The NBA is serious about speaking out regarding issues of social justice and other things of that nature in the USA. The biggest display of this was during the 2020 Bubble when players wore ‘Black Lives Matter’ among other messages on their jerseys.
The legendary Phil Jackson seemingly had a problem with that. The man that won 11 titles with the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers later revealed that this was when he stopped watching the league. And some called him a racist because of it. Asked about it recently, though, Gilbert Arenas gave an interesting response.
“So, something like that, what is the context from Phil?” Arenas said to DJ Vlad when he explained Jackson’s position on the issue. “What is the real? We can all say, ‘That’s f**king racist sh*t’ but what is the real context? Are you mad that politics is coming into the sport? Right? That’s what I’m saying, it all matters. It all really matters.
“It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, f**k that, Phil.’ Is it Black people or Black Lives Matter? Or just as a hooper are you mad that the politics is in the game… Is it that stance? That’s why sometimes I ignore certain sh*t because if I don’t have the full context. So for you to be racist to me, you have to… It has to be real racism.”
(starts at 1:41 minutes)
Gilbert Arenas seems to be willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to Phil Jackson in this situation, something that has been a controversial topic in the past. Scottie Pippen once accused his former coach of being racist, although many other personalities came to his defense at the time. In any case, it seems Arenas has a point about this particular statement from Jackson.
What Were Phil Jackson’s Exact Words?
In these cases, it is important to know the full context as Gilbert Arenas says. And to that end, here’s what Phil Jackson had to say when he spoke about the Bubble.
“All the teams that could qualify went down there and stayed down there, no audience, and they have things on their back like ‘Justice’ and a funny thing happened like ‘Justice went to the basket and Equal Opportunity knocked him down,'” Phil Jackson said.
“Some of my grandkids thought it was pretty funny to play up those names, I couldn’t watch that. The Lakers won that year… They even had slogans on the floor and the baseline. It was trying to cater to an audience or 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… Politics stays out of the game, it doesn’t need to be there.”
It seems that Arenas hit the nail on the head when he asked where the situation was about politics or Black Lives Matter in particular. It seems to be a strange reason for one of the game’s greatest coaches to stop following the sport, but it is hard to deny that Jackson’s issues were more with the message being there than the contents of it.
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