The NBA’s opening (restart) weekend gave fans the close games, clutch plays and acrobatic dunks they have missed since March. It also offered a hefty dose of activism—during pre- and post-game interviews, as well as during games, with the majority of players opting to replace the name on the back of their jersey with a social message.
Noticeably amiss from the act were many of the biggest names in the sport—All-Stars and former All-Stars, NBA champions, players who have spoken out against racial injustice in the past and who continued to do so in their interviews this weekend. This was a selfish evasion of solidarity and a weak showing of individual leadership in a sport that thrives off of, perhaps more than any other team sport, the star power of individual players.
The reasoning for skipping out on the social messages fell flat.
L.A. Lakers big man Anthony Davis said he wanted to honor his family name. Davis has done that throughout his eight-year career. He’ll continue to do that throughout the rest of his career. This is a rare opportunity to represent more than one name, and he balked.
LeBron James, Davis’ teammate, said he was not included in the decision-making process for acceptable messages, so he’d continue wearing his last name. He didn’t give any detail as to what he would have worn given a blank slate, but James presumably wanted to sport something unique. The issue is: he wanted to stand out when the point is to stand together.
Miami Heat forward Jimmy Butler said he wanted to leave the back of his jersey blank. Once informed he had to have some lettering on the back of his jersey—an arbitrary rule in its own right—Butler decided to keep his own name. Leaving the back of his jersey blank would have been a powerful message from Butler, but he still had 29 approved messages from which to choose. The available messages ranged from “equality” and “liberation” to “anti-racist” and “education reform.” They covered an array of topics, giving the athletes choices of what cause or idea or philosophy to support. Butler chose to stand alone, as Butler, rather than with his teammates, as voices for “peace” or even a simple reminder to “love us.”
Several members of the Houston Rockets, including James Harden, the NBA’s leading scorer, decided not to display a message. Harden’s teammates Austin Rivers and Tyson Chandler said they decided not to wear a message because they were not allowed to put “Trayvon” on their jerseys in honor of Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager who in 2012 was killed while walking home from a convenience store by George Zimmerman. WNBA players were allowed to use Breonna Taylor’s name on their jerseys.
For the players who publicly explained their reasoning, the decision to display their name often came down to not being able to choose what they wanted; in Davis’ case, it purely came down to choosing his name or a message, and he chose his name. These were choices for individuality, which is important for athletes to express, but right now not as important as unity.
The Sixers had the most players—including three of their best in Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid and Al Horford—of any team in the league donning their own names. Other big-name players who decided against replacing their name with a social justice message: Paul George, Kawhi Leonard and Patrick Beverley of the L.A. Clippers; the Lakers’ Rajon Rondo and Dwight Howard; and Denver Nuggets big man Nikola Jokic, one of the few non-Black players in the league to pass on a jersey message.
On the other end of the jersey activism spectrum, several teams had complete participation. One team, the Mavericks, even unified on a message, “equality.” The only deviation in Dallas came because several players translated “equality” into their native language.
Again, James and others have been outspoken about injustices in other ways, and the effectiveness of the jersey activism is difficult to measure. How can one tell how many bigots have been converted to allies based on seeing a word or three on the back of a jersey? It’s impossible. But not all fans tune in to press conferences, so the jersey messages are a way to capitalize on the NBA’s widespread reach from tip-off to final buzzer. TNT’s NBA reopening kick-off doubleheader on Thursday averaged 2.9 million viewers.
The early game featured two teams with total participation in the jersey messages: the New Orleans Pelicans and the Utah Jazz. That game drew an average of 2.1 million viewers—2.1 million people who saw Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram, Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell, uniting to back change.
The late game featuring an L.A. showdown of two of the NBA’s best teams averaged 3.4 million viewers—3.4 million people who saw Davis and James, George and Leonard and Beverley, refusing to include themselves in what should have been a simple act of solidarity.