Adam Silver wants to sit down and talk to Kyrie. We all know when the Big Boss…the one that works in a different building or a different city…wants to talk to us that the issue is life changing. Adam purposefully left lots of time between his public announcement of the meeting and it’s actual happening. The public announcement was the warning shot. The meeting will be about the punishment implementation. And yes, the punishment has already been determined. That’s just the way it goes with employment. The Brooklyn Nets have already implemented their punishment. Minimum 5 game ban that lasts until they are satisfied he can work for them and not ‘tarnish’ their image. The NBA however is also allowed to apply punishment to players. When I saw a front row of protestors at a recent Kyrie game I knew he was in far deeper trouble than even he likely realized. The NBA simply can not have that happening for any length of time.
I believe when Adam meets Kyrie he will ban Kyrie from playing NBA basketball until he goes through a lengthy educational program and shows an ability to not damage the reputation of NBA teams. It won’t be called a ban for legal reasons, it will be called a suspension. Of course when you control the requirements to lift that suspension it’s a ban if you want it to be one. There will be a ton of hurdles for Kyrie to jump. Given his history of refusing to be ordered around by anyone, especially White Men, I doubt he’s going to be interested in following Adam’s orders. There are a few really important and difficult topics to dig into here and I hope readers will continue on with a calm and peaceful frame of mind. Nobody is trying to be racist or anti-Semitic or any other terrible way to behave in this article.
First off I’m never a big supporter of Billionaires. I find they bend and outright change rules and laws to help them protect their money and privilege or help them earn more money and privilege. Society has gone through many years and countless tragic events to learn difficult lessons on how to manage itself effectively. Those lessons become laws and they are strictly enforced in a democratic society. I’ve seen so much evidence of ‘the Rich’ working to change laws for their benefit it is disgusting. Of course ‘Rich’ people themselves are just fine. Nice people to talk with. Great friends. Wonderful family people. However the higher up you go on the ‘Rich’ scale the more you see the manipulation of regulations and laws to improve business opportunities. NBA Owners are at the top of the top of the ‘Rich’ scale. The 0.01 percenters. They pay Adam Silver’s salary and you should have no doubt about it, Adam’s job is to protect their investments in the NBA. That’s his first, second and last concern in this Kyrie affair.
The big issue here is Kyrie’s right to free speech. A lot of people don’t understand how important free speech is for society to function properly. That’s tragic because a healthy society needs an effective way to look at problems, discuss them and work out a better way to handle them in the future. Of course we all have different problems so we need free speech to simply hear all the different problems all the people in society are having. Then we can consider them, and investigate how large the problem is and what type of solutions might be possible. Without being allowed to even say your problems let alone explain to them so others can consider them Society would never be able to fix almost anything that people who control ‘speech’ don’t want to change. So let’s try to dig into the issue Kyrie is raising up here and consider it fairly because we all should respect his right to free speech.
I don’t know what Kyrie’s full issue is in this situation. I’ve heard lots of takes on it. He seems to believe Black people were the original ‘Jewish’ people. My limited understanding of Mediterranian history would agree that Jewish people at the time of Christ were dark skinned. I don’t know if they had dark Black skin, light Black skin, dark brown skin, light brown skin. I don’t find it relevant what the color of their skin was at the time of Christ. However as soon as I see people arguing they can’t say something bad because of their skin I find it silly to even consider it. I don’t think Kyrie is anti-semitic thou for many reasons including his public history of statements and a very recent $500,000 donation to assist in working against antisemitism. However he did clearly promote a movie that seems to raise a lot of anti-semitic arguments. I haven’t seen the movie, I have only read the reviews of arguments on the movie that upset people. After reviewing Kyrie’s statements I believe he appreciates parts of the movie and not others. The movie seems to make many wide ranging claims, the most relevant to Kyrie’s statements being that current Jewish people are white and stole the ‘children of God’ title from Black people. Other claims of the holocaust and such don’t seem to be what Kyrie is talking about. I can believe that due to massive migration into and out of the area around Jerusalem over a period of 2,000 years that the color of the native population has become more white than black. The many Holy Crusades conducted by European powers would likely cause this type of result. However I don’t find this very possible situation a planned conspiracy or White takeover of the children of God. So I would have to disagree with Kyrie, as far as I understand his position which is admittedly likely very poor.
If Kyrie’s belief is that the Earth is Flat should he be banned from the NBA??? Clearly not. It’s a strange belief, but it doesn’t harm anyone else and Kyrie can live his life how he likes. He can promote that belief all he wants as well…because that’s what people do. Humans talk to other humans and share information. Others believe it or don’t believe it. Happens every day and it’s perfectly natural.
If Kyrie’s belief is that White people took over the Christian God’s church and removed Black people that’s a perfectly ok thing to believe. In fact most art historians would agree that church art was focused on more white skinned ‘gentile’ practitioners from richer Roman areas than dark skinned church practitioners from poorer Roman areas. Was it an advertising tool to attract richer people to the church or a conspiracy to turn Black people into slaves…that’s where my opinion and Kyrie’s might seem to differ. However I fully respect his right to talk about his opinion. Free Speech is so critical to humanity solving its problems in a civilized manner that you need to really cause terrible harm before I am willing to take away your Free Speech. Obviously I wish Kyrie had more carefully expressed himself given his huge platform and the delicate topic of ‘skin color’ and religion.
If Kyrie’s belief is that current Jewdism is excluding Black people and it has a long terrible history of lying and causing massive problems around the world then I think he’s gone much too far and is anti-Semitic. That seems to be the full message of the movie Kyrie promoted and Kyrie should clarify he is not anti-Semitic, which I believe he tried to do in a way not conceding anything about supporting the movie. It’s hard to support the movie given some of the clearly terrible claims the movie seems to make. That’s what Kyrie seems to want to do, likely because he is a strong and proud Black history supporter. I don’t really know because Kyrie is very cryptic when he speaks and it is difficult to easily understand what he means. I believe Kyrie speaks like that in an attempt to muddy the message enough so supporters can still understand what he is saying but ‘haters’ will not understand he is against them. Politicians are great at using words and phrases that mean little and have a thousand ways to not be held to the stated position in the future. Kyrie tries the same in his support of Black people and culture. It’s sad he feels the need to do that rather than clearly state his open support of whatever cause he wants to support.
I would warn Adam Silver and all the NBA Owners to be careful when they deal with Free Speech and denying employment to people. I am sure they have an army of great lawyers, but for readers both issues are taken very seriously by Law Courts. It’s likely the NBA works hard to steer away from those issues with all sorts of other concerns they feel strong enough to ‘suspend’ (ban) Kyrie from the NBA for an indefinite period of time. Beyond the multi million dollar lawsuits that will surely fly the NBA has hundreds of other players that are all leaders in their communities and all have large platforms to spread their messages. A large portion of these players will be extremely sensitive to any restriction the league might be seen to impose on players around support for Black rights. Kyrie’s main issue seems to be supporting Black history awareness and that is a good issue to support as long as it’s done without all the other anti-Semitic messages.
I hope this article has helped discuss the issue Kyrie finds himself buried in right now just a little bit. I don’t want to see Kyrie suspended indefinitely. I don’t want to see his Free Speech limited. What I want is a calm conversation about exactly what he is trying to support and what he is not supporting. Showing up front row at NBA games to protest Kyrie doesn’t help the conversation move forward, it increases the pressure to stop the conversation and hire lawyers. Insulting Kyrie online doesn’t help understand what he’s standing for, it’s simply jumping to conclusions with a few grains of information to base them on. Nobody needs to be canceled here. More clarity is needed and with that will come responsibility for what beliefs you promote. If the law has banned the speech Kyrie is engaging in then let the legal process happen. If Kyrie is innocent of any crimes then judge for yourself if you like him or not due to his speech, but don’t attack him because you don’t agree. Respectfully disagree and move on. We don’t have to win the battle of ideas because there is no battle! All ideas are welcome and society will keep trying different ones until we find what works best for people.
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Kyrie posted an apology as this article was being published. I'll add a link to it here on his Instagram account. My article does seem to fit with this recent apology.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ckhj8iIu0HN/