Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James has said that some NFL owners have a ‘slave’ mentality.
Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and Carolina Panthers safety Eric Reid have both filed grievances against the NFL and its teams’ owners alleging they colluded to keep them out of football due to their stance on social issues.
Kaepernick has not played for the 49ers since 2016 when he first started kneeling during the Star Spangled banner to protest racial injustices while Reid was not signed by the Panthers until the end of September and has since been drug tested by the NFL six times in the past 11 weeks.
James, who has a history of speaking out on social issues in America, said that NFL players have to do what the owners say or they risk expulsion from their team.
“In the NFL they got a bunch of old white men owning teams and they got that slave mentality,” James said on his HBO discussion show, The Shop. “And it’s like, ‘This is my team. You do what the fuck I tell y’all to do. Or we get rid of y’all.’
“The difference between the NBA and the NFL, the NBA is what we believe he [a player] can be. The potential. In the NFL, it’s like what can you do for me this Sunday, or this Monday or this Thursday, and if you ain’t it, we moving on.”
LeBron airing out NFL owners on #TheShopHBO 🔥
"In the NFL, they got a bunch of old white men owning teams and they got that slave mentality," https://t.co/XLXNPZ8wkK
— Big Boss 🇵🇸 (@LordBalvin) December 22, 2018
James also praised NBA commissioner Adam Silver for his openness in dealing with his players and says that he will always entertain discussions and discourse.
“I’m so appreciative in our league of our commissioner,” James added. “He doesn’t mind us having … a real feeling and to be able to express that. It doesn’t even matter if Adam agrees with what we are saying, he at least wants to hear us out. As long as we are doing it in a very educational, nonviolent way, then he’s absolutely OK with it.”
