In advance of Wednesday night’s game against the Phoenix Suns, Detroit Pistons head coach Van Gundy talked about election results rather than basketball.
According to the Detroit Free Press, Van Gundy said, “I don’t think anybody can deny this guy is openly and brazenly racist and misogynistic. We have just thrown a good part of our population under the bus, and I have problems with thinking this is where we are as a country.”
Van Gundy had only just begun, “It’s just, we have said — and my daughters, the three of them — our society has said, ‘No, we think you should be second-class citizens. We want you to be second-class citizens.’ And we embrace a guy who is openly misogynist as a our leader. I don’t know how we get past that.
“This isn’t your normal candidate. I don’t even know if I have political differences with him. I don’t even know what his politics [are]. I don’t know, other than to build a wall and ‘I hate people of color,’ and women are to be treated as sex objects and as servants to men. I don’t know how you get past that. I don’t know how you walk into the booth and vote for that.”
Van Gundy further said, “And the fact that millions and millions of Americans don’t think that racism and sexism disqualifies you to be our leader, in our country…. We presume to tell other countries about human-rights abuses and everything else. We better never do that again, when our leaders talk to China or anybody else about human-rights abuses.
“We just elected an openly, brazen misogynist leader and we should keep our mouths shut and realize that we need to be learning maybe from the rest of the world, because we don’t got anything to teach anybody.
“It’s embarrassing. I have been ashamed of a lot of things that have happened in this country, but I can’t say I’ve ever been ashamed of our country until today. Until today. We all have to find our way to move forward, but that was — and I’m not even trying to make a political statement. To me, that’s beyond politics.”
Van Gundy lives and works in the state of Michigan, where Donald Trump performed quite well, meaning the coach will have ample opportunity to go home and tell Michiganders just how embarrassing and shameful he finds them.
Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter: @themightygwinn
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