WATCH: NBA stars take part in campaign to end gun violence
The NBA has partnered with Everytown for Gun Safety, and this is a big deal.
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2 min read
The NBA has partnered with Everytown for Gun Safety, an organization founded by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. Stars like Stephen Curry, Chris Paul, Carmelo Anthony and Joakim Noah appear in commercials for a campaign to end gun violence that will air during games on Christmas Day. The first one opens with Curry saying, "I heard about a shooting involving a three-year-old girl over the summer. My daughter, Riley, is that age."
This is a big deal. While the term "gun control" is never used, Bloomberg's organization essentially exists as a "counterweight to the National Rifle Association," as the New York Times put it. Never before has a major sports league so directly associated itself with something like this -- the NBA logo appears at the end of the commercials.
The N.B.A. said it held little internal debate about working with Mr. Bloomberg’s group. “We know far too many people who have been caught up in gun violence in this country,” said Kathleen Behrens, the league’s president of social responsibility and player programs. “And we can do something about it.”
But the decision may prove tricky for the league: While many of its teams are based in cities dominated by Democrats, a number of other teams — and millions of N.B.A. fans — hail from places where Mr. Bloomberg and his approach to guns are viewed with deep suspicion. Mrs. Behrens said the league had not shown the ads to team owners, but added, “We’re not worried about any political implications.”
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Harry Edwards, the sociologist who, as leader of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, helped organize the raised-fist protest by Tommy Smith and John Carlos during the 1968 Summer Games, said too much gun violence was “tied into this masculine mystique — having to do with being respected as a man, or tough as a man.”
“When Steph Curry or Carmelo Anthony are saying, ‘No, there’s nothing masculine about that; the violence has to stop,’ these are the people that young African-American males around the country are identifying with,” Mr. Edwards said. “It has more impact than if the president had said it.”
According to the New York Times, film director Spike Lee pitched the idea to ESPN president John Skipper in November, and Skipper presented it to NBA commissioner Adam Silver. Lee had previously worked with Everytown for Gun Safety on a protest march.
