New Oklahoma City Thunder guard Victor Oladipo apparently has no issue chiming in on the biggest story around the sports world today.
In a wide-ranging interview with Complex, the recently acquired 24-year-old rising star discussed whether he believes the national anthem protest that’s become prevalent around the NFL will transfer over to the NBA hardwood.
His response was rather interesting.
“Oh, no question. I truly believe it will. Because at the end of the day it’s a sport, and people are gonna be looking at some guys in the NBA to see what they’re gonna do as well,” the former lottery pick said. “At the end of the day you just control what you can control, so your opinion is your opinion, that’s the beauty of the United States, so, do whatever you feel is best that will help you do whatever you believe.”
If you believe what Baltimore Orioles outfielder Adam Jones has to say about how the demographic makeup of a sport plays a role in these protests, Oladipo probably isn’t wrong here.
Roughly three-quarters of today’s NBA players are African-American.
This lends some credence to the idea that at least a handful of players will decide to sit for the anthem as a way to protest perceived police brutality and show a united stand with San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick as well as others who have joined in on the protest.
As for Oladipo specifically, he wouldn’t say whether he’s considering taking part in the protest.
“Not yet, but a few people just in general I’ve had conversations with about that, I tell ‘em the same thing, people’s beliefs are people’s beliefs, you know what I mean, you can only control so much, you can only control what you can control, and the most things you can control is yourself,” the former Magic guard said. “So whatever you believe, believe in to the utmost. But I think definitely, we’ll see a few guys in the NBA doing the same thing.”
It will surely be interesting to see how this turns out on the NBA court. We will definitely find out soon enough.