Two players who have questioned whether or not the 2019-20 NBA season should return are Los Angeles Lakers big man Dwight Howard and Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving.
In a passionate tirade, ESPN analyst Stephen A. Smith tore into the players, saying that their actions would end up having a negative impact on the regular workers and laborers who depend on the NBA for their own livelihood.
Stephen A Smith compares what Kyrie Irving and Dwight Howard are doing to rioting and destroying their own community
Max Kellerman "Rioting in their own communities? Black people don't own those communities" pic.twitter.com/YQXquGkDXm
— Gifdsports (@gifdsports) June 15, 2020
“Black folks lament all the time,” Smith said. “We totally support protest. We are protesters, we got a lot to protest about. But when you riot, particularly in your own community, in the past I’m talking about. Why is that something that we’ve lamented? Because when the fire stops burning, and the damage has been done and you’ve done it in your own community, where do you go from there?”
He then compared the same sentiment to Irving and Howard, who are reportedly thinking about sitting out the rest of the season for fear of taking the focus off of the social injustice in the United States that has been brought under a microscope as of late.
“In this regard, when you’re looking at the NBA, you’re not talking about the players,” he said. “You’re talking about the collateral effect that it has on people the sport employs, on people in local economies who feed off of that. The fact is that something like that, cancelling the NBA season, it’s not just going to affect the players, it’s going to affect thousands upon thousands of people. Millions if not billions of dollars for economies, and that’s going to have a ripple effect. You can’t ignore that.”
Clearly, Smith has very strong feelings about how Irving and Howard are approaching the situation.
Whether or not his words end up having an impact on the players remains to be seen.
