John Steigerwald: NBA should be sending more than one message during playoffs

It’s time the NBA woke up.

Its bubble season starts Thursday, and the league has made it clear the presentation is going to be as much about promoting Black Lives Matter as it is about basketball.

Those words will be painted on the court, and the players will have the option of putting “social justice” messages on the backs of their jerseys instead of their names.

The bus that will transport them from their hotel to the court is black with BLACK LIVES MATTER painted in huge white letters on the side.

On Saturday night, ESPN televised a special NBA Countdown show devoted mostly to the message the league hopes to send when it returns.

Reporter Mark Spears said this about the players: “They want us to know that social justice remains in the forefront of their minds, and that message is clear every day at press conferences.”

The show’s host, Maria Taylor, interviewed NBA commissioner Adam Silver who said, “Ultimately, we came together and decided we should be using this platform to deal with social justice.”

And you thought the NBA was coming together in Orlando to play basketball.

Who can argue with pleas for “social justice?”

Twenty years ago, the great philosopher, Thomas Sowell, who is Black and a former Marxist, wrote a book called “Vision of the Anointed.” By anointed he meant self-anointed people from academia, elite media and government, and he wrote they shelter themselves from scrutiny and policy with a veil of “moral certitude.”

And he said it’s often futile to try to correct people who see themselves “morally on a higher plane” because, “those who disagree with the prevailing vision are seen not merely as being in error, but as being in sin.”

How can anyone disagree with an organization called Black Lives Matter? Former NFL defensive end Marcellus Wiley said this on FS1’s “Speak For Yourself”:

“I don’t know how many people really look into the mission statement of Black Lives Matter. But I did. And I am a Black man. Two things: My family structure is so vital to me. Being a father and a husband is my mission right now.

“How do I reconcile that with this quote: ‘We dismantle the patriarchal practice. We disrupt the western prescribed nuclear family structure requirement.’

“So when I see that as a mission statement, it makes me scratch my head. I also see their mission is to eradicate white supremacy. In 2020, white supremacy is the mission? Boy, that’s a lot of digging through minutiae right there.

“I am on a show that I am hosting with another Black guy, who is hosting with me, who replaced another Black guy. And that’s just one example of it. So, I respect your space. I respect what you’re protesting for. But will you support others who don’t support that same protest?”

The answer is probably no.

Is Wiley allowed to not be impressed or moved by the words Black Lives Matter painted on the court?

Probably not.

LeBron James’ comments on the Black Lives Matter movement were played on this show, hosted by a Black woman with a panel of four Black men, that included a report by Robin Roberts, an openly gay Black woman. “I don’t like the word ‘movement.’ Unfortunately, in America today there ain’t been no damn movement for us.”

An idiotic statement, of course, but remember, to disagree is a sin.

But you know what never came up on the show amid all the discussion about freeing the oppressed? China.

And that’s why it’s time the NBA and its players woke up.

The uniforms LeBron James and all the NBA players wear — the ones that will have social justice messages stitched on the back — come from Nike. And cotton used in making the jerseys is picked by slaves. Not workers being paid slave wages. Slaves.

One million Uighur Muslims, a minority in China, have been forcibly transported on trains to the cotton fields and factories. They live behind barbed wire fences in concentration camps.

The NBA and James have made billions of dollars on the backs of slaves who also make 8 million pairs of Nike shoes to be sent to the U.S. every year.

Remember that the next time you see the champion of the oppressed, Colin Kaepernick, doing a Nike commercial.

Don’t be surprised to see a new one show up on NBA telecasts soon, by the way.

Maybe a player could have this stitched on the back of his jersey: “Made By Slaves.”

Wake me when the NBA breaks all ties with China.