Legendary NBA coach Phil Jackson says he stopped watching basketball when league got political

Legendary retired NBA coach Phil Jackson says he stopped watching basketball after the league became political during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Jackson, who led the Chicago Bulls to six NBA championships with Michael Jordan and won five more coaching the Los Angeles Lakers with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, said earlier this month on the "Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin" podcast that he stopped watching after the league allowed players to promote social justice messages on the back of their jerseys instead of their names during the 2020 NBA lockdown games.

"I couldn’t watch that," he said. "They even had slogans on the floor, on the baseline. It was catering. It was trying to cater to an audience, or trying to bring a certain audience into play. And they didn’t know it was turning other people off, you know. People want to see sports as non-political."

Many of the slogans supported social justice and the Black Lives Matter movement, which was in full force after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. 

Jackson's comments sparked controversy online.

"He’s not alone in this," director and 2022 Republican congressional primary candidate Robby Starbuck tweeted. "My oldest daughter and I used to love watching but it got too political to watch."

"Phil Jackson says he doesn’t watch the NBA anymore because it should be non-political and not support slogans like 'Black Lives Matter,'" radio host Bishop Talbert Swan tweeted. "The league is 80% Black. He didn’t mind ... mostly Black players giving him 11 championships."

Madeleine Hubbard is an international correspondent for Just the News. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram.