If a player kneels, the owner said :Get that son of a bitch off of the field! You’re FIRED! Donald Trump
Shut up and dribble Laura Ingraham
This was just announced by Chris Hayes on All In, and I can’t wait for the impending Trumper tantrum. After bringing the NBA playoff schedule to its knees two days ago when the Milwaukee Bucks announced they would sit out and forfeit their playoff game against the Orlando Magic, and started a chain reaction that led to the cancellation of the NBA playoff schedule. The NBA players union announced today that they have ended their boycott. In just those few days, the boycott spread to the WNBA, MLB, MLS, and even the NHL. But it had nothing to do with the NBA players folding, and looking at it now, Trump likely wishes the dumb jocks would just keep sitting out.
The agreement for the players to return was negotiated with the NBA, and one of the things that the NBA gave up to ensure a return to normal was that the owners of every NBA team will throw open the doors of their arenas as giant polling places on election day!
This is activism with a vengeance, and I am so proud of the players. They tried fancy slogans on their t-shirts with the names of murdered African Americans, and things like I can’t breathe!, and taking a knee in solidarity, tweeting and making statements before and after games, and nothing was working. So the players finally dug in their heels and said, Look, you want us to use our bodies for your entertainment, then you are damn well going to listen to us.
This move was strategically and tactically brilliant. The NBA was the first professional sports league to shut down, and they invested millions in figuring out a safe way to resume play and salvage the season. The league and its owners spent millions of dollars in figuring out a way to safely sequester the players and staff in a bubble in Orlando, and to test them frequently and economically. If the players had decided to vote with their feet, and go home, the league and owners would have been out of pocket, with no chance to recoup any of that money. They literally had no choice except to accept the terms.
This agreement is absolutely brutal for Trump. It was only a week ago or so that I wrote about the effort led by Lakers superstar LeBron James that had already netted 5 teams that had agreed to open up their empty stadiums as polling places for the election. Logistically, most NBA arenas are located in or near the city center, much closer to the urban, lower income, inner city areas than to the suburbs where the more affluent regular and season ticket holders live. And now the owners are going to make mega polling places out of their empty stadiums.
Look at it this way. The key to this election is going to be turnout. Trump won the electoral college by squeaking out an extra 77,000 votes in the states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and thanks to a suppressed African American vote. Trump’s racist law and order rhetoric is specifically designed to drive up white panic backlash, and as a result, drive up black turnout, which they need to suppress. And now, thanks to LeBron and the guys, the arenas in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee will be open as super polling places. Talk about counter productive.
And it’s even worse than that, because there are a shit load of vulnerable GOP Senators up for reelection in 2020. In addition to arenas being open in the very states that if flipped, will give Biden 270 votes, the arenas in Charlotte NC, Atlanta GA, Denver CO, Dallas TX, Houston TX, San Antonio TX, and Phoenix AZ will all be open, ready to welcome voters to exercise their choice to vote. And for the critical-as-a-heart-attack swing state of Florida, arenas in Miami and Orlando will be open for polling.
You have to hand it to the NBA players. Their action in sitting out playoff games will not get them the immediate remedy everybody is after, and they know that. But, by opening these arenas up as polling places in November, they sure as shit increased the chances that a whole bunch of GOP shitpokes will be putting their belongings into cardboard boxes after November 3rd, including The Cheeto Prophet. And handing the keys to a unified Democratic government sure as shit will get them closer to their goal. These are not dumb jocks, ladies and gentlemen, they have their shit seriously wired, and they have learned to leverage their skills to a social end. As El Pendejo Presidente and the GOP are about to find out.
Smart cookies all.
People krrp forgetting that major universities will give these guys a free eduycation in return for their play…
Some of them study things besides sports. Not enough, maybe.
Our little town had one of it’s three polling places burn down so they had to vote on what to do about replacing the damaged one. They decided to have everyone vote where I vote, which is what they call the Coliseum. It is used for horse shows. Only a small area is used normally for voting and is never very crowded even then. I live just four blocks off of Main St and can get anywhere in town in five minutes so I don’t see it as being a burden on anyone to vote in the coliseum. I think it is a good change.
Just looked at 538 and it looks like Joe Biden got Putin’s Convention Bounce. If not for a single Rasmussen poll of only +1, the weekly averages would be easily in the double digits. Now it is 8 or 9. Just thought I would throw all that in.
To be fair, Blue, 8 or 9 ahead is where Joe has been all along on the averages. We just gotta translate that into votes now.
MLB teams are still having strikes.
King James just laid down the law on Trump with this move. And it’s hardly as though black voters aren’t already SUPER motivated to show up this year.
NBA has sold itself as a players league. Actual teams are not as important as players. LeBron took his fans with him from Cleveland, Miami and eventually LA. The NBA players have the most power of any sport (other than WNBA). NFL canceled Kaep with no real consequences, this really appeals to white (trump) america.MLB has few African American players so it is sort of in the middle. NBA has more inner city fans and fan culture and youth culture. The NBA owners, players and fans know who their fan base is (WNBA even more so) and also know advertisers and products completely buy into all they are doing. TBH I don’t think the owners of NBA teams have a problem with any of this. It makes their brand look better in relation to their fans, advertisers and sponsors.
Yeah, there’s something to be said about knowing which side your bread is buttered on. But there’s also something to be said about players steering the narrative over the owners.