The problem is consistency of situation. Flipping the bird is always the same message, a message that is not generally considered protected speech in most employment circumstances. Kneeling is not. Tebow kneeled during the anthem through his whole career. Now he was kneeling in prayer not in protest, but it immediately shows the problem with trying to say kneeling is bad. It’s a certain type of kneeling with a certain intent which players could easily nuance, especially if goes to court. Unless behavior during the anthem is codified in the rulebook and CBA (which is only the case in the NBA) trying to after the fact declare some behavior misconduct is doomed.
“Flipping the bird is always the same message”
Not at all. Sometimes it is an indicator of group solidarity.
“Tebow knelt during the anthem through his whole career. Now he was kneeling in prayer not in protest”
How do we know that? Because he told us. And how do we know that the miscreants were kneeling with the intent to engage in misconduct? For the same reason.
“Unless behavior during the anthem is codified”
We need to bring back the reasonable man standard.
“trying to after the fact declare some behavior misconduct”
Come on. Everybody saw that it was misconduct from the very first.