As the comfortable and worn adage illustrates professional basketball’s aversion to defense, the actors orchestrating a ballet of dunks and three pointers through the cumbersome hierarchy of players, coaches, and the front office are also oblivious to the concept of reasonable self-defense.
This tiresome perspective on Constitutional freedoms proliferating through the rarified air of hoopster titans does include the incorrigible stipulation, that in instances requiring discretionary acts self-preservation, armed personnel, law enforcement, carry laws are embraced in the lockeroom as long as the threat is neutralized. This illogical sentiment towards conditional inclusion, a toxic bi-product of the progressive mentality and a divisive part of the NBA brand explains the sporting league’s underwhelming television ratings, highlighted by the casual fan’s frustration for entertainment and athletics used as a vehicle to forward a serious political agenda with elements of extremism.
While Golden State Warrior head coach Steve Kerr prefers a playing style featuring a salvo three pointers from long range, the leftist quasi-celebrity is also adamant in hijacking post-game press conferences to lobby for restrictive gun control measures, and his rhetoric prompted various coaches and players to reveal their true ideological identities in further alienating potential audiences in middle America. The dead zones of fan apathy a metaphor for the disconnect that coastal metropolitan culture has with a large majority of citizens in pawning emotion rather than empirical evidence and effective results.
In a putrid segue from the regular season to the playoffs, conjoined with the liberal tendency to exploit a shooting travesty to promote an anti-firearm narrative, outspoken San Antonio Spur and champion coach Greg Popovich went on a veritable tirade in the wake of the franchise’s worst season in decades. (Deflection anyone?)
The tenured elder of the league’s coaching fraternity spurted out the usual myths and mistruths that gun control activists use in perpetually shifting the argument to stigmatize law-abiding citizens by intellectually dishonest interpretation of CDC statistics. The alphabet agency’s “gun violence” are already suspect, even before the interpretation of the data is skewed by mini-tyrants. The condescending and self-righteous atmosphere surrounding Kerr and Popovich becomes more sordid once the reality that the coaches are protected by armed guards and law enforcement in receiving protection from rabid and possibly intoxicated individuals drowning in raw emotion. While the fun and fan are removed from the game by faux-patriots, the hypocrisy has a bitter and everlasting aftertaste that rivals an experience with a warm Bud Light during the intermission at a drag show.
Former sharpshooter Rex Chapman, known for his long range sniping from downtown and current social media influencer, joined the Kerr-Popovich rant and brought an anti-firearm to the dialogue from a player’s prospective. Chapman, who played starred at the University of Kentucky, tweeted that the Louisville bank travesty exemplifies why public school teachers should not be armed. Aside from the obvious false equivalency, the retired athlete and other gun control activists are either oblivious or indifferent to the fact that “Gun Free Zone” school properties are responsible for creating soft targets, as a potential shooter can determine that there will probably be a lack of severe consequences for horrendous actions. For those endorsing severe anti-firearm legislation, pushing those following the law is never a consideration in their flawed and reckless interpretation of reality.
In the aftermath of the Colin Kaepernick National Anthem scandal, America’s most popular sports brand suffered a major downturn in viewership and apparel sales, a clear link between a radical and the politicization of entertainment. With the NBA already facing stagnation, from playing style, to unlikable stars, to a marathon of a season schedule, exercising First Amendment rights that has nothing to do with the game is probably not the best course of action in rekindling an audience.
At least the trio is carelessly transparent in their stance on the Second Amendment and public safety, a level of directness that most fans do not want to know about when trying to enjoy the best basketball players on earth compete, or at least fake it.