Posted on April 24, 2023

NBA Champion Coach Phil Jackson Says He Doesn’t Watch Basketball Anymore Because It Got Too Political

Lauren Sforza, The Hill, April 23, 2023

Eleven-time champion coach Phil Jackson said in a recent interview that he no longer watches NBA basketball, saying that the league was trying to appeal to a “certain audience” with social justice efforts.

On a recent appearance on the “Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin” podcast earlier this month, Jackson told host Rick Rubin that he had not watched NBA basketball since the 2020 pandemic and the league played in a COVID bubble in Orlando, Fla. {snip}

{snip} Pointing to social justice phrases on a player’s jersey, he said his grandchildren thought it was “pretty funny to play up those names.”

“They had things on their back like ‘Justice’ and a funny thing, like ‘Justice went to the basket and Equal Opportunity knocked him down,’” he said.

“They even had slogans on the floor, on the baseline. It was catering. It was trying to cater to an audience, or trying to bring a certain audience into play,” he added. {snip}

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