LeBron James has spent his NBA career being unafraid to speak out about issues that go well beyond basketball.
That has included statements both out loud and worn on his body — wearing hoodies in tribute to Trayvon Martin, joining with other NBA stars to don “I Can’t Breathe” shirts during warmups in 2014, making a powerful statement with Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul and Dwyane Wade during the 2016 ESPYs, and tweeting about the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2017.
Yet here we are, with James being heavily criticized for his first comments about the NBA-China situation, in which he said Rockets general manager Daryl Morey “wasn’t educated on the situation at hand” and that it’s about being “careful with what we tweet and what we say and what we do, even though, yes, we do have freedom of speech.”
Despite James tweeting later that he didn’t think “there was any consideration for the consequences and ramifications of the tweet,” critics have dug up a tweet from the Los Angeles Lakers superstar from nearly two years ago and quoted it back at him:
The replies are exactly what you’d expect. A sampling:
None of what he said on Monday discounts what James has done and said in the past while championing social justice. But after he’s spent so many years proving why he won’t “shut up and dribble,” as FOX News’s Laura Ingraham once callously said on the air, these comments — coupled with that tweet above — feel hypocritical. James essentially tells Morey, a general manager known for his intelligence, to shut up and not tweet, even though Morey’s original tweet was clearly sent as the NBA was set to play games in Asia as a way of shining light on the story. Morey knew what he was doing, and James — who recently had the governor of California sign much-needed but still controversial legislation around college sports on his television show in the middle of college football season — should understand that.
We can go into a tangent about how we’re depending on athletes to be complete experts in issues both domestic and foreign and deliver the right message about them. And that shouldn’t always be the case.
But when there’s a star of this caliber who has spent a career pushing for his fellow athletes to not stay silent, it’s a disappointment.
