Sports and ethics: The thin line between redemption and reckoning

Zafir Nagji, Staff Writer

Professional athletes are constantly at the forefront of mainstream media. Being in the public eye as much as they are means their lives are subject to analysis and judgment. This can mean immense positive affirmation when they contribute to improving society, such as LeBron James winning Associated Press Athlete of the Year in 2018 after opening the I Promise School in his hometown of Akron, Ohio. It can also bring about harsh criticism for poorly made decisions, such as the ridicule Lamar Odom received when he came out about his struggles with drug addiction.

However, when athletes get into serious legal trouble, teams and leagues rarely disbar them from playing and earning millions of dollars on the public stage. So, to answer the question if it is ethically sound to allow this to happen, let’s look at some cases where professional athletes were allowed to play despite legal troubles and some scenarios where athletes were blackballed for lesser reasons.

The NBA is no stranger to its athletes encountering legal issues. One of the more recent and well-known players in this category is Charlotte Hornets forward, Miles Bridges, who was unable to travel to Canada for a matchup against the Toronto Raptors on Dec. 18, 2023, due to his legal troubles.

In 2022, Bridges was charged with one felony count of causing harm to a parent of a child and two felony counts of child abuse. He pled no contest to the first felony count to drop the other two and was sentenced to three years of probation with no jail time and had to agree to a 10-year protection order that mandated he stay 100 yards away from the woman in question.

The NBA also added a 30-game suspension, but this did not prevent the Hornets from signing Bridges to a $7.9 million extension in July 2023. Just three months later, Bridges was back in the news for more inappropriate decisions.

In October 2023, a criminal summons was issued for Bridges as he allegedly violated the protective order he agreed to less than a year ago by reportedly threatening his former girlfriend and damaging her car while their children were in the vehicle. He also threatened to withhold child support payments if she reported the incident.

The NFL also has its share of athletes involved in deviant activity. Most famous among them is Antonio Brown, who, in 2019, was accused of sexual assault by his former trainer, Britney Taylor. Taylor accused Brown of assaulting her during two training trips in June 2017 and raping her in May 2018. After a brief suspension enforced by the league, Brown signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at the special request of Tom Brady.

Super Bowl-winning cornerback Richard Sherman also incriminated himself in 2021 when he crashed his SUV into a suburban Seattle construction site, attempted to break into his in-laws’ house, and physically fought with officers trying to apprehend him. Sherman was set to be a free agent after the 2021 NFL season, and while he was unable to find a contract with another team, he was soon hired by Fox Sports to be on their popular TV show, UNDISPUTED, with acclaimed journalist Skip Bayless.

These are certainly not the only examples of legal deviation in professional sports. Other infamous cases include Karl Malone impregnating a 13-year-old girl and still being named to the NBA’s Top 75 Players list and Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and, more recently, Hockey Canada’s massive sexual assault scandal, which The Reflector will cover as information continues to be released.

Additionally, the purpose of this article is not to say that those who are accused of crimes and wrongdoings do not deserve second chances, even if it was their own poor decision-making and lack of character that led them to do so. However, the issue stems from the fact that in an average person’s life, criminal activity often spells them out of ever hoping to have a reputable career and make good on their second chance, simply because they do not perform on multi-billion dollar stages for the richest team and league owners in the world.

Furthermore, athletes have lost the careers they so religiously worked hard to obtain for political reasons. Colin Kaepernick comes to mind right away; before some games in 2016, to protest racial inequality and police brutality, he and Eric Reid sat during the national anthems. As a sign of respect to military personnel, they later decided to kneel.

“After hours of careful consideration, and even a visit from Nate Boyer, a retired Green Beret and former NFL player, we came to the conclusion that we should kneel, rather than sit, … during the anthem, as a peaceful protest,” said Reid. “We chose to kneel because it’s a respectful gesture. I remember thinking our posture was like a flag flown at half-mast to mark a tragedy.”

They started with this gesture in the preseason, but over the course of the regular season, 11 other players joined Kaepernick in his peaceful protest. Many NFL fans burned their Kaepernick jerseys and other Nike products they owned after he became the face of their “Dream Crazy” ad campaign, which had the tagline, “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything. Just do it.”

As a result of the backlash and the NFL’s strong patriotism, Kaepernick was not offered a contract by any of the 30 teams in the league after becoming a free agent following the protest. While Kaepernick was, by no means, the best quarterback in the league, his jerseys always sold well and he had become an established name under the shield by then, meaning he absolutely deserved a contract and was iniquitously black balled out of one as a result of his protest.

The next year, in 2017, 200 more players in the NFL kneeled during the national anthem and in 2020, when the NBA had to finish its season in an isolated bubble because of the pandemic, a number of teams and players carried out the same gesture and wore Black Lives Matter warmup shirts to protest the rising issues of police brutality and institutional racism.

Kaepernick was not the first to lose his job over peaceful protesting. Over three decades ago, former NBA star player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf was suspended by the league for refusing to stand for the national anthem, protesting the flag that he believed was symbolic of tyranny and oppression. He later chose to stand, but rather than placing his hand on his heart, he chose to pray, and presumably because of his recent conversion to Islam, received immense backlash. Boos in opposing arenas was just the start, as he soon began receiving death threats and a home he was building in Mississippi was burned down.

His playing time declined rapidly after his protest and by 2001, he was out of the NBA. It was not until 2017 that he was offered the chance to return to the hardwood, as Ice Cube’s BIG3 basketball league became Abdul-Rauf’s new battleground and welcomed him with open arms.

Again, those who commit crimes or make mistakes deserve a second chance after showing signs of improvement and committing to bettering themselves. However, athletes, who often act as role models and earn massive salaries, seem to escape being held to the same standards as the average person and are given opportunities most average people would not receive. This becomes especially concerning when athletes who have seemingly committed no wrongdoing are suspended and sometimes even blackballed from their respective sports for much less immoral behaviour.