The NBA and China: When $$$ is Threatened, Activism Falls Silent

The NBA season is approaching, and for those who have read my other sports blog before, you would know that I am a big fan of NBA basketball.   Because of this, I am acutely aware of the image the NBA has tried to foster over the last several years: That it is the most progressive, “woke” league in America.  Players and coaches are encouraged to speak out on political and social issues (though, predictably, such opinions tend to reflect only the Left side of the aisle).  Adam Silver, the NBA’s commissioner, controversially pulled the All-Star game out of Charlotte due to North Carolina’s bathroom bill that mandated that biological men and women have to go to the bathroom designated for their sex.  Golden State Warrior coach Steve Kerr went on Bill Simmons’ podcast later and defended the decision, saying that it wasn’t even about politics but instead was a “human” issue… even though it was in fact a very political issue with a lot of people on both sides, so Kerr just indirectly called a large part of the nation (maybe even the majority) inhumane.

The media largely praised this, treating the likes of San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich as a wise sage for his frequent criticisms of Donald Trump, though such opinions never offered anything that wasn’t a superficial sound byte.  The media also fiercely came to the defense of Lebron and Kevin Durant when Laura Ingraham insensitively told them to “shut up and dribble” after they were shown to criticize Trump in one of Lebron’s TV shows.  Ingraham was rightly derided for the harshness of that comment, and Lebron and others continued to talk more about how they are “more than an athlete.”

I agree that they are more than athletes, coaches, and GMs.  It is interesting, though, that many are choosing now to “shut up and dribble” when millions of their own dollars are at stake in the Chinese market.

Scandalous Grace: Why Forgiveness of a Killer is Inconvenient for the Narratives of the Resentful

Like many Americans, I paid attention to the trial of Amber Guyger, though not closely.  I was actually worried that the prosecution overcharged her because it seemed like a slam dunk case for manslaughter but not so much for murder, but there were evidently enough holes in her defense to gain the conviction.  To review what happened, Guyger was a police officer coming off duty after a 13 hour shift, and she accidentally went to the wrong floor and walked into the wrong apartment.  Instead of being her unit, it was the home of Botham Jean, who was watching TV and eating ice cream.  Guyger shot him, assuming he was an intruder.  It was a horrible incident, and while it is believable that Guyger went to the wrong apartment by accident (this has happened to a lot of people), there was no rational reason for her to start shooting because Jean offered no threat to her (of all the people I’ve talked to who have admitted they walked in or almost walked in to the wrong room or apartment before, exactly zero of them shot anyone).  We can’t have people just entering into other people’s homes and shooting them, even if the entrance was unintentional.  There had to be consequences, and those consequences are ten years in prison for her.

Unsurprisingly, however, this became a highly politicized case, as people have tried to marshal this for their particular narratives.  For example, many people are using this as another example of police brutality because a white police officer shot an unarmed black man.  The problem is that this was not a police encounter, so that is a category error.  She wasn’t looking for someone to arrest; the main relevance of her being a cop was that it guaranteed that she was armed, but many other people walk around strapped as well.  Even her guilty verdict has failed to satisfy some people that justice was served because they feel like it was too short a sentence, at least compared to others.  One particular meme going around is that a black man was sentenced to 45 years in prison for killing a police dog while this white woman was given only ten for killing a black man… only that the man in question was not sentenced merely for killing a police dog but for a myriad of other offenses such as stabbing an officer, attacking other officers, and trying to take an officer’s gun.  I have my own issues with the use of police dogs and I’m not saying that the sentence of 45 years is a good one, but trying to compare these two cases is comparing apples with oranges.