Broadcaster Napear suspended, called ‘racist’
Sacramento Kings playby-play announcer and talk-show host Grant Napear has been placed on administrative leave by radio station KHTK after a weekend Twitter exchange with DeMarcus Cousins that prompted former Kings players to refer to Napear as a clown and “closet racist.”
Napear was absent Monday from the sports-talk radio show he hosts with former NBA player Doug Christie. The station said it plans to investigate a Twitter exchange he had Sunday in which Cousins asked Napear for his take on “BLM” (Black Lives Matter).
After facetiously replying, “Hey !!!! How are you? Thought you forgot about me. Haven’t heard from you in years,” Napear went on to Tweet: “ALL LIVES MATTER...EVERY SINGLE ONE!!!”
That line drew immediate criticism from some social media users, including former Kings and Warriors Chris Webber and Matt
Barnes, who called out Napear.
In a tweet accompanied by two clown faces, Webber wrote: “Demarcus we know and have known who Grant is. The team knows as well. I’ve told them many times. They’ve seen it. They know who he is.”
Barnes chimed in with, “Would expect nothing less from a closet racists (sic).”
Cousins, Webber and Barnes are black. Napear is white. Whether he was aware of it or not, the broadcaster repeated an inflammatory retort that often has been used by those seeking to dismiss the message of the “Black Lives Matter” movement.
Naper was slammed by a Twitter user who wrote, “‘All lives matter’ is the goto response from racist individuals when they’re asked about #BLM. How could you be so tone-deaf to not know that? Even if it wasn’t your intent to be racist, it was an incredibly dumb thing to say.”
How long Napear will be on leave from his radio show, and whether the dispute will affect his role as the longtime TV voice of the Kings on NBC Sports California, is unclear. But it appears that the opinions expressed by Webber and Barnes could be potentially more damaging than Napear’s “all lives matter” tweet.
In a Monday online post, Sacramento Bee writer TJ Macias wrote that Napear has a history of uttering controversial comments on hotbutton issues regarding racism. He pointed out that, in 2015, when Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling was infamously caught on tape making racist statements, Napear, defended Sterling on his radio show, despite all the mounting evidence against him.
In 2018, Napear even rehashed the topic on his radio show with Christie when he expressed that there is no way that Sterling could have been racist because he employed a black general manager in Elgin Baylor, and a black coach in Doc Rivers.
On Monday, Napear took a contrite tone on Twitter:
There has been bad blood between Napear and Cousins for years. After the Kings traded Cousins, a former Warriors player, to New Orleans in 2017, Napear often went out of his way to praise the deal, saying a “dark cloud” had been lifted from the franchise.
And last year, when Cousins, then playing for the Warriors, called out Toronto Raptors fans for cheering when Kevin Durant injured his achilles in game 5 of the NBA Finals, Napear responded with harsh words for Cousins, saying, “If there is any player in the NBA that should not be talking about fan behavior, and about how to treat athletes as opposed to people, it’s DeMarcus Cousins.”