Former NBA Commissioner David Stern Swipes at NFL: If it Were Basketball, Kaepernick Would Playing

Former NBA commissioner David Stern took a shot at the NFL for Colin Kaepernick’s lack of employment in the league, saying that if the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback were a pro-basketball player, he’d be playing for an NBA team.

Stern, who left his top position at the NBA in 2014, made the theoretical remark during an appearance on the Bloomberg Business of Sports podcast, where he used the Kaepernick controversy to claim professional basketball has a better record with civil rights than other leagues.

“As we were digging out of a terrible hole for us — in the late ’70s and ’80s, when there was a fair amount of racism exhibited about players — we felt as a matter of policy we had to promote our players and show that they were real people,” Stern said, after suggesting NFL owners may be wary of politically outspoken players because of attacks from President Donald Trump.

He went to say that the laissez-faire attitude toward their athletes’ personalities and activism “worked” for the NBA.

After sitting and later kneeling during pre-game national anthems to protest police brutality in 2016, Kaepernick was left unemployed the following season, as he could not a reach deal with any of the 32 teams in the league. He has since sued the NFL on the basis that they allegedly conspired together to keep him off the field because of his views.

Stern also told Bloomberg that he thinks the NFL should have given Kaepernick a temporary suspension for kneeling during the anthem. As for the outraged fans who threatened to boycott the NFL if they allowed the activism to continue, Stern said they aren’t actually going anywhere.

“Look at the bounceback the NFL had this season,” Stern said. “They are the No. 1 sports property and the No. 1 television property likely in the world, other than the Olympics and the World Cup.”

[image via screengrab]