Shannon Sharpe Blasts “Dumb Dumb” Phil Jackson For Criticizing NBA’s Social Justice Efforts
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Shannon Sharpe has responded to remarks made by Phil Jackson regarding the NBA’s social justice awareness efforts, deeming the decorated coach “dumb” and “foolish.”
On Monday (April 24), Sharpe and Undisputed co-host Skip Bayless shared their reaction to Jackson’s comments, which were made during an appearance on Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast and bordered on being critical and dismissive of the fight for equality and justice.
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“Can you tell dumb dumb politics have always been in sports?” Sharpe said, referencing Jackson’s assertion that athletes of prior eras didn’t extoll their political views. “(Muhammad) Ali, (boxer) Jack Johnson… Go back in history of the time. Politics have always been in sports.”
Sharpe and Bayless then pointed to Jackson’s own past, as he was once known as a progressive, anti-war “hippie” with a history of using psychedelic drugs. “Now, all of a sudden, it turns him off,” Sharpe scoffed.
The Hall of Fame tight-end also questioned the validity of Jackson’s claims that the slogans on the jerseys and the court where a visual disturbance, arguing that most spectators were more concerned with the actual gameplay than the 13-time NBA champ’s gripes.
“I don’t care nothing about what’s on the court,” Sharpe said. “Can they go put the ball in the basketball then go ‘d’ up? I wanna see the shot making. I wanna see the ball handling. I wanna see the creativity. It wasn’t (about) what’s on no damn court.” He continued to lash out against Jackson before concluding “Come on, Phil. You sound foolish.”
During his appearance on the Tetragrammaton podcast, Jackson was asked if he still watches NBA basketball games, to which he replied “No. I don’t” before explaining his reasoning, pointing to the 2020 NBA season as when he lost interest in the league.
“They had things on their back like ‘Justice’ and a funny thing happened,” Jackson told Rubin. “Like ‘Justice went to the basket and Equal Opportunity knocked him down’… Some of my grandkids thought it was pretty funny to play up those names. I couldn’t watch that.”
The coach added, “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. And they didn’t know it was turning other people off. People want to see sports as non-political.” He then pointed to former Senator and Knicks teammate Bill Bradley as one of numerous star athletes he says kept their politics and athletic exploits separate from one another. “Bill Bradley was a senator, a number of baseball players have been representatives and senators … But their politics stay out of the game,” Jackson claimed. “It doesn’t need to be there.”
Sharpe and Jackson’s views are the latest to be shared regarding the increased role of sociopolitical matters in sports, as more athletes and fans have become active in using their platform to speak on social justice and politics. However, on the opposite end of the spectrum, some sports figures and contingents of fans have voiced their disdain for this trend, with some threatening to follow Jackson’s suit and stop tuning in to NBA games.
According to Skip Bayless, however, those claims have yet to come to fruition, as the first round of this year’s NBA playoffs has drawn the highest ratings for the league in a decade. “Somebody’s watching,” the pundit surmised.
Watch Shannon Sharpe address Phil Jackson’s comments on Undisputed below.
