I remember the NBA labor negotiations of 2005, during which I was on the players’ union executive committee. The talks took place in the aftermath of the Malice at the Palace, and commissioner David Stern and the league were in full crisis mode. They wanted to introduce a dress code, a much-maligned policy whose tacit aim was to make Black players less threatening to the white season-ticket holders and TV viewers who drove much of the league’s revenue.
I had worn my clothes baggy since high school. That was just my style. Phil Jackson, who had won six titles with Michael Jordan as head coach of the Chicago Bulls and three more with the Los Angeles Lakers, had a different opinion though.
“The players have been dressing in prison garb the last five or six years. All the stuff that goes on, it’s like gangster, thuggery stuff. It’s time. It’s been time to do that,” he told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune as the dress code was introduced.
Jackson, who by then was the head coach of the Lakers, had no problem echoing sentiments usually heard on Fox News, stereotyping an entire generation of young Black men. It was at that point that I knew exactly what Jackson thought of us.
So it came as no surprise when Jackson said last week that he has lost interest in the NBA because it’s too “political”. He seemed particularly irritated by the league’s support of the Black Lives Matter movement after the police murder of George Floyd in 2020.
“[The NBA] even had slogans on the floor and on the baseline. It was trying to cater to an audience or trying to bring a certain audience to the game,” Jackson said on a recent episode of music producer Rick Rubin’s podcast. “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.”
He added: “They had things on their back like ‘Justice’. And a funny thing happened like: ‘Justice just went to the basket and Equal Opportunity knocked him down’. Some of my grandkids thought it was pretty funny to play up those names; I couldn’t watch that.”
The NBA was responding not only to the murder of Floyd but a summer that saw 26-year-old Breonna Taylor killed by Louisville police in her own home, and Jacob Blake shot in front of his children by officers in Kenosha, Wisconsin. And those were just the highest-profile cases.
The entire country was in an uproar as protests took place across the United States. People of all races, colors, nationalities, and cultures let their voices be heard. And NBA players were not on the sidelines but were active participants in that movement.
However, this apparently didn’t sit too well with Jackson. It was particularly odd coming from a man who has been happy to lap up praise for his embrace of Buddhist teachings, peace and progressive opinions.
The “things on their back” that Jackson was referring to were slogans such as Justice, Equal Opportunity, Vote and Peace. Shouldn’t they be right up his alley, considering his alleged forward thinking? Does peace for all not include Black people?
How is it possible that someone who made a fortune thanks to the skills of Black players such as Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant is triggered by athletes saying that their lives matter? Is Jackson really so disgusted that he can’t watch basketball, even as social activism in the league has faded from its peak in 2020?
It raises the question whether Jackson ever saw the lives of the Black athletes he coached as being of any significance outside an NBA court. Or were they to him just, as the journalist William Rhoden once wrote, $40m slaves? Men who are not respected for their opinions, minds or intellect. Men who shouldn’t have the gall to say Black people should be treated as equals to people who look like Jackson.
What Jackson calls “politics” wasn’t really political at all. It was just a request for equality.
He wasn’t just disrespectful to players, though. He insulted the countless family members of victims of police brutality. They value athletes using their voices and their platforms to bring awareness to the loved ones killed at the hands of police.
It was a sentiment echoed by the Emerald Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner, in Finding My Voice, a book we wrote together.
“NBA players as a whole supported my family after my father was choked to death by the NYPD. Back then, every time I turned on the TV, all I saw were people justifying his murder and saying why my father deserved to die,” she wrote.
“When NBA players were putting Black Lives Matter on the front of their shirts, it wasn’t about promoting an organization, they were using their tremendous platforms to take a stand and saying that our lives mattered. That my father’s life mattered. That George Floyd’s life mattered. That Breonna Taylor’s life mattered. It meant so much to us impacted family members. I will forever be thankful to the NBA and all the athletes who stood with us.”
Hopefully, Jackson can share this message with his grandchildren, so they no longer find it amusing that NBA athletes have the courage to take a stand against racism and police brutality, and advocate on behalf of justice and equality.
Etan Thomas played in the NBA from 2000 through 2011. He is a published poet, activist and motivational speaker
