Southpaw 36: More Than a Bill
The NBA and WNBA's endorsement of Democrats' police reform bill shows why player control matters—and what the limits of that control might be.
Dear readers,
Happy holiday weekend from Brooklyn, where, in very 2021 style, it’s raining and cold.
News broke late last night that Atlanta Braves outfielder Marcell Ozuna has been arrested on domestic assault and battery charges, a headline that is all too familiar to fans of the MLB. We didn’t have time to write about Ozuna’s arrest more extensively, but we wanted to re-up one of our early Southpaw stories about potential strategies to address the MLB’s failed domestic violence policy. This latest news sadly demonstrates the need for the sort of reforms we discussed in that piece.
In somewhat brighter news, we wrote this week about an exciting new development in the evolution of athlete activism—the National Basketball Social Justice Coalition’s decision to publicly endorse the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. We hope you enjoy!
-Calder & Ian
The NBA’s endorsement of police reform legislation shows why player control matters—and what the limits of that control might be.
Last August, when players in the NBA and WNBA went on strike to protest the police murder of Jacob Blake, fans held their breath. When news broke two short days later that the players and the league had brokered an agreement to resume play—facilitated in part by President Obama—many on the left (us included) expressed their disappointment. The concessions that the players had won from the league—chiefly the creation of a social justice coalition composed of players, coaches, and executives from across the league—seemed meager. Why hadn’t the players held out for more serious concessions? What good would another social justice coalition do?
This week, the players once again proved their naysayers wrong. On Tuesday, the first anniversary of George Floyd’s murder, the National Basketball Social Justice Coalition issued a statement urging Congress to adopt “common sense policy reform” by passing the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Later in the day, the WNBA and NBA players union both issued statements of solidarity with the coalition and urged Congress to act. The Black Players for Change, an independent organization representing Black players in Major League Soccer, also issued a statement of support.
Amid the seismic shifts that are currently remaking the political landscape of professional sports—yes, we’re still plugging our piece for POLITICO—it’s easy to overlook just how significant this development is. In a 2019 frame of mind, it would be practically unthinkable that the NBA as a league would move to endorse a specific piece of legislation and call on the Senate by name to pass it. The fact that the Floyd Act remains hotly partisan—Senate Republicans are currently standing in the way of its passage—makes the league’s decision even more remarkable. (Although the coalition’s statement doesn’t point the finger directly at Republicans, it doesn’t take an especially perceptive reader to understand that lines like “we hope [the bill] will have . . . bipartisan support as it should and must” are addressed to Republicans.)
But as Howard Bryant wrote on Twitter, this is what player control in 2021 looks like:
Admittedly, this does overstate the extent of the players’ control. Historically, the NBA has permitted (and even encouraged) activism up to the point where it threatens to cut into the league’s profits. For example, the league will allow players to wear “Black Lives Matter” on the back of their jerseys, but it has no tolerance for support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, which might endanger the league’s lucrative broadcasting deals in China. In the wake of last August’s wild-cat strikes, the league has clearly calculated that a significant number of angry players are much more of a threat to their bottom line than the small number of thin-blue-line-supporting fans who might oppose league-sponsored social justice initiatives. The decision to throw their support behind the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is unusual, but it’s also the natural extension of that calculus. The new coalition doesn’t give players complete freedom in their activism. For example, the players probably wouldn’t be allowed to pressure Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to abolish the filibuster, despite the fact that that’s probably a necessary precondition for passing any sort of meaningful police reform bill.
But this all-or-nothing framework perhaps isn’t the right one to use to evaluate the NBA’s political evolution. Like any corporation, the NBA is an unstable political coalition composed of groups with different—and not necessarily compatible—interests. The league’s executives are walking along a political tightrope, and that tightrope is getting thinner and thinner. On the one hand, league officials need to keep their increasingly politically active players happy enough to avoid a repeat of last summer’s strike; on the other hand, they need to avoid totally alienating the reactionary elements that make up a shrinking portion of its fan base but a disproportionately large portion of its ownership class. Add in pressure from a predominantly progressive fan base and a vocally left-wing sports media, and the NBA’s footing on the tightrope looks pretty precarious.
The coalition’s statement is a product of this precarity—meaning it won’t totally satisfy the league’s most activist fans and players, and it won’t totally piss off its reactionary owners. But it does demonstrate precisely why even limited player control within the league is so important: it counterbalances the inherently conservative tendencies of the ownership class and, if wielded effectively, can actually nudge the league as a whole toward progress. The players, who are increasingly recognizing their power in the star-driven league, may sooner or later force the league off the tightrope and directly into their camp.
This is all to say: we still don’t know what a truly activist sports league looks like in this country, but we’re hoping that we’ll soon find out.
RODNEY’S ROUNDUP
Do you want to read about . . .
. . . a vintage Trump/New England Patriots tale of corruption and deceit? “Son, ghostwriter of late senator say Trump intervened to stop probe of Patriots' Spygate scandal,” by Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham for ESPN (May 26, 2021).
. . . the latest on sexual assault allegations against Neymar? “Nike Split With Neymar Amid Sexual-Assault Probe,” by Khadeeja Safdar in The Wall Street Journal (May 27, 2021).
. . . Texas cops burying sexual assault allegations against college football players? “Baylor cop investigating sex assault told accused football players she wanted to 'keep it quiet'” by Anna Baum in The Houston Chronicle (May 25, 2021).