NBA legend Charles Barkley thinks that the path that majors sports leagues, including the NBA, are taking to promote social justice is not the right one. It is because the focus is not on how to tackle these issues.
One of the things the league will do when the season resumes is placing custom messages on the back of players jerseys instead of their last names. Superstars, such as LeBron James and Anthony Davis, opted out of this, but the majority of the players will replace their names with NBA-approved messages.
“What’s happening now is we’re turning into a circus,” Barkley said on CNBC as transcribed by Virgil Villanueva of ClutchPoints. “Instead of talking about racial equality, racial justice and economic justice, we spend all our time worrying about who’s kneeling and not kneeling, what things are being said on buses, what’s being said on jerseys. I think we’re missing the point.”
“We need police reform, prison reform. Those are No. 1 and No. 2 things to focus on. We need the cops, good cops out there policing bad cops …. When we spend time focusing on what’s on the jersey, that’s gonna defeat purpose. My concern is this is turning into a circus instead of trying to do some good stuff.”
