Carlos Osorio AP
NBA Finals Warriors Cavaliers Basketball
Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James takes questions at a press conference after the basketball team's practiced during the NBA Finals, Thursday, June 7, 2018, in Cleveland. The Warriors lead the series 3-0 with Game 4 on Friday. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
LeBron James is taking his talents to Venice Beach. The greatest basketball player on earth has signed with the Los Angeles Lakers for four years at $154 million. Analyses of this free-agent signing, what it will mean for the Lakers, the champion Golden State Warriors, and the rest of the NBA, is all over the web, television, newspapers, and pretty much every media outlet short of skywriting.
But there is another aspect of this signing that could have far-reaching repercussions: what the move by LeBron to Los Angeles could mean for his critical social activism.
Over the last six years, LeBron has carved out a legacy for himself as someone unafraid to use his hyper-exalted, brought-to-you-by-Nike platform to speak out about racism and police violence. The billionaire athlete who grew up in public housing has never forgotten his roots as he’s tried to live out his teenage dream to be “a global icon like Muhammad Ali.”
It started for LeBron when he was with the Miami Heat. He organized his entire team, black and white players, to pose wearing hoodies, the international symbol of solidarity with the family of Trayvon Martin. Martin, a seventeen-year-old resident of Miami Gardens, Florida, was killed by a vigilante who used Martin’s hoodie as an excuse for his murder.
When LeBron went from Miami back to his hometown team of Cleveland, he remained vocal, speaking out publicly in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
At the ESPY Awards in 2016,LeBron said: “We all feel helpless and frustrated by the violence. We do. But that’s not acceptable. It’s time to look in the mirror and ask ourselves what are we doing to create change. It’s not about being a role model. It’s not about our responsibility to the tradition of activism. I know tonight we’re honoring Muhammad Ali. The GOAT. But to do his legacy any justice, let’s use this moment as a call to action for all professional athletes to educate ourselves. It’s for these issues.”
Last year, when someone scrawled a racial slur on his house, LeBron took the extraordinary step of going public with what happened. “This is kind of killing me inside right now,” he said. “No matter how much money you have, no matter how famous you are, no matter how many people admire you, being black in America is—it’s tough. And we got a long way to go for us as a society and for us as African Americans until we feel equal in America.”
LeBron has directly challenged the nation’s Twitter-bully-in-chief, referring to him dismissively as “U bum.”
LeBron has also directly challenged the nation’s Twitter-bully-in-chief, referring to him dismissively as “U bum.” Interestingly, LeBron is the one person who Donald Trump seems to fear in the Twitterverse and refuses to challenge—perhaps because LeBron may be more popular than he is.
In Cleveland, LeBron was the biggest fish in a very small pond. If something happened, the media—and the public—had the expectation that he would have something to say. It was a surprise when he wouldn’t speak out after a police killing was caught on film.
Now that dynamic has been turned on its head. He’ll be playing in the media capital of the world, the sort of place that is less pond than it is ocean, often filled with people climbing over one another to become the first to comment on the issues of the day.
In addition, one of the reasons that LeBron stated that he was interested in Los Angeles was the “social activism” of team president Magic Johnson. Magic, perhaps the greatest point guard of all time, is not known to be as vocal as LeBron on issues of race. His activism is much more rooted in “green power”—capital investment in the black community.
That kind of work matters, but it should not come at the expense of LeBron’s voice. In the end, waiting for LeBron to be outspoken in Los Angeles is not a winning strategy. We must work to sustain the social movements against racial inequity that drive him to keep using his voice to fight for a better world. Los Angeles is its own hermetically sealed universe; cracking it open for the greater good will be the task at hand.