{"id":284,"date":"2024-04-01T16:53:42","date_gmt":"2024-04-01T16:53:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/mark-radcliff\/?p=284"},"modified":"2024-04-01T16:53:42","modified_gmt":"2024-04-01T16:53:42","slug":"blog3-sports-activist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/mark-radcliff\/2024\/04\/01\/blog3-sports-activist\/","title":{"rendered":"blog#3 sports activist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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LeBron James is nicknamed King James for his dominance on the court. He came into the NBA straight from high school in 2003, a hoped-for generational megastar the same year Michael Jordan retired (for a third time).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Jordan, James has been a high-profile star, winning four NBA championships in 20 seasons. But\u00a0unlike Jordan, James has used his platform to advocate for Black people and protest their treatment by police. In 2018, James attracted the ire of Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who said on her popular primetime program that he should \u201cshut up and dribble.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NPR reported at the time, \u201cIngraham said she was not interested in the political advice from \u2018someone who gets paid $100 million a year to bounce a ball.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James hasn\u2019t backed down from speaking his mind on social issues. In 2020, as protests for racial justice followed the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police,\u00a0James posted on twitter: \u201cWhy doesn\u2019t America love us?\u201d He had previously worn a\u00a0T-shirt during game warmups\u00a0reading \u201cI Can\u2019t Breathe,\u201d a reference to the 2014 death of Eric Garner in New York City.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James was far from the only athlete who participated in sports protests or other gatherings in 2020 related to racial justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In August 2020, the entire Milwaukee Bucks team\u00a0refused to play in a playoff game\u00a0after Jacob Blake, a Black man, was shot by a police officer in Kenosha, Wis., prompting several nights of protests and riots. Other teams\u00a0across the NBA and minor baseball league followed suit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As NPR reported, \u201cJames, with 47 million Twitter followers, spoke for many athletes when he tweeted an expletive, and then this: \u2018WE DEMAND CHANGE. SICK OF IT.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think Lebron was able to enhance the activism, he has a tremendous amount of followers on varies social media platforms as well as being possibly one of the biggest names in the NBA so seeing someone push for activism especially for the Black Lives Matter movements its great to see a strong Black figure within the community trying to do their part by pushing the message itself as well as getting other people abroad for example him and his team mates all wore shirts with that message on it. As well as the shoes he launched one being a white pair and the other shoe is black but on the back they read ”Equality” showing that everyone is equal regardless of race, color, etc. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LeBron James is nicknamed King James for his dominance on the court. He came into the NBA straight from high school in 2003, a hoped-for generational megastar the same year Michael Jordan retired (for a third time). Like Jordan, James has been a high-profile star, winning four NBA championships in 20 seasons. But\u00a0unlike Jordan, James … Continue reading blog#3 sports activist<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wds_primary_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/mark-radcliff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/mark-radcliff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/mark-radcliff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/mark-radcliff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/mark-radcliff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/mark-radcliff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/mark-radcliff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions\/289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/mark-radcliff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/mark-radcliff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/mark-radcliff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}