Last week, LeBron James announced that he was opening a public school in his hometown of Akron, OH that will serve a historically underprivileged community and the at-risk students hungry for a quality education there. Not only are tuition, books, and meals free, the school will also provide outreach to parents who are struggling financially to help continue their education and find employment opportunities.
LeBron was almost universally lauded for his commitment to give back to his community in such a profound and meaningful way. But not by Donald Trump. Instead, the man whose own bogus university defrauded unsuspecting students of tens of thousands of dollars with a worthless diploma and subsequently went bankrupt decided to insult LeBron’s intelligence upon hearing that he’d deigned to criticize him during a CNN interview with Don Lemon.
The NBA world, naturally, rallied its support around LeBron, with current and former players, as well as assorted other league personnel, taking to Twitter to denounce Trump’s toxic divisiveness. Arch-nemesis Steph Curry was chief among them, as both he and LeBron have set aside their on-court rivalry in the past to unite against Trump, and Curry had to more to say on the matter during a Bay Area golf tournament on Wednesday when he characterized Trump’s attack as blatantly racist.
Via Logan Murdock of The Mercury News:
“Frustration,” said Curry, who will participate in Ellie Mae Classic Thursday. “That rhetoric is all based in some longstanding racism in terms of black men with a voice in power. Unfortunately, that’s being revealed more and more as the days go on.”
Curry and the Warriors have drawn Trump’s ire in the past for preemptively declining the ceremonial White House visit normally afforded to world champions in professional sports. Trump responded in his typically petulant way by retroactively dis-inviting them.
Trump’s attack is only the latest example of right-wing figures making disparaging comments about athletes using their platform to address social issues. Fox News personality Laura Ingraham infamously told LeBron to “shut up and dribble” after he criticized Trump in February, insinuating that he wasn’t intelligent enough to weigh in on political matters.
LeBron got the last laugh when he responded brilliantly by making that the title of his new docu-series about political activism among sports stars.
