NBA Athletes Are Too Rich to Be Revolutionaries
There’s nothing radical about allowing the league to co-opt a labor strike
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
For a minute there, the revolution was truly untelevised. After the Milwaukee Bucks refused to take the court for their Game 5 appearance against the Orlando Magic on Wednesday, in protest of Kenosha police’s repeated shooting of unarmed Jacob Blake, it seemed like the country’s Blackest sports league had finally said “enough.” The rest of the teams slated to play that night began to follow suit; Houston and Oklahoma City first, then the Lakers and Blazers. The WNBA, major-league baseball, MLS soccer. This was it, people thought. From the unlikely flashpoint of the NBA bubble, a race-class struggle big bang would transform American sports from the inside out. Eighteen hours later, though, the league announced that the playoffs would resume — likely by the end of the week.
Womp.
As a hoop head and a socialist, I felt a serotonin rush at the slightest signal of a burgeoning labor struggle, because I couldn’t imagine it happening at all. A day before the Bucks’ first strike, when teams like the Raptors and Celtics had begun discussing the possibility of…
