Joleen Cope
Staff Reporter
Messages of social justice and racial equality have been largely presented by the NBA during this recent season. Many people were happy to see this, but the NBA commissioner, Adam Silver, stated that all these massages are going to be “off the court” by the next upcoming season.
Adam Silver decided to talk about the messages of social justice that were on different courts and even players' jerseys. The courts had Black Lives Matter on the court, while the players were able to choose their own messages for the back of their jerseys. This included equality, say their names, peace, and of course black lives matter phrases. Silver made an appearance at the NBA Countdown to bring it all up. Supposedly, it was said that there were fans that were upset about the social justice messages. They did not want to see all of the messages because they wanted to “pay attention to the game”. This made many other fans quite furious.
According to Silver, the league is fully committed to upholding racial equality and social justice even though they are removing these messages from the courts. He understands that some are not interested in the messages and want to watch a basketball game. They realized that their views went way down once they had black lives matter messages presented throughout courts. The NBA finals hit historically low television ratings. This is the major cause of why they are removing the messages.
The first three games, surprisingly, only averaged out at around a 3.6 rating and 6.65 million viewers. Last year, the Toronto Raptors and the Golden State Warriors mashup last year had a rating of 8.8 and over 15 million viewers. In comparison to the recent season, the numbers last year are significantly higher. This shocked even Adam Silver.
People tuning out from basketball games is not entirely caused from the messages they put on courts, but they believe it had a big part in it. None of the players have argued with Silver's decision and Adam Silver says he will continue to help players push black lives matter messages while off the court.
Image Credit: theundefeated.com
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