It’s been an eventful weekend in sports, first with Steph Curry reaffirming that he had no intention of visiting The White House to celebrate their recent NBA Championship win. President Trump took the snub from the Warriors personally and subsequently tweeted out that the Warriors were no longer invited to the White House.
What followed was a massive spike in social consciousness from athletes the likes that America hasn’t seen since the 1960s. LeBron James joined the fray, calling President Trump a “bum”. It didn’t stop there as many other NBA athletes decided to join in and voice their displeasure for what they saw as President Trump attacking one of their own.
Noted Trump critic and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban had been silent about the entire weekend of back and forth between the NBA and the Trump administration. That silence was broken today when Cuban spoke to NBC’s Meet The Press and wonders if the President can handle the criticism from his comments.
“If the president’s going to say something condemning a person, an industry, a sport,” Cuban told Meet The Press. “Then he’s got to be able to take the blowback that’s going to come back. So LeBron and Steph and any athlete, any owner, it’s an open door now, and so they have every right for the same reasons to be able to say whatever’s on their mind. Now we’ll be able to see if he can take it.”
Cuban’s musings probably ended Sunday morning as Trump doubled down on his criticism of the NFL. The President’s anger probably only increased as the Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonville Jaguars both participated in an anthem protest before their game in London.
With the majority of NFL games yet to kick off, there are bound to be more protests involving the National Anthem which will infuriate those with a more conservative nature. How the Presidential administration will respond has yet to be seen, but a good wager is that there will be a tweet that will cause more ripples.
