Taking a Knee, Once Career Poison, Now Seen as Good for Business
Taking a Knee, Once Career Poison, Now Seen as Good for Business
(Bloomberg) -- In 1990, Michael Jordan, as famous at the time for selling Nike shoes as he was for playing for the Chicago Bulls, declined to get involved in politics. “Republicans buy sneakers, too,” he said.
Thirty years later, protesting athletes pushed major sports leagues to cancel a slew of games after police shot yet another Black man, Jacob Blake. The risk of losing a shoe contract or alienating fans wasn’t enough to stop players from making their point.
“We’re coming out and letting it be known that we’re more than pro athletes,” said Tianna Hawkins, a forward on the Washington Mystics. “We’re using our platform to be heard.”
The Mystics, defending Women’s National Basketball Association champions, took the court Aug. 26 wearing T-shirts that spelled out Blake’s name and had seven holes in the back to represent the bullets that police fired at him.
The events represented a stunning reversal. Just four years ago, when National Football League quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee for the first time during a pregame National Anthem, it effectively ended his career. Now pro athletes were setting the agenda for the racial-equality movement, in some cases, with the support of management.
The risk of a backlash hasn’t gone away, especially in an election year when President Donald Trump called a Black Lives Matter mural a “symbol of hate.” Kaepernick and the price he paid still weighs on athletes who consider working for racial justice.
“Any player now that takes an activist stance, Colin Kaepernick is going to be in the back of your mind,” said Renee Montgomery, one of about a dozen players who decided to skip the 2020 WNBA season to do social-justice work. When she decided to opt out, she said some team owners may not like it “because they’re specifically focused on the business of basketball. But now a lot of athletes are saying they don’t care about the repercussions. It’s more important to be an activist.”
The Black Lives Matter protests of the summer have pushed owners and management to be more receptive to player activism. The National Basketball Association has put racial justice at the center of its season; in June NFL commissioner Roger Goodell apologized for not listening to earlier calls to action about racism. (Kaepernick, however, remains unsigned.)
It hasn’t hurt that public opinion and consumers are on the activist's side. In 2018, Nike and Kaepernick proved that protest sells with an advertising campaign that generated $43 million in free-media buzz in the first 24 hours. For companies that have a history of involvement in topical issues, “to look away is inauthentic,” said T. Bettina Cornwell, head of the marketing department at the University of Oregon’s Lundquist College of Business.
Critics of athlete activism still blasted away. On Fox Sports Radio, host Clay Travis called the NBA players’ decision to strike “one of the craziest, and most insane and most illogical decisions I have ever seen made by anyone in positions of prominence in the world of sports. Maybe the craziest.”
“Those players thought that somehow they were changing the world or changing the United States by what they were doing, but what they were doing was preaching to a choir that already agreed with them,” Travis said. “It’s not like there were super-racist people out there who thought, ‘Hey, I want to kill people based on their race, but then I saw NBA players taking a knee during the national anthem and I decided I shouldn’t be racist anymore.’ That’s ludicrous.”
Following player protests, the NBA committed to using many of its arenas as polling places in November, a way to counteract the closing of many voting venues and the crippling of the U.S. Postal Service, which is expected to handle millions of mail-in ballots. Ads during games will also promote civic engagement and voter access.
If there was a backlash, it wasn’t immediately apparent. TV ratings for both TNT and ESPN were up for the games following the work stoppage compared with the week before.
While Kaepernick was a trail blazer, the growing power of professional athletes can be credited in part to the most visible one of all, LeBron James.
Jordan stood aside, but James has always found the political spotlight. When Trayvon Martin was killed, James wore a hoodie. When Eric Garner was killed, James wore a T-shirt that read “I Can’t Breathe.” When most players shopped their talents to teams in free agency, James invited teams to sell their advantages to him. James is also involved in Nike's Equality campaign, which promotes fairness and donates to social-justice causes.
While Jordan wanted to be liked, James insists on respect.
“Jordan was more popular,” said Colin Cowherd, another Fox Sports Radio host, “but LeBron is more powerful. LeBron has been willing to be hated.”
James heard criticism last year for not speaking in support of Hong Kong protesters. The NBA has business in China, and James was seen as defending his interest in that. No doubt he’s been great for the league. Since James joined the Cleveland Cavaliers out of high school in 2003, the NBA’s revenue increased 322% to $8.8 billion last year. Protest and profit can go hand in hand.
Last week, that idea penetrated even the Whitest of sports. Pro golfer Cameron Champ protested the Kenosha shooting by wearing one black shoe and one white shoe, with “Black Lives Matter” magic-markered on them.
The shoes were Nikes.
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