BOLD TURN FOR THE TEAM
How this offseason became the most mind-blowing chapter in the Texans' complicated history
Jun 16, 2020, 2:52 pm
Photo by John Grieshop/Getty Images.
No doubt, sometimes it's difficult to figure out what's going on in Houston Texans coach Bill O'Brien's brain – clock management, a profanity-laced confrontation with a fan, giving away superstar receiver DeAndre Hopkins in a trade that could get the Arizona Cardinals arrested for highway (I-10) robbery, it goes on.
But one thing about coach O'Brien, there's no wondering where his heart lies. He is clear about his feelings on race, social injustice and human dignity. This season, O'Brien will lay it on the line. He will take a knee in full view of the public, on the field when the national anthem plays before NFL games. He is the first and only coach among America's four major pro sports to announce his intention. Do not question his courage.
"Yeah, I'll take a knee, I'm all for it," O'Brien said. Just a reminder, the Texans have had four coaches in their history. Only one has a winning record, and he's on the record supporting Black Lives Matter.
Last week, O'Brien, along with Texans owner Cal McNair and star player J.J. Watt, attended the funeral of George Floyd, the Houston native who was killed while handcuffed in police custody in Minneapolis. O'Brien, who grew up in Massachusetts and cut his coaching teeth with the New England Patriots, added, "To see discrimination of any kind against an innocent man who was murdered out of evil and ignorance, it simply breaks my heart and makes me angry. We have to do so much better. It's 400 years of slavery. It's segregation. It's police brutality."
Houston should be proud of Texans leadership. The head coach will take a knee for the national anthem. It's not a sudden awakening for O'Brien. He has supported players taking a knee in the past. Our brilliant quarterback Deshaun Watson pressured his alma mater Clemson to remove the name of a slave owner from campus buildings. And Watt, who has led the Texans onto the field waving an American flag, clapped back against a Twitter follower who said Watt would never disrespect the flag by taking a knee. Watt said, "If you still think it's about disrespecting the flag or our military, you clearly haven't been listening."
This is a bold and positive turn for the team. Only three years ago, Texans owner Bob McNair said the NFL needed to prohibit players from kneeling during the anthem. McNair, who has since passed away, told other owners that the NFL "can't have the inmates running the prison." That is not how the expression goes. His choice of words, referring to players as "inmates" and the league as "the prison," was revealing, however. How far this team has come.
New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees has apologized for his comment, "I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the American flag." As Watt says, Brees has been listening. Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield promises that he "absolutely" will kneel for the anthem this season. He has been listening, too.
With NFL commissioner Roger Goodell now supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, what now for quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who was the first player to kneel for the anthem in 2016, and was out of the league one year later? He risked everything for what he believed, lost his job and many millions of dollars, but has never wavered from protesting police brutality against African-Americans. He will be remembered on the right side of history.
Reportedly at least one team has inquired about Kap's services. Wouldn't it be something if the New England Patriots sign the outspoken quarterback and he leads them to the Super Bowl, where the Pats face the Dallas Cowboys, owned by the suddenly silent Jerry Jones? That wouldn't be a football game, it'd be the cultural event of the century.
Kaepernick faces long odds of taking an NFL field (again), taking a knee (again) and taking his team to the Super Bowl (again). Been there, done all three. But Kaepernick hasn't thrown a pass that counted in four years. Even premiere athletes rarely come back from extended time away and achieve their former success. There have been exceptions, however:
Ted Williams volunteered for military duty during World War II and the Korean conflict and missed five years of his prime with the Red Sox. He returned to baseball and completed his legendary Hall of Fame career.
Muhammad Ali was banned from boxing for 3-1/2 years after he refused induction into the Army, but came back to re-capture the heavyweight title.
Michael Jordan helped the Chicago Bulls win three NBA titles, left to fulfill a dream of playing baseball, and returned for three more basketball championships.
Kaepernick, while banished for years, just might catch lightning in a bottle. He has exquisite skills, is a proven winner, and continued to work out while in exile. If anybody can … here's hoping.
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They’ll be watching in Canada, not just because of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, though the NBA’s scoring champion and MVP favorite who plays for Oklahoma City surely helps lure in fans who are north of the border.
They’ll be watching from Serbia and Greece, the homelands of Denver star Nikola Jokic and Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo. Alperen Sengun will have them watching Houston games in the middle of the night in Turkey, too. Slovenian fans will be watching Luka Doncic and the Lakers play their playoff opener at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, 5:30 p.m. Saturday in Los Angeles. Fans in Cameroon will be tuned in to see Pascal Siakam and the Indiana Pacers. Defending champion Boston features, among others, Kristaps Porzingis of Latvia and Al Horford of the Dominican Republic.
Once again, the NBA playoffs are setting up to be a showcase for international stars.
In a season where the five statistical champions were from five different countries, an NBA first — Gilgeous-Alexander is Canadian, rebounding champion Domantas Sabonis of Sacramento is from Lithuania, blocked shots champion Victor Wembanyama of San Antonio is from France, steals champion Dyson Daniels of Atlanta is from Australia, and assists champion Trae Young of the Hawks is from the U.S. — the postseason will have plenty of international feel as well. Gilgeous-Alexander is in, while Sabonis and Daniels (along with Young, obviously) could join him if their teams get through the play-in tournament.
“We have a tremendous number of international players in this league,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this season. “It’s roughly 30% of our players representing, at least on opening day, 43 different countries, so there’s much more of a global sense around our teams.”
By the end of the season, it wound up being 44 different countries — at least in terms of countries where players who scored in the NBA this season were born. For the first time in NBA history, players from one country other than the U.S. combined to score more than 15,000 points; Canadian players scored 15,588 this season, led by Gilgeous-Alexander, the first scoring champion from that country.
Gilgeous-Alexander is favored to be MVP this season. It'll be either him or Jokic, which means it'll be a seventh consecutive year with an international MVP for the NBA. Antetokounmpo won twice, then Jokic won three of the next four, with Cameroon-born Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers winning two seasons ago.
“Shai is in the category of you do not stop him,” Toronto coach Darko Rajakovic said after a game between the Raptors and Thunder this season.
In other words, he's like a lot of other international guys now. Nobody truly stops Jokic, Antetokounmpo and Doncic either.
And this season brought another international first: Doncic finished atop the NBA's most popular jersey list, meaning NBAStore.com sold more of his jerseys than they did anyone else's. Sure, that was bolstered by Doncic changing jerseys midseason when he was traded by Dallas to the Los Angeles Lakers, but it still is significant.
The Slovenian star is the first international player to finish atop the most popular jerseys list — and the first player other than Stephen Curry or LeBron James to hold that spot in more than a decade, since soon-to-be-enshrined Basketball Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony did it when he was with New York in 2012-13.
“We’re so small, we have 2 million people. But really, our sport is amazing,” fellow Slovene Ajsa Sivka said when she was drafted by the WNBA's Chicago Sky on Monday night and asked about Doncic and other top Slovenian athletes. “No matter what sport, we have at least someone that’s great in it. I’m just really proud to be Slovenian.”
All this comes at a time where the NBA is more serious than perhaps ever before about growing its international footprint. Last month, FIBA — the sport's international governing body — and the NBA announced a plan to partner on a new European basketball league that has been taking shape for many years. The initial target calls for a 16-team league and it potentially could involve many of the biggest franchise names in Europe, such as Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City.
It was a season where four players topped 2,000 points in the NBA and three of them were international with Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokic and Antetokounmpo. Globally, time spent watching NBA League Pass was up 6% over last season. More people watched NBA games in France this season than ever before, even with Wembanyama missing the final two months. NBA-related social media views in Canada this season set records, and league metrics show more fans than ever were watching in the Asia-Pacific region — already a basketball hotbed — as well.
FIBA secretary general Andreas Zagklis said the numbers — which are clearly being fueled by the continued international growth — suggest the game is very strong right now.
“Looking around the world, and of course here in North America," Zagklis said, "the NBA is most popular and more commercially successful than ever.”