The national anthem protests, spurred on by Colin Kaepernick and several other professional athletes, has quickly become one of the most divisive topics of the year, and there’s very little middle ground. Folks either see it as an insult to our country, a slap in the face to the men and women of the armed forces who risk their lives to protect us, or a patriotic expression of our first amendment rights and a long-overdue conversation starter on the topics plaguing our nation, namely race and class inequality.
You can count Cavs owner Dan Gilbert among the former. During a recent panel discussion at the University of Michigan, Gilbert squared off with Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, who believes his players and others have every right to express their feelings of alienation and disenfranchisement.
Here’s what Gilbert had to say, via Louis Aguilar of The Detroit News:
“There’s a million ways you can express yourself and you should do that, for sure. Taking a knee in the United States of America while millions of people are watching, I think it’s a poor example,” Gilbert said.
What would Gilbert do if a Cavalier decided to take such action?
“I hope we don’t ever have to come with that,” Gilbert said.
Prior to the NBA season, the league was bracing for widespread anthem protests, but aside from a few scattered demonstrations of solidarity that have mostly included players locking arms with one another, it’s been relatively quiet on that front. Most of the league’s biggest stars — including LeBron James — have said that although they support Kaepernick and other athletes’ decisions to kneel during the anthem, they won’t do so themselves.
Carmelo Anthony, who has been one of the most outspoken voices on police violence against the black community, has likewise declined to participate in such protests. That’s in no small part because both the league offices and the Players’ Association did their best to preempt this prior to the season when they sent out a joint letter challenging players to take more concrete actions in their respective communities to facilitate change.
Currently, it’s against league rules for players to kneel during the national anthem, and there’s been no clear indication whether that policy is being addressed in the current round of collective bargaining negotiations, which the league and the NBPL hope to have finalized by the end of the year to avoid another potential work stoppage.
It’s also against the rules for players to wear unapproved apparel during warmups, although when several players — including LeBron and Kyrie Irving — sported “I Can’t Breathe” t-shirts in the past (in tribute to an unarmed black man who died in police custody), the NBA declined to fine them. That didn’t hold true for the WNBA players who wore “Black Lives Matter” shirts last season, although the league eventually rescinded those fines following significant backlash.
Neither the league nor Gilbert have had to deal with the specific issue of the anthem protests so far, and it’s clear they’d like to keep it that way.
