In a Tuesday appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Outkick’s Jason Whitlock weighed in on the low NBA Finals ratings.
Whitlock attributed the problematic ratings drop to the league’s “hard lean into an anti-American sentiment,” which he said “has turned off traditional sports fans.”
“[T]hey have LeBron James, who allegedly is the biggest star in all of sports, playing for the Lakers, the biggest star in the NBA, and they couldn’t draw flies. This is a problem,” Whitlock asserted.
“It’s multifaceted. Look, obviously, COVID had an issue, but there’s no denying that this hard lean into anti-American sentiment has turned off traditional sports fans,” he added. “Just think about the way sports have sold themselves for more than a hundred years or close. Ever since Jesse Owens, 1936 Olympic, American sports have been the ambassador for Americana. We play the national anthem. It’s a patriotic event. This is a total 180 in terms of branding in the way the NBA has presented itself, and a lot of people are just disconcerted by it. We used an analogy today on Outkick in a very outstanding piece about what’s going on with the NBA. Just think of Disney World, where they play these games. Instead of Mickey Mouse as their brand ambassador, Cardi B. was their brand ambassador. Suppose women dressed in Hooters outfits were strapping mom and dad and their teenage kids into Space Mountain. That would be quite a brand change. It would be off-putting to the traditional Disney World customer base. That’s what’s going on here in the NBA.”
Whitlock went on to discuss why NBA owners like Mark Cuban are afraid to speak out against the China Communist Party.
He said that China has “hijacked” the NBA, which he noted is what the Asian superpower and other foreign countries have tried to do to the United States.
“President Trump’s America first agenda — this is what he is talking about,” Whitlock outlined. “American companies, the NBA being hijacked by foreign influence. This is what’s happening to our country. I’m so glad it’s being exposed in the NBA because it’s an opportunity to educate the average American sports fan or whatever. So you can finally understand what this foreign influence is doing to our country. They’ve turned a patriotic cultural event into an anti-American protest in the NBA, and to some degree, the NFL, we’ve got to put a stop to this.”
“China is spending a lot of money trying to undermine America and American culture,” he added. “This is what communist-run countries do. They smear the West and America as racist. Meanwhile, they are 1,000 times more racist than America — 1,000 times.”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
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