After being shut down by the coronavirus outbreak in mid-March, sports leagues are beginning to start or resume their seasons as the country is slowly opening back up. However, with the ongoing protests in response to police brutality towards the Black community, the question some league’s face is whether to keep the show going with what’s been going on across the country.
During his conversation with HipHopDX, Icewear Vezzo gave his thoughts on the NBA continuing their season in Orlando and how he feels the players who don’t want the season to pick back up and rather protest aren’t legit activists.
“I think the players that have been involved with protests and being activists in a sense that still want to play, I think they’re genuine. But I think the ones who are taking the time right now to say they don’t want to play and protest instead, I don’t think that’s genuine at all,” says Icewear Vezzo.
“What’s different from a rapper going to work and protesting? What’s different from Kendrick Lamar leaving that protest and going to the studio? Or LeBron leaving a protest and then going to play ball,” asks Vezzo. “LeBron wants to play but he also is a person who was active during this pandemic and this whole protest situation. It’s genuine with him.”
Vezzo thinks it’s a bit shady that certain ballers aren’t hitting the court for protesting reasons. In his mind, it’s hard to tell who’s serious with their cause because people have figured out how to profit off activism.
“At first people were just protesting, now we got people who learned how to benefit from protesting and from standing up,” says Vezzo. “So over the last two months, you get rewarded for speaking up and standing out and people are seeing that. So I think those guys who say that just don’t want to go to work.”
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In regards to the NFL who has it’s own well-documented issues with race, Vezzo thinks the players should skip the season entirely due to the league’s inability to acknowledge and tackle racial injustices.
“I don’t think the NFL players should play because it’s a different vibe with them. The NBA cares and always accepted and appreciated our community. The NFL is not with the movement,” he says. “There are no Black owners and look at what happened with Kaepernick. He got blackballed for standing up. LeBron James gets rewarded from the NBA when he speaks up. Playing in the NFL ain’t no different from playing for a slave master, to me.”
Vezzo went even further to say some of the mentalities of players, mainly quarterbacks, are influenced by the NFL’s lack of interest in acknowledging the racial issues plaguing the country.
“Wasn’t [Patrick] Mahomes the guy who basically said he didn’t understand police brutality?” he asked. “Like he said something wild like that, right? You look at these guys who are quarterbacks and you look at their mentality, it’s no different from being a house nigga with that type of mentality.
“Think about somebody openly saying that who’s the star quarterback, having those conversations, giving that opinion and sharing that insight with his bosses and with the people that pay him and that’s above him. That’s why they make him a star and say, ‘yeah, we like that nigga. He can be the quarterback.”
Check back with HipHopDX for our full interview with Icewear Vezzo coming soon.
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How pathetic…smfh
Oh boo hoo! It’s so hard to be an athlete making millions of $$$$ every year! Slavery! Oppression! Get the fuck outta here you rich privileged fucks!
You must be white. lol People want to dedicate their time to helping out and you’re dissing them. lol you’re a piece of shit
No he is a crybaby. Your a racist.
They’re just trying to get a message out. Advocating for others on a larger more visible platform. Why you so butt hurt? Because their beliefs don’t align with yours? Now is the time to unite and have conversations with one another to understand and not be so immature.
God bless the Detroit homie Vezzo but maybe certain people don’t want to play because they don’t want to, like, fall out and die a few days or a week after getting sweaty and bumping into one another playing these games.
The NBA only has one black owner.
The corporate NBA’s nominally progressive stance to allow BLM phrases on shirts, etc., should not be looked at as some kind of “the NBA is super down with the cause” sentiment. The NBA writ large is super down with making its money and recovering whatever financial losses there are from the 2020 season. Period.
First off all, LeBron is a slave to the Chinese communist like all the other NBA clowns pushing the Marxist BLM bullshit. So that whole in bed with China relationship the NBA has makes them stand out from the NFL. Second, why do all black “activists” buy into the whole group think mentality so damn hard ? Why can’t other blacks have no opinion on thugs clashing with cops? Maybe those people know how to stay out of trouble? It doesn’t take a genius to stay away from cops. Only an idiot would buy into the lie that cops target blacks because of their skin.
I have my biggest problem with the nfl being the lige expectancy of a player vrs the amount of pay they get, they make very littke for the level.of public brutality of the sport on their body and autonomy only to depend on endorsements to build their worth which leaves them not only slaves to the league but slaves to the govt and media outlets limiting their abilities to stand for anything outside of the acts of brutality. Theyre second for lowest psid athletes next to hockey and a piece of me believes thats purposeful because both sports originated from black men and are now perpetuated by white patriarchy as their own making