What started as one football player’s silent protest sprouted a nationwide conversation on inequality.
The sports world’s national-anthem protests started with San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick and quickly spread throughout the NFL, eventually reaching the WNBA, professional soccer, the NCAA, high school athletics and the NBA.
During the NBA preseason, teams including Milwaukee, New York and Toronto showed what they described as signs of unity during the national anthem. Neither the Bulls organization nor its players have made a similar gesture as of yet, though some have expressed appreciation and support for those who do speak up.
“I respect our players in whatever decision they make,” coach Fred Hoiberg said. “I’m not sure what will happen with our group, but I do certainly respect their right to express themselves. … As far as my beliefs, I believe in standing respectfully and honoring the national anthem, but I certainly do respect our players and their right to express themselves.”
The Bulls are no strangers to community outreach; the organization works with more than 30 programs in Chicago. Most recently the team hosted a basketball tournament, allowing Youth Guidance’s Becoming A Man program and the Chicago Police Department to foster positive relationships between youths and officers.
To give the event some star quality, Bulls guard Rajon Rondo helped to referee the game, Jimmy Butler and other Bulls assisted with group sessions and NBA legend Bob Lanier helped stir conversation.
Lanier is no stranger to community outreach. In 1989, he helped launch the NBA’s Stay In School Program. As a current ambassador of the league, he works with youths in NBA cities across the country in helping them influence social change.
“This is one of the best times in the history of sports period to use your celebrity for the greater good,” Lanier told RedEye. “If you know our players, our league has been involved with societal change since way back when [Muhammad] Ali was going through all that with Vietnam and we had Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul Jabbar involved in that. And then you had Magic and big Yao [Ming] involved in HIV [awareness], so there’s been a pattern in history of our players. And now with social media and players standing out for social injustice, in our league we want to have dialogue. We want to give kids hope.”
Butler said he draws inspiration from fellow stars in the league, including one of his teammates.
“Melo [Carmelo Anthony], C.P. [Chris Paul], D-Wade [Dwyane Wade] and LeBron [James], what they’re doing in communities, speaking out for everything that they believe in, helping in any and every way that they can, lending their hand in their communities, that’s bigger than basketball. That’s a worldly thing off the court,” Butler told RedEye. “Which is huge because people now know you not for only what you do on the court but also for what you do off the court, for what you stand for, for what you believe in, and it’s giving everybody the courage to stand out and be who they are.”
The Toronto Raptors were one of the first teams to take a stance similar to Kaepernick’s, locking arms while the anthem played during their first preseason game in 2016. It’s perhaps no coincidence that Wayne Embry is a senior adviser for the organization.
During his 11-year NBA career, from 1958-69, Embry suited up for the Cincinnati Royals, Boston Celtics and Milwaukee Bucks. He played in the league during a time when he said there was an unspoken limit on the number of black players who could be on one team, and restaurants, hotels and arenas were not always welcoming to African-American players.
In 1972, he was hired as general manager of the Bucks, becoming the first African-American to hold that position for an NBA team.
“Post-civil rights movement in the ’70s, there was an effort to overcome a lot of the discrimination in hiring,” Embry told RedEye. “In 1972, when I was named GM, I recall media asked me what it was like being the first and what significance did I see in it. I said the way I see it being significant is that others find it significant, and what else would be significant is that I’m not the last. Of course there’s been progress since then in coaching and in the front office, and the NBA’s been at the forefront of that. And so I think in a broader scope in teams’ history, opportunities have been presented, and so to your question and where we are today, there’s a concern of regression.”
To be clear, Embry was referring to regression in America as a whole, not with respect to the NBA. In such a time of uncertainty, the Raptors and other teams are focused on presenting a front in which they support one another and wish to shed light on inequality and racial tension.
Some of the league’s biggest stars made a huge statement at the 2016 ESPY Awards, when Anthony, James, Paul and Wade took the stage to say “enough is enough.” Their actions came in the wake of several slayings of unarmed African-American men by police.
The NBA also took a stand against LGBT inequality this summer when it moved the 2017 All-Star game from Charlotte to New Orleans because of North Carolina’s HB2 law. The legislation limits anti-discrimination protections for gay, lesbian and transgender people and states that transgender people may only use public restrooms that correspond with the gender on their birth certificate, not the gender they identify with.
“I think it shows the NBA and where they are,” Bucks coach Jason Kidd said. “They’re ahead of the situation, and when you can stay ahead of the situation, it tends to work out. We have a group of young men who can express themselves, and I think it’s good that these young men can do that. There’s no better platform to bring awareness.”
The mentality of the NBA’s leadership is important to the players.
“I think it’s good,” Indiana Pacers All-Star forward Paul George said before the season. “For one, our league is predominantly African-American. So for [league management] to have our backs, I think … with everything that’s going on around the world, it’s great that they’re allowing us to have our freedom and allowing us to stand up for something.”
Of course, there is still interest in how athletes act during the national anthem. Chicago will see Kaepernick firsthand when his 49ers visit Soldier Field to play the Bears on Dec. 4. But the even bigger question is, what happens back in the real world?
“Isn’t that ironic, though?” Bucks forward and Chicago native Jabari Parker told RedEye. “People don’t speak about the issue, but they’ll talk about the stance, the negativity that brings besides the crime itself. I think we need to do something.”
There is no question that players such as Wade, Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah, just three in a long line of athletes who are active in improving their communities, believe taking action is important. Going hand in hand with that is keeping the conversation going, Embry said.
“I think these guys are highly visible,” Embry said. “And I’m reminded of the fact that during my years as a player and a front-office executive [that] sports has always been a model for coming together from diverse backgrounds. This is first what we tell our players. You play for each other. We got a room of players from diverse backgrounds together to work toward a common goal. And the way you do that is to unite in solidarity. United we stand, divided we fall.”
Annie Costabile is a RedEye contributor. @anniecostabile
