Posted on 10/12/2020 1:26:50 PM PDT by conservative98
Monday, Mark Cuban appeared on the Megyn Kelly Show. The NBA owner spun the NBA’s tank-job as hard as he could, discussing the league’s ratings collapse, Black Lives Matter, and the NBA’s relationship with China.
As Outkick has written, the 2020 NBA Finals are an historic disaster — with games down as much as 58% year-over-year. Kelly accurately blames the league’s decision to go political for the millions of Americans turning away.
“You wear a pink ribbon to support breast cancer is one thing. Putting BLM in the middle of the court when it’s not supported by virtually any Republican in the country [is another],” she started.
Cuban then oddly asked Kelly “which BLM group” she was referring to.
“It’s a group founded by Marxists, who want to dismantle the nuclear family and defund the police,” Kelly responded.
Cuban claimed that BLM.com and the movement were not the same: “You never, ever heard [the NBA] talk about Marxism.”
Kelly got him again: “To pretend BLM — dot com, or otherwise — is not about defunding the police is dishonest. The basketball players have made clear, they support that.”
Cuban didn’t deny that certain players want to dismantle the police. “Individual players can have their opinions,” he says. The NBA “is interested in police reform. We’ve never talked about defunding the police.”
Though Cuban is correct the NBA, as a unit, has never stated they are for defunding police, the league has fully embraced BLM. The group, as Kelly notes, “devotes” itself to defunding law enforcement agencies across the country.
Cuban tried to argue that there was no one speaking for BLM, but that isn’t true either.
“The co-founder of BLM, Patrisse Cullors, was on TV saying, ‘We should abolish law enforcement,'” Kelly noted.
For some reason, Cuban claimed that networks were simply re-airing Cullors’ quotes.
“Your audience is fleeing,” Kelly said on the topic of viewership decline. “They object to the politicization of the league… [The NBA] has suffered.”
Kelly broke down the Finals’ turnout:
“Lowest Finals opener ever. Game 2, another new low. Game 3, down an unprecedented 58% from last year.
“This is during a marquee matchup with the Lakers and Heat. Last year, they had some team in Canada. That matchup is crushing what we are seeing now.”
Kelly summed up the series: “This is an unprecedented viewership collapse.”
Here is where the discussion got good. Cuban used the same excuses the sports media has used for years to distract from the NBA’s tanking numbers. He blamed the media outlets that Kelly chose to cite: “The sources might not be reflective of reality.” Kelly said she read about the NBA ratings on Outkick.
“You are not looking outside NBA ratings to see what is happening in media,” Cuban fired back. He also mentioned horse racing’s decline.
As I explained last week, NBA defenders are now comparing the league to niche sports — like horse racing and hockey. But in 2016, the same media members compared the NBA with the NFL.
Which one is it? Is the NBA on its way to catching the NFL, or is it a niche sport catered to a specific audience?
I like horse racing. Horse racing decline is actually in many ways (though not for exactly the same reasons) the same as for the NBA - neglect and bad decisions by management. Nobody likes to see a horse tumble and die right in front of them. But you have tracks that have been redone very poorly (oddly, with the aim of lessening harm to the horses it has caused more spills) and the trainers and owners are running broken down horses against the advice of veterinarians.
I had an interest in a race horse once many years ago. I loved that little filly. She ran for a couple of years but when the vet x-ray was was showing signs of hairline fracture in her front legs, we immediately stopped racing her and sent her out to breeding. Many trainers and owners would have kept her on the track until the problem worsened, only perhaps to watch her break down and die in front of thousands of spectators. And that’s a major turn off to everyone and certainly doesn’t help build support for the sport.
Same is true for the NBA. We don’t change channels from the News to Sports just to get more News and opinion. The NBA and other leagues have turned off major portions of their own audience and with few exceptions they have nobody to blame but their own poor decisions. And the networks that paid great sums of cash to air their games are doing the same, injecting politics into their ‘color commentary’. Sure, every player has an absolute right to their own opinion. But show me any office that allows political or religious contentiousness to fester - I’ll show you an office full of dysfunction and discontent. That is why many policy manuals actively discourage this type of conversation on company time.
And Kelly is right, there is a major difference between wearing a pink ribbon to remind people of breast cancer and the need for awareness and early diagnosis vs painting “BLM” in the middle of the court. She is even more correct - and where it gets interesting - is that BLM means different things to different people. Nobody disagrees with the statement that “black lives matter”, of course they do, but that is completely different from the political movement and the political aims of the organizers and leaders of the movement - who really do cloud their true agenda behind the sorrow of very grim incidents that occur in society. The NBA and other sports audiences are not fools. The leagues are fooling themselves.
Corporations are doing the same sh*t, it backfires.
Freepers love to hate on Kelly, because she didn’t give puff piece interviews to their favorite people. But she was always a tough interviewer, regardless of party affiliation. She was like a female O’Reilly. A bit arrogant and very self absorbed. It was like her and O’Reilly actually cared about the fallout from going too easy on someone. O’Reilly actually OVERcompensated, and was much harder on conservatives than liberals, while Kelly was tough on both.
Calling out BLM’s Marxist, anti-family, anti-cop roots would get most journalists put on “vacation”, if not out of a job.
I want to hear more from Megyn. When she’s not counting her Gold Coins or Options portfolio, she can do a very good interview here and there.
Poor thing, looks like she has priced herself out of the market. “Oops! I did it again!” The Podcast is an inexpensive alternative.
Phrasing! lol!
Indeed and look at it now - you have major corporations including government contractors segregating people by race and forcing them to take part in “racial sensitivity” seminars (which is not really what it is in practice) and it has only created dysfunction and discontent. Why should people apologize for the body they were born into? This gets us nowhere as a society or as individual sentient human beings.
Mark Cuban is a perfect example of how you can be a genius in business and yet also be a MORON AND A SC*MBAG as a human being.
What he is encouraging with his support and defense of BLM is a nightmare for hundreds of millions of Americans.
I will not shed a tear when BLM/antifa burn his house to the ground with him in it (I hope his family and staff get out because they, like America, don’t deserve to be punished for his stupidity.
How did he get so rich and still be a Dunce?
I wonder which idea? According to this testosterone-challenged troglodyte, there are different BLMs.
Megyn knows a little about collapsing ratings.
- You know, if Megyn had said that, it would have been credible to her.
Freepers love to hate on Kelly
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mainly because she decided it was her job to take out the “pretender” Trump.
Maybe clueless idiots should just keep their mouths shut about politics, Mark?
Nobody wants to be lectured about “privilege” by a bunch of twenty year old children who have been coddled since junior high and to whom success is managing to throw a big orange ball through a ring 5 out of every 10 tries.
Kelly’s war with Trump wasn’t a one sided battle. Both of them should have been able to rise above it and move on.
“And nobody cared.”
BTW—Megan Kelley can go pound too!!!
She may have done a decent job here with Cuban, but too little too late she’s a jerk
She had her 15 minutes, surprised she still working in media.
America: We hate the BLM pushing NBA
Cuban: Which BLM? You guys are so stupid you don’t know what BLM really is.
America: Yes we do, now we really hate you.
How about this?
1. We are going to keep politics out of our workplace. We are a sports/entertainment business, we do not have a political point of view. We are here to entertain. Players can do what they want politically on their own time. On our time, they are here to work, not make statements.
2. We realize we are not essential. We realize a lot of people are having a hard time right now. We want to support the front line workers and the people who may have lost their jobs or be working from home. We will make some of our previously paid programing games free to everyone. We just want to support our fellow citizens, entertain you, and get your minds off your problems for a little while.
Do this, take this attitude, and the response would be overwhelmingly positive. People would never forget it.
But, they can’t, because they think they are very important and critical to social functioning. That they somehow have a high place in our social structure, where they must use their position to progress a cause out of some moral obligation.
They are not important. They play a game with a ball. No matter how much money they make, it doesn’t qualify them to be statesmen. It’s entertainment. It’s not essential. It’s easily replaceable with other forms of entertainment.
No one else gets to advocate their favorite causes while they are working. The mailman doesn’t knock on your door when he is delivering the male to educate you about the plight of whales. He would be fired for doing that.
And the mail is more important to our property functioning society than professional basketball is.
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