Jeremy Lin Talks Donald Trump, Feels A Lot Of What ‘Steph Curry Described’
Jeremy Lin thinks Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors did the right thing by standing up to President Donald Trump.
Lin used Monday’s NBA Media Day to weigh in on the widening controversy that has pitted the president against a growing number of sports stars across several leagues.
Trump recently announced that he was rescinding the Warriors’ White House invitation as NBA champs before Curry and company could officially make it clear that they had no intentions of showing up to begin with.
“It’s great for everyone to take a stand,” Lin told the New York Post. “Obviously the invite was rescinded, which is a tough situation to be in. But looking at Steph [Curry] and the Warriors, I don’t think they could’ve done anything differently. A lot of what Steph described, I feel as well.”
Lin’s words served as a reminder to everyone that he too is a minority, and he has talked about growing up as a minority in a society that has long been conflicted over race.
“I’m not big into politics, but right now, I really am in terms of learning and trying to figure out how do I use my platform and my voice to take a stand,” he said. “Because at the end of the day, we see a lot of injustice still, and things aren’t the way we thought they should be in America, or aren’t the way they wish they could be.”
Trump upped the ante earlier this month during a political speech in Alabama, where he declared any athlete taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem should immediately feel condemnation.
“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a b***h off the field right now,” he said. “Out! He’s fired. He’s fired.”
That declaration and other moves like taking back the Warriors invite immediately drew the ire of sports stars across the landscape, most notably among them three-time NBA champion LeBron James, who dismissed Trump as a “bum” in a tweet that was liked by roughly 1.5 million people and retweeted by over 630,000 others.
On Monday, James stance hadn’t softened much.
“The people run this country,” the Washington Post reports James boomed during a press conference. “Not one individual, and damn sure not him.”
James added that he sees all the growing protest as a good thing for the solidarity that it breeds.
“I salute the NFL, the players, the coaches, the owners and the fans it was unbelievable,” he said of several NFL teams taking action in one form or another on Sunday. “There was no divide, no divide even from that guy that continues to try to divide us as people.”
James later added, “We know this is the greatest country in the world. This is the land of the free, but we still have problems just like everybody else.”
San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich tried sizing up the situation and the issue of race using a metaphor from a different sport.
“It’s hard to sit down and decide that, yes, it’s like you’re at the 50-meter mark in a 100-meter dash,” he said. “You’ve got that kind of a lead, yes, because you were born white. You have advantages that are systemically, culturally, psychologically there. And they’ve been built up and cemented for hundreds of years. People want to hold their position, people want the status quo, people don’t want to give that up. And until it’s given up, it’s not going to be fixed.”
[Featured Image by Michael Reaves/Getty Images]
