“Nike and LeBron James have put out their ‘Equality’ commercial, all these athletes have gone ‘social justice warrior’, Draymond Green is calling James Dolan a ‘Slave Master’, Steve Kerr and Gregg Popovich almost everyday release a statement on their thoughts about President Trump -- Politics has invaded sports and no one knows what to do."
In an extremely volatile and uncharted era on the debate of free speech in this country, Jason Whitlock thinks sports culture has wholeheartedly given way to social platforms that have absolutely nothing to do with athletics themselves – putting its audience through uncomfortable levels of polarization with a following that used to rely on them as their sanctuary.
“We’re heading towards an NBA All-Star weekend very shortly where it could get very political," Whitlock said. "They may have to rename this NBA All-Star weekend, ‘The NBA All-Star Weekend brought to you by Colin Kaepernick.”
With Donald Trump’s inconceivable war with the media saturating TV and radio at every turn Whitlock thinks it’s given rise to uninformed athletes using their celebrity to dump more fuel on any fire they can find.
“Athletes have come in and have tried to imitate Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and they’ve screwed it up, the imitation is horrible,” he said. “Then once you add Donald Trump into the mix, all hell has broken lose and you can’t escape politics and sports anywhere you go.”