To the extent that there will be a sports-world resistance to Donald Trump’s presidency, it appears it will be led by the NBA.
We’ve already seen players, led by LeBron James, cast doubt on whether future NBA championship teams will visit Trump’s White House and coaches, led by Gregg Popovich, strongly rebuke the president-elect.
And on Tuesday night, ESPN reported that at least three NBA teams—the Grizzlies, Mavericks and Bucks—will boycott Trump-brand hotels in New York and Boston.
ESPN reached out to all 30 teams and got a mixed bag of answers. In addition to Memphis, Milwaukee and Dallas, at least one other team will reportedly switch out of the Trump hotel in Manhattan when its contract there ends. Additional teams said that have stayed there in the past but aren’t this year but wouldn’t attribute that decision to political beliefs. Seven others teams still plan to stay at Trump hotels this season. Some teams said they’ve never stayed at Trump hotels.
The Mavericks are the last surprising Trump-opposers, given how vocal owner Mark Cuban has been in objecting to Trump’s candidacy. It would have been more jarring to see that the Mavs were going to stay at Trump-brand hotels moving forward.
We should probably expect to see more teams join in the Trump boycott in the coming months. You kind of figure that once some players walk under one of those giant, skyline-destroying signs and consider whom they’re giving money to (in Chicago, at least. Trump no longer own the New York hotel), they’ll feel uneasy about staying there.
The NBA is the most politically liberal league and the league usually most willing to speak about social issues, so the anti-Trump activism might just be getting started.
[ESPN]