The Patriot Post® · NBA Players Cancel Themselves ... But on Second Thought
For those who aren’t aware, the National Basketball Association recently restarted its season. After shutting down for months due to the coronavirus pandemic, the league is currently in the midst of its playoffs for the season championship. Or, rather, the NBA was in the midst of its playoffs until yesterday when, moments before game time, the Milwaukee Bucks decided not to play the game against their playoff opponents, the Orlando Magic. Bucks players said their reason for refusing to play was to protest the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Then, like dominos, players from the four other teams scheduled to play on Wednesday all declared that they too would not be playing, with the Lakers and Clippers going so far as to issue statements that players had voted to boycott the remainder of the NBA season. That the Lakers did so was significant from a sports standpoint given that they were highly favored to win the championship.
Lakers superstar LeBron James, widely considered one of the best to ever play the sport, issued a statement expressing his woke anger. “F—K THIS MAN!!! WE DEMAND CHANGE. SICK OF IT.” The statement from James is entirely predictable, as he is one who has embraced the Black Lives Matter grievance agenda hook, line, and sinker.
The great irony here is that the NBA, James included, blasts America while refusing to condemn the genuine human rights abuses and injustice the Chinese communist government has meted out on minority groups within its own nation. This is, of course, due to the fact that China is a major financial backer of the NBA.
Meanwhile, the NBA has bent over backwards in catering to the players’ woke demands. As sports analyst Clay Travis noted, “The NBA never said no to the players. They okayed everything — political messages on jerseys, kneeling for the national anthem, political messages on the court itself — and it still wasn’t enough. And now their business doesn’t exist. Lesson: you can’t ever be woke enough.”
So, out of anger spurred on by believing a false narrative, these woke NBA players have decided to boycott the very sport that has afforded them the opportunity to become multimillionaire celebrities. Ironically, they have canceled themselves. But honestly, as the sport was increasingly saturated with leftist “social justice” politics, it had become nearly unbearable to watch anyway.
Update: Except today the players have decided that, never mind, they’ve actually made enough progress on “systemic racism” to start playing again.