Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, and numerous other NBA stars have been increasingly vocal over the past year about social and political issues, most recently speaking out against president Donald Trump. Curry found himself at the center of the most recent firestorm involving the president and an NBA athlete after he said he didn’t want the Warriors to go to the White House to visit Trump.
Trump then tweeted about Curry and the Warriors, saying he was revoking their invitation despite them already having said they were turning it down. This led to LeBron, Durant and, others coming to Curry’s side.
Every athlete that speaks out on a social or political issue inevitably receives backlash. Often it’s the “stick to sports” cries, but there’s also a lot of people that criticize “millionaire athletes” speaking about issues that they believe don’t affect them. This often happens when athletes use their platform to shine light on social or racial issues that often have the most obvious impact on those with lower socioeconomic standing than a professional athlete.
However, as we’ve seen recently, those issues do still impact athletes, like LeBron James who had a slur written across the gate of his home, and many athletes came from those communities. For Curry, someone that grew up the son of an NBA player, those cries are even louder, but he recently explained to ESPN’s Chris Haynes why his voice still matters and why the message is the same, even as an athlete that was the son of a pro player.
“I’ve heard a lot of backlash from this whole thing last weekend about how much money we make and ‘what are we complaining about?’ and ‘we’re in a bubble, we don’t have the same struggles and stresses of life [compared] to other people,’ ” Curry said. “And obviously, I come from a privileged background with my dad playing in the NBA. I’m not denying that, but the majority of the NBA players come from the same backgrounds and socioeconomic situations that these criticisms are coming from.
“It gets lost. We have families. We’ve got people around us that are going through the same thing. How that all kind of takes shape is ridiculous to me — trying to minimize what we’re talking about because we have money.”
Curry also noted the recent run-in Anthony Morrow had with police in Georgia who stopped him in what Morrow claims was racial profiling and searched his car. The argument that players somehow don’t understand what’s going on in the world because they have money and because they no longer live in places or neighborhoods that see the issues of police brutality and racial inequality is a tactic to dampen their voice and limit their platform.
Curry’s statement is a strong one and he understands his privilege, but also knows he has a platform that can help.
“I have a platform, and I’m going to use it for the betterment of society,” he told ESPN. “That’s what we all should be trying to do.”
Hopefully fans will understand that and see that while players may not have necessarily felt firsthand impacts (although some have) it’s important for them to use their voice to amplify that of their community which is so often ignored.
