LeBron, Did You Ever Have Thoughts Of Going Woman?
"Because if you did, I’d like to have you on my basketball team."
Dear Readers,
Before we get to our (truly insane) story of the week, we’d like to update you on Brittney Griner, the subject of our interview with Maya Goldberg-Safir a few weeks ago.
Earlier this week, the United States government announced that it had reclassified Griner as “wrongfully detained” by Russia, signaling a major shift in policy toward the WNBA star, who has been detailed in Russia since early February. This new designation could have major implications for the efforts to secure Griner’s release, suggesting that the State Department will not wait for Griner's case to be heard in the Russian legal system before attempting to negotiate her release. Given that the United States recently negotiated the release of Trevor Reed, another American wrongfully detained by Russia, the change in strategy is worth monitoring.
And now, onto our former (and future?) president.
-Ian and Calder
“LeBron, Did You Ever Have Thoughts Of Going Woman?”
For your own sanity, we hope that you haven’t been paying too much attention to Donald Trump’s recent rallies. They are, essentially, what you would expect: several hours of Trump grousing about all of the ways that his political opponents have been “very unfair, very very unfair” to him, punctuated by intermittent ramblings about the quality of his golf game. If you missed these particular golf-related digressions, Trump was kind enough to release a statement a few weeks ago about a hole-in-one that he hit on the links:
It went clank, into the hole! (For a full breakdown of Trump’s latest exploits on the course, we recommend David Roth's piece.)
But during a rally that he held this past week in Nebraska, Trump reprised one of his favorite acts: shitting on LeBron James. Here’s a video of this latest performance:
We would provide you with the context for this clip, but the truth is, there isn’t any. Seemingly out of nowhere, Trump declared: “I’ll say to LeBron James, who I don’t like very much, I’ll say, ‘LeBron, did you ever have thoughts of going, woman? Because if you did, I’d like to have you on my basketball team.’”
To a layperson, these comments might appear to be legitimately nonsensical. But fortunately (or unfortunately) for you, dear reader, the two of us are here to parse the ex-president’s bizarre sports-related ramblings for you. Buckle up.
First off, making sense of Trump’s latest anti-LeBron remark requires an understanding of the GOP culture war battle du jour: trans athletes. A lot of Republicans are very angry at the moment that transgendered athletes like Lia Thomas, a swimmer at the Univesity of Pennsylvania, are allowed to swim against women. (Thomas has been successful, but isn’t breaking any records.)
Nevertheless, Republicans have doubled down on their message that allowing transgender women to compete as women is not only unfair but also dangerous, and that it somehow imperils the future of female sports altogether. (There is, of course, a bitter irony in the fact that these conservatives do not actually care about protecting women’s sports and wouldn’t even be paying attention to them otherwise — but that’s a column for another day.)
Then, of course, there is Trump’s multi-year feud with James himself, dating back to at least 2017, when LeBron tweeted “U bum” at the Donald after he refused to invite Steph Curry to the White House. The two have traded rhetorical barbs several times over the years, and in Trumpland, LeBron has become an avatar for the whole group of anti-Trump athletes in the professional sporting world.
So, Trump — presumably putting himself in the position of the owner of a female basketball team — is saying that LeBron, if he were to decide to “go women”, could dominate women’s basketball. For what it’s worth, that’s probably true, given that LeBron continues to dominate men’s basketball at the age of 37 — but that’s besides that point.
But the really classic Trump line — besides “go woman,” which has to be somewhere in the pantheon of Trumpian turns of phrase — comes next, when he says “I’d like to have you on my basketball team.”
Trump, of course, does not own a WNBA team. If fact, he was so angry at the WNBA’s players for criticizing his administration that he repeatedly refused to invite the WNBA champions to the White House. But in the scenario that he dreamed up while spouting off on stage, he does in fact own a successful WNBA. It doesn’t really take Freud to figure this one out. Trump is such a megalomaniac that even when he's imagining himself as part of an institution that he despises, he reflexively imagines himself in charge of it. If you stop to think about it, this is actually a pretty remarkable habit of mind. How many people casually fantasize about assuming positions of power within institutions that they hate? We would imagine not many.
But probably the most revealing of Trump’s quip is his frank admission that the GOP’s war on transgender athletes has nothing to do with fairness. Of course, this should be obvious by now, but it’s still striking to hear Trump say it out loud: that if he were in the position to benefit from an unfair situation — i.e., a man playing on his fictional women’s basketball — he would jump at the opportunity.
The same is true of the GOP’s entire opposition to female athletes. The GOP doesn’t want to prevent transgender female athletes because allowing them to compete against other women is unfair. They want to prevent it because it doesn’t benefit them. In fact, it poses a profound threat to them, insofar as it undermines the entire system of gender norms and patriarchal relations that the right depends on to maintain power.
As his riffing reveals, Trump isn’t even that concerned about concealing this fact.
RODNEY’S ROUNDUP
. . . the sporting world’s reaction to the leaked SCOTUS decision on Roe? “‘I only see it getting worse’: Female athletes speak out on Roe v. Wade,” by Cindy Boren and Des Bieler in The Washington Post (May 3, 2021).
. . . how athletes should protest the Roe decision? “White male athletes should kneel for abortion rights — it’s not like they’d get blackballed,” by Carron Phillips in Deadspin (May 4, 2021).
. . . the NCAA’s recent cynical lobbying push? “What Did These Morons Think Was Going To Happen?” by Patrick Redford in Defector (May 5, 2021). '
. . . Washington Capitals fans’ decisions to cut ties with the team over its star’s pro-Putin position? “They support Ukraine. So they can’t support Alex Ovechkin,” by Roman Stubbs in The Washington Post (May 2, 2021).
. . . the U.S.’s overdue decision on Griner? “Finally a Change of Strategy in the Push for Brittney Griner’s Freedom,” by Dave Zirin in The Nation (May 4, 2021).
Worth noting, purely for the sake of accuracy, that Lia Thomas is generally breaking records, either pool or meet records, fastest in the nation at a given event, etc. She’s certainly not blowing them away or demoting all her competitors 700 places as John McEnroe might have implied. But she is breaking records.