Insubordination: Why Black NBA Stars Don't Buy The Vax
Canadian NBA star Andrew Wiggins was supposed to be known as a superstar when he was drafted No. 1 overall by Cleveland in the 2014 draft. Now, after seven seasons of mixed playing results, he may instead be best known as the guy who said no to the NBA on their mandatory vaccination rules.
In a delicious irony, he exposed the patronizing double standard of hyper-liberal white NBA media— which fanatically protects black players through every hypocrisy. Until now. And Wiggins, inadvertently, exposed the dirty secret about vaccine resistance: it’s not Ted Nugent, bow-hunting whites leading the idealogical resistance.
It’s people in the black community who, by a large margin, are telling Joe Biden and his liberal pals (gasp) that, while everyone else submits, dissent is their God-given right in America. In New York City, devastated in 2020 by Covid-19 and governor Andrew Cuomo’s ineptitude, roughly 72 percent of black New York City residents aged 18-44 are now banned banned from entering dining establishments, because they remain stubbornly unvaccinated.
In Florida, Black people have received 9 percent of vaccinations, while they make up 15 percent of cases, 17 percent of deaths, and 15 percent of the total population. (White people received a higher share of vaccinations compared to their share of cases in most states reporting data. )
The percentage of white people who have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose (53 percent) was 1.2 times higher than the rate for Black people (45 percent) as of September 20, 2021. This despite the pleading from race hustlers like CNN’s Don Lemon (‘It’s Not About Freedom, It Is About Public Health’) to force blacks to submit to the pressure for a jab.
Wiggins, now with the Golden State Warriors, refused to take the vaccine since his request for a religious exemption was denied. League rules say Warriors players must follow the guidelines of California, the home state of the Warriors. No needle, no playing at the Chase Center for Wiggins. That led the media in squishy NoCal to ask Wiggins’ teammate Draymond Green if he’ll pressure Wiggins to take the jab.
They didn’t get what they expected— or wanted. “It’s not my place or my business on whether he gets vaccinated or not — it's your own personal choice at the end of the day what you do with your body. It's not my place to tell him what he should or shouldn't do with his. Because he's not going to come tell me what I should do with my body.” [UPDATE: Golden State coach Steve Kerr now says Wiggins has had the vax. Wiggins insists he was forced. ]
Vax nothwithstanding, Green says, “We're dealing with something that, to me, feels like (it) has turned into a political war, when you're talking about vaccinated [people] and non-vaccinated [people],” "I think there is something to be said for people's concern about something that's being pressed so hard. Like, why are you pressing this so hard? You're pressing and pressing and pressing.”
Green continued, “You say we live in the land of the free. Well, you’re not giving anyone freedom, because you’re making people do something essentially… That goes against everything America stands for.”
In Washington, Wizards star Bradley Beal echoed Green’s comments. “I would like an explanation to people with vaccines – why are they still getting COVID if that’s something that we are supposed to highly be protected from?… It’s funny that it only reduces your chances of going to the hospital. It doesn’t eliminate anybody from getting COVID. Right?”
“Some people have bad reactions to the vaccine,” Beal said. “Nobody likes to talk about that. And what happens if one of our players gets the vaccine and they can’t play after that or they have complications after that? Because there are cases like that. But I feel we don’t talk about those as heavily, because they’re so minute maybe. But they are existent.”
Fellow NBA stars Kyrie Irving and Jonathan Isaac echoed Beal and Green on their right to decide. (Here’s Isaac dunking on Rolling Stone . Worse for vax boosters, the league’s bell cow, LeBron James, echoed the feminist diktat that it wasn’t his place to tell anyone what they can take in their body.
That brought out the hate from the press box, a hive of liberal/ progressive white thought if there ever was one.
"Draymond Green joins All-Hypocrisy team for vaccine stance" bugled there New York Daily News.
"Stop letting NBA anti-vaxxers spout COVID-19 misinformation" announced Yahoo.
"Bradley Beal Smugly Parades Ignorance On Covid Vaccines" pronounced Mediaite.
“On vaccines, NBA players are being told to shut up and dribble” noted the Washington Examiner.
The supposed kill shot in all these jeremiads is the new dagger of promoting “misinformation” (as if the Media Party didn’t do exactly that on Jussie Smollett, the Covington Kids, RussiaGate, Hunter Biden’s laptop and 150 more. ) “Misinformation” now being the all-purpose cleanser for thought disapproved by Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia and other tech oligarchs.
For the righteous knowledge industry, hearing both sides is now a quaint artifact of the past, like John Phillip Souza band music. As we wrote Nov. 23, 2020. “The sale has been made by those in authority. They call the shots. No one is allowed to dissent. That was the end game. And there’s no going back when the Woke media warns you that resistance will invite the cancel culture to ruin your life. This is the new reality. Get used to it. And if you value your freedoms, tough luck.”
Almost a year later black NBA stars, of all people, are the ones making this point to the civil libertarians or free-speech liberals that freedom is for everyone, not just for those with whom you agree. Who’d have thunk’ that?
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book with his son Evan is called InExact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx