The Leader of the Free World is the NBA - August 30, 2020

by Craig “Swiss” Colby

There’s a new leader of the free world.

Usually that title goes to the President of the United States, but since Trump started alienating allies, cozying up to fascists and throwing American lives under the Covid bus, the role has been up for grabs.

This year, the NBA went out and took it.

2020 started with Covid-19 as a distant voice, whispering of trouble far away. As the voice grew louder, it gained more of our ear. We didn’t really start listening, though, until the NBA said “we’re shutting it down” after one player – one – contracted the virus. The NBA had been listening, looking at the science, and when it touched their world, they took immediate, extreme action. It was to their economic detriment, but to the benefit of their players, staff, and fans. 

Th NBA made their announcement on March 11. The World Health Organization recognized Covid-19 as a pandemic on March 12.  The NBA beat the WHO by a day.  Other sports, and the rest of the world, started shutting down after that, after the NBA showed the world what needed to be done. They did the right thing right away. That’s when the rest of us started paying attention.

Later, the NBA showed the world how to restart the economy. They created a bubble for the players and staff, putting safety first, while working in consultation with their players. If players wanted to opt out, they could. The league didn’t push safety aside to make people go to work. They found a way to make it work. They also managed to make it happen in Florida, pandemic central. 

The NBA was on top of marketing safety procedures. I don’t have official data on this but the first licensed masks I saw were for NBA teams. That’s one reason why my family has Toronto Raptors face protection.

The NBA fully embraced the social dynamics that had changed while they weren’t playing. As protests subsided, the league kept the conversation alive with Black Lives Matters written on the court and calls for justice on the backs of players jerseys.  They kept it up too. When the Milwaukee Bucks refused to play following the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin the league shut down all the games.  The NHL and some MLB teams followed suit.

When the players were trying to decide whether to keep playing, LeBron James reached out to the former leader of the free world, Barack Obama. Why? Because real leadership realizes it doesn’t know everything. It seeks guidance. Obama advised the players to resume playing. So, they did.

The players and owners joined to enact further social reform, including choosing to open arenas as voting stations to fight attempts at voter suppression. By the way, that was a step already taken by an NBA team, the Atlanta Hawks.

The NBA has handled potentially explosive legal disputes the right way. While Masai Ujiri, the Raptors president, was being investigated for an altercation with a sheriff’s deputy acting as security following the Raptor’s championship win, the NBA supported Ujiri, but kept quiet while the investigation continued. They spoke out after body cam footage pulled back the curtains on the incident.

Finally, the NBA was caught in a firestorm when Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted “Fight for freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.” China quickly pulled out of scheduled NBA events and took games off the air. It cost the NBA a lot of money. Naturally, the NBA tried to build bridges.  It was reported that the Chinese government asked for Morey to be fired, which they denied. Still NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s response said a lot. “We said there’s no chance that’s happening,” Silver said. “There’s no chance we’ll even discipline him.”

He also said "The NBA will not put itself in a position of regulating what players, employees and team owners say or will not say on these issues. We simply could not operate that way."

People can criticize the NBA’s response to China, but their response to the people who work for them is beyond reproach. The NBA put its relationship with its employees ahead of revenue. Remarkable.

Lest you think this just an American story, I’ll remind you that the NBA championship banner is hanging in Canada right now, won by players from all over the world who play tenacious team defence.

Put all this together and you see real leadership. Concrete, tangible, workable leadership. I feel like asking the NBA if I should send my kids back to school in the fall. If they were on the ballot in the U.S. election, I would vote for them.

It’s obvious. The NBA is now the leader of the free world.