Former NBA coach and player Phil Jackson is lamenting that he believes the league has gotten so political he doesn’t bother watching games anymore.
During an interview on the “Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin” podcast, Jackson expressed his belief that the league has been trying to attract a specific audience since 2020, which has resulted in alienating many longtime NBA fans.
As such, the former Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers coach called for professional basketball to remain non-political and criticized the display of social justice slogans on the court and jerseys.
“I am not enjoying the game,” Jackson, 77, said during the interview. “That’s too bad. There’s a whole generation that doesn’t like the game.”
Jackson went on to say that the NBA became too politicized in response to the social unrest following George Floyd’s death while in police custody. The league’s transition to a “bubble” in Orlando, where players, coaches, media, and other staff traveled to protect themselves from COVID while continuing the season, coincided with the pandemic and peak of government-mandated lockdowns.
“All the teams that could qualify went down there and stayed down there, no audience, and they had things on their back like ‘Justice’ and a funny thing happened,” Jackson said. “They made a funny thing like, ‘Justice just went to the basket and Equal Opportunity just knocked him down.’ My grandkids thought that was pretty funny to play up those names. I couldn’t watch that.”
During that period, the NBA displayed social justice messages such as “Black Lives Matter” and “Justice” on the court, jerseys, and team buses. According to the Daily Mail, many players chose to replace their last names on jerseys with the word “Justice.” Additionally, the league allowed players to kneel during the national anthem.
“It was trying to cater to an audience or trying to bring a certain audience to the game, and they didn’t know it was turning other people off,” Jackson said. “People want to see sports as non-political. Politics stays out of the game. It doesn’t need to be there.”
Jackson’s view on the intermingling of social justice advocacy with sports is shared by a significant portion of sports fans, according to a 2021 YouGov/Yahoo News poll. The poll found that nearly 50% of sports fans in the country changed their viewing habits due to political messaging in sports. While 11% of viewers said they watched more sports because of it, 34.5% said they watched less.
