Trump turns sports field into political battleground

President Donald Trump took aim at two of the world’s most powerful sports leagues and some of their most popular athletes, directly inserting himself into an already fiery debate over race, social justice and the role athletes have played in highlighting those issues.

In a speech and a series of tweets, he urged NFL owners to fire players who do not stand for the national anthem, suggested the league is declining because it is not as violent as it once was and seemed to disinvite the NBA champion Golden State Warriors from the traditional White House visit over their star player Stephen Curry’s public opposition to him.

Speaking in Huntsville, Ala., on Friday, he used an expletive to describe players who kneel or sit during the anthem to protest police brutality against black Americans and other forms of social injustice.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out, he’s fired,’ ” Trump said Friday night at a rally for Sen. Luther Strange, who is facing Roy Moore in a Republican primary runoff.

While many fans on social media were supportive of the president, the reaction from many athletes was immediate and impassioned, particularly among African-American football and basketball players who have criticized Trump on race. Many, including LeBron James, among the best-known athletes in the country, denounced the president.

“U bum StephenCurry30 already said he ain’t going! So therefore ain’t no invite. Going to White House was a great honor until you showed up!” James wrote on Twitter, where he has nearly twice as many followers Trump.

“It’s surreal, to be honest,” Curry said. “I don’t know why he feels the need to target certain individuals rather than others. I have an idea of why, but it’s kind of beneath a leader of a country to go that route. That’s not what leaders do.”

Trump also drew an unusually strong rebuke from Roger Goodell, commissioner of the NFL, whose owners include many donors to, and friends of, the president, as well as from the football players’ union.

As of late Saturday afternoon, NFL players were still deciding if and how they would respond Sunday. Many players felt it would be difficult to organize a leaguewide protest on short notice.

“Guys got hit in the face (Friday) night,” said one person familiar with the NFL Players Association’s thinking, who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.

Some players also worried Trump had put them in a bad position: If they protested, Trump could reassert talking points to his base. If they observed the anthem, Trump could claim responsibility.

A spokesman for the University of North Carolina national championship basketball team confirmed the team would not be going to the White House, but he said it was a scheduling conflict, not a response to the day’s backand-forth.

On Saturday night, Bruce Maxwell of the Oakland Athletics became the first Major League Baseball player to kneel during the national anthem. Insulting his critics

Many athletes have been moved to comment on race and social justice more frequently in the past year after a series of police shootings of unarmed African-Americans and the support Trump has received from white supremacists.

Last year, Colin Kaepernick, then a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, began kneeling during the playing of the national anthem to highlight, he has said, police brutality and racial injustice. He left the team after last season and has not worked since, inspiring debate over whether teams are punishing him, while many players have knelt or made gestures in support of him during the anthem.

At the same time, some owners of NFL teams have suggested players should not take part in political demonstrations during the game. None appeared to speak up for Trump on Saturday, though, and with the exception of two leftleaning owners, they did not criticize him either.

“Comments like we heard from the president are inappropriate, offensive and divisive,” two of the NFL’s most prominent owners, John Mara and Steve Tisch of the New York Giants, said in a statement. “We are proud of our players, the vast majority of whom use their NFL platform to make a positive difference in our society.”

The president often uses freewheeling campaign speeches and Twitter to berate and insult critics in unvarnished language and to whip up core supporters.

But Trump’s broadsides this time focused on some of the most prominent African-American athletes in the country, who have international followings and have called out the president for his lack of tolerance and divisive views on race. ‘Lack of respect’

With the NFL struggling to make the game safer in light of scores of players who have been found to have severe brain damage from hard hits, Trump complained that the game was being ruined by referees trying to control unnecessarily rough tackles.

“Today if you hit too hard — 15 yards! Throw him out of the game!” he said, adding: “They’re ruining the game!”

Goodell said the president failed to understand how the league and its players work together to “create a sense of unity in our country and our culture.”

“Divisive comments like these demonstrate an unfortunate lack of respect for the NFL, our great game and all of our players, and a failure to understand the overwhelming force for good our clubs and players represent in our communities,” he said in a statement.

Goodell, who leads a league in which about three-quarters of the players are black while about the same percentage of fans are white, has tried to find a middle ground between the players and his bosses, the owners of the 32 NFL teams.

More than half a dozen owners contributed to Trump’s inauguration, and many of them donate heavily to conservative causes. Some owners, including Robert Kraft of the New England Patriots, consider Trump a friend.

“In calling upon his NFL ownership cronies to ‘fire the SOBs,’ he has effectively thrown these owners under the bus in exchange for a moment of applause in Alabama,” said Harry Edwards, a sociology professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

“Every owner, and especially the seven who supported him with both money and public association, are going to have to answer the questions: ‘What side of history are you on? Do you agree with Trump?’ If they agree or have no comment, they will be aligned against both the NFL commissioner and league office and the NFLPA. If they do not agree with his Alabama statements, they will in effect have separated themselves from both Trump and his alt-right constituency.”