An act of conscience in the midst of protests
Orlando Magic forward Jonathan Isaac tore his ACL during a game against the Sacramento Kings on Sunday. The Magic got the win over the Kings 132-116, but it came at a terrible price.
While going for a layup, the 22year-old star blew out the same knee that had sidelined him for 31 games earlier in the season. Unless he’s able to develop the healing powers of the unkillable XMen mutant Wolverine, he’s out for the rest of an already abbreviated season.
Because Mr. Isaac has been in the headlines recently because of his refusal to kneel during the National Anthem with the majority of his colleagues in the NBA, I was curious about what the reaction would be to his season-ending injury on social media.
To my surprise, it was mercifully short of the mean-spiritedness I expected, even on Twitter where one goes for epic dragging and schadenfreude over the most inconsequential things. There was a “Karma, baby” meme on Twitter, but it seemed more perfunctory than heartfelt and failed to get much traction.
As the tweets of concern from NBA colleagues and the applause of support from both teammates and the opposing team demonstrated when he was rolled off the floor in a wheelchair — his personal “chariot of fire” — genuine affection for Mr. Isaac remains high, trumping whatever awkwardness might have arisen from his decision to break ranks with 99.9% of the players in the league last week.
With his Orlando Magic jersey now second only to LeBron James’ as the best-selling jersey in the NBA, Jonathan Isaac remains a popular and principled outlier at a time when being remotely contrarian is bad for one’s brand. His decision to stand and pray silently is the likely reason his jersey is so popular these days.
Still, Mr. Isaac’s refusal to kneel differs more in style than substance with his NBA colleagues. Because he is a Black man in America, he doesn’t dispute the scourge of police brutality and the need to publicly stand against it. Because he is an ordained minister, kneeling for anything other than acknowledging God is a non-starter with him, no matter how well intentioned the gesture is. He’s also uncomfortable wearing audience-tested protest slogans when he’s bright enough to come up with his own if he so chooses. He also chose to pray.
While his reasons for standing apart from every other player in the NBA seems idiosyncratic to most, it is a position arrived at honestly by someone who allows his conscience and his faith to inform his public stances even if it is at odds with the prevailing social and political orthodoxy.
Mr. Isaac has made it clear that he’s not opposed to what his colleagues are doing to show their solidarity with those calling for police accountability — he just has a different way of expressing it. He prefers to pray. It’s a nuanced response that irks those who prefer uniformity at the expense of conscience. To his credit, Mr. Isaac doesn’t care about pleasing his critics.
Now, for all I know, Mr. Isaac may be a card-carrying religious conservative. That is his right as an American citizen. There are lots of Black conservatives out there who don’t advertise it, but at least Mr. Isaac has the courage of his convictions if he’s one of them. He’d rather pray for change than kneel for it.
Ironically, if the GOP weren’t so determined to be the party of voter suppression and gerrymandering, it could capture a sizable percentage of Black voters who, besides being religious and socially conservative, also resent being told to go to the back of the electoral bus by white Republicans who have never welcomed them into the fold.
Besides a reluctance to kneel for religious reasons, I suspect Mr. Isaac might intuit there is something strange about corporate America’s rush to identify with the iconography of Black Lives Matter in the post-George Floyd era.
Everyone not born yesterday knows that with the exception of Nike, corporate America cowered in fear of nasty tweets from President Donald Trump as he made his opposition to kneeling players clear. The cowardice of the NFL and the gutlessness of the NBA in negating its players’ constitutional right to kneel is what contributed to former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick being blackballed by the NFL until George Floyd’s murder changed American politics in less than a month.
The NFL has recently “course corrected,” rescinded its rule against kneeling and invited Mr. Kaepernick to return to the game. Even so, it has yet to formally apologize for depriving him of a chance to compete during his prime years against many of the game’s best players.
Looking at the hypocrisy of both the NFL and the NBA, Mr. Isaac may prefer to listen to his own conscience rather than outsource it to the whims of nakedly greedy leagues and franchises that also want to profit from America’s change of heart when it comes to BLM and public protest.
By standing instead of kneeling during the National Anthem, Mr. Isaac isn’t revealing himself to be some kind of “anti-Kaepernick.” If anything, he is proving that he is cut from the same ethical cloth when it comes to resisting popular consensus and doing what he believes to be right by his own lights.
Mr. Isaac knew he was going to be dragged by disappointed fans for allegedly “selling out,” even though a true “sellout” is the person who ignores his or her conscience just to get along with the crowd.
Personally, I don’t believe that kneeling in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, Colin Kaepernick and the entire NBA is contrary to my convictions as a Christian, but I don’t want or expect Mr. Isaac to do anything that would violate his principles if he’s arrived at an entirely different conclusion. I’m more suspicious of sports and entertainment corporations trying to co-opt BLM than I am of Mr. Isaac’s decision to stand and pray.
I’m sure Mr. Kaepernick recognizes a kindred spirit in Jonathan Isaac even if he disagrees with him about the efficacy of kneeling. After all, Mr. Kaepernick’s kneeling has already brought several big sports leagues to their knees.