Protests of social injustices by athletes have been major news in the world of sports for some time now. In the NBA, the leader at the forefront of that movement has been Carmelo Anthony.
During the summer, Melo was one of the first athletes to call for others to use their platforms to incite change. It started with social media and evolved into an eloquent speech at the ESPYs with fellow superstars LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Paul.
Anthony has not stopped leading that charge and more NBA players and coaches (and those in other sports) have joined in. But that decision by Melo to ignite the movement was not an easy one. He risked losing endorsements and fans and receiving constant messages of hate.
Carmelo Anthony appeared on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah on Thursday to speak about that initial decision:
“I had no intention of going to the ESPYs at all. And then a couple of guys called me and texted me and said, ‘Listen, this is a platform where we can really lead and have our voices be heard and really send a message and really, just try to create some awareness of what’s going on.’ […] Once we did that, you know it was, you want to put your hands over head cause there’s so many requests coming in now and everybody wants you to talk about different things that’s going on. But for me I like to talk about kind of the nitty-gritty of what’s going on.”
“At first, you gotta really put it into perspective. There’s so many things and tragedies that’s happening throughout our country over the past couple years. I can’t speak on every thing. I can’t stand up for everything that’s going on. But it’s not until something really happens to you in your backyard; in this case it was the Freddie Gray situation back in Baltimore where I was like ‘Okay, enough is enough. This is really affecting me because it’s in my backyard. I know these people, I know the families, I know the community like that.’ So I wanted to get back there as soon as possible and really feel what the pressure was like after the riots and feel that tension that was going on back there. And I tell you what, I would never, ever, wish that on anybody.”
Melo went on to talk eloquently about fearing for his young son’s safety as he gets older in the wake of police shootings. He also discussed his work with the Carmelo Anthony Foundation, helping bring basketball to low-income areas.
The whole interview is definitely worth a watch here (the shortened version is embedded above).
