonging, and equity. Triplett’s partnership with the organization was announced in February.

“Putting a Black Lives Matter sticker on your bag is just kinda, ‘That’s a problem.’ But you hope people migrate from that to solutions and that’s the reason for Dedication To Community on my bag,” Triplett said. “Their main focus is law enforcement training. It’s guys that came through the NFL, worked heavily with them on their conduct policy, and the founder is [M.] Quentin Williams, he was an FBI agent and a prosecutor.

“These guys have one solution. Training law enforcement, training the communities, helping people understand each other better. Really what they work on is communication and not letting these situations escalate.”

Kirk Triplett
Kirk Triplett poses with his golf bag with a Black Lives Matter sticker on it at the 2020 Bridgestone Senior Players Tournament pro-am on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2020, Akron, Ohio, at Firestone Country Club. (Photo: Phil Masturzo/ Beacon Journal)

Triplett, who lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, and his wife Cathi have four children — twins Conor and Sam, 25, daughter Alexis, 21, and Kobe, the latter two adopted. Alexis is Latino; Kobe’s biological father is Black, his mother Japanese.

Before Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree murder in the May 25, 2020, killing of Floyd, Triplett said he had several conversations with Kobe. Chauvin received a sentence of 22.5 years on Friday.

“We’ve discussed that fairly regularly,” Triplett said of the Chauvin case. “This is not a great deal of interest to him. It became a great deal of interest to me when I talked to him and said, ‘If you get stopped by the police, you need to do this, this and this.’ I’ve got three other kids and that conversation looked completely different with them than it did with him. I thought, ‘Here’s where the patent unfairness comes in.’

“When people say systemic racism or system inequality … it’s something that’s really hard for me to visualize and understand because I’ve never faced it. When I’m having that conversation with him, I just get the little, tiniest inkling of what this might be like. I think that’s the first step, everybody understanding what sometimes these people face.”

Triplett said Kobe got the message. The Tripletts also participated in relationship training through D2C.

D2C has a partnership with the Miami Heat, training Miami patrol officers the Heat sponsor, and is involved with other professional sports.

“They have an agreement with Joe Gibbs Racing and they train the organization there. They do some stuff with the NHL,” Triplett said. “The NHL is like golf, there’s not a lot of racial issues in those sports because they’re so white, for lack of a better term, there’s not a lot of diversity.

“Most sports today that lack diversity want to create opportunity. It’s not an overnight process, but some of it starts with funding and finding ways for young people to look at a sport and instead of saying, ‘Oh, that’s the white man’s game,’ they think, ‘Here’s this APGA,’ [a non-profit tour to prepare African-American and minority golfers] or ‘I can go to school at a HBCU.’ There’s a pathway to participate in the sport.”

Triplett sees progress in that regard.

“Phil Mickelson made a large donation to HBCU golf teams,” he said. “The PGA Tour is trying to help minority access to golf through the APGA. Billy Horschel has also sponsored a tournament for the APGA. Access to health care, access to economic opportunity, all of these things.

“Golf does a great job of contributing to the community. Maybe we haven’t always done a great job in the social justice area. I don’t see any reason we can’t.”

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Josh Martin on the NFL being reactive instead of proactive

Sports Pulse: Josh Martin on the role the NFL could play in speaking to the injustices that the black community face

Sports Pulse: Josh Martin on the role the NFL could play in speaking to the injustices that the black community face

Lonzo Ball shares lessons learned during Black Lives Matter movement

As the league continues to be at the forefront of social justice matters, Lonzo Ball spoke about what he’s learned during the movement.

A little under a year removed from the Black Lives Matter movement during the spring and summer of 2020, the NBA continues to be a league near the forefront when it comes to addressing social justice matters. Many of the league’s top players have been outspoken about social justice, including Lonzo Ball.

On Friday following the Pelicans game against the Suns, Ball talked about what he’s learned over the last year of the country and the need for more change.

“You have to keep moving forward, keep pushing forward to do better as a country, as a whole and just support equality, really,” he said. “Last year, I think people finally started broadcasting it a lot more, getting it out to the public and I think that just has to continue to happen and people have to continue to do better.”

Ball took part in a peaceful rally in his hometown Chino Hills last spring and spoke about some of the social justice matters and the importance of things like wearing social justice phrases on their jerseys while in the bubble.

He was also included in the Social Justice Leadership Coalition created by Saints and Pelicans owner Gayle Benson. That group, though, has not been even mentioned since its creation. Nonetheless, Ball’s involvement in the movement has been influential as he and others continue to make a notable impact.

Equality: Ohio State football to have something new on the back of its helmets this year

The Ohio State football team has collectively decided to put these words on the back of their iconic silver helmets for 2020.

Several Big Ten teams will be enhancing their uniforms with nods towards social justice and equality this fall. Ohio State is no different. The Big Ten released a statement on Friday, announcing the launch of the “United as One” campaign across its member schools to give the student-athletes a voice and continue to shed light on social justice and an end to racism.

“All things are possible in the Big Ten when we unite as one,” said Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren in the statement. “I am humbled and deeply appreciative of how our 14 member institutions have communicated, collaborated and committed to develop a conference-wide campaign focused on creating equality and equity in our society.”

And when it comes to Ohio State, the players have decided to add the word “Equality” to the back bubble of the football helmet that usually has the word “Buckeyes” spelled out.

“With everything that’s been going on with social justice and stuff, what we decided to do as a team — we’re going to have “Equality” stated on everybody’s helmet during the game on this little bubble right here,” said team captain Jonathon Cooper. “We decided equality because I think it represents all of us, just together, our family and stuff.

“Equality is a good word to put to sum up all of the ideas and all the things we’re thinking in the Buckeye culture and in the locker room,” said defensive end Zach Harrison. “Everybody’s equal, regardless of race or where you came from, background, this that or the other. It’ll be a great thing for the country to follow our footsteps and how we treat each other in the locker room at Ohio state.

Get a look at how this will all look by watching the video the Ohio State Football Twitter account shared on Friday.

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WATCH: Kirk Herbstreit gets emotional talking about social injustice on College GameDay

ESPN College GameDay analyst and former Ohio State QB Kirk Herbstreit got emotional talking about social injustice in a moving monologue.

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We got to see a different side of Kirk Herbstreit this weekend that we don’t often see. The former Ohio State quarterback and long-time analyst on ESPN’s College GameDay program started to talk about what college players can do to help lead to change when it comes to social injustice when things got emotional.

“How do you listen to these stories and not feel pain,” said Herbstreit, as he started to choke up. “And not.. not want to help..”

Herbstreit continued to speak on the different injustices felt by the African-American community while visibly emotional in what was a very moving, raw commentary on social justice that we don’t often see on a channel like ESPN.

I would recommend that everyone watch this powerful video today:

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Florida Gators guard Scottie Lewis speaks out on social justice

Lewis said this movement isn’t just about social justice for Black people, it represents an intersection of all oppressed groups.

Since protests, marches and discussions about racial justice in this country reached a fever pitch this summer, Florida basketball guard Scottie Lewis has been one of the most vocal Gators athletes.

When UF athletes across all sports protested in downtown Gainesville last weekend, Lewis addressed the crowd with an emotional and powerful speech.

Speaking to the media Tuesday, Lewis elaborated on his positions and the goals of his activism. He said he believes he has a unique opportunity to use his platform to create positive change.

“Just as a voice of not only athletes but as people, I figured if I’m going to have a voice or have a platform, what better way to do it than to give myself up and sacrifice a lot of things in order to make sure that myself and the people like me and the people that look like me, are setting a strong foundation for the ones coming after us,” Lewis said.

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Lewis said this movement isn’t just about social justice for Black people, though that is certainly a priority in the wake of high-profile police shootings around the country. Instead, he says the movement represents an intersection of all oppressed groups.

“No matter where you come from, no matter who you are, no matter what you believe in, we’re more alike than what people may suggest that we are,” Lewis said. “You go to the protests and look out to the crowd, you see a very diverse group of people, all fighting for one thing, and I guess in retrospect, it’s bigger than African-Americans, it’s among the LGBTQ communities and women, black people, white people, people of color all over the world who have felt less than human, simply because of what other people say about them.”

Much like the protestors at-large, the reception for athletes speaking their minds on these issues has been mixed. When NBA star Lebron James spoke out about, among other things, racial issues in the United States as well as criticism of Pres. Donald Trump, Fox News host Laura Ingraham said, “Keep the political comments to yourselves. … Shut up and dribble.”

Lewis said that the phrase “shut up and dribble,” which has since been co-opted by sports fans looking to silence athletes on social issues, was perhaps the “most ignorant thing” he had ever heard.

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