Before you run with this, I'd give it some time to see who bought the 20k jerseys...you know how many NY Best Sellers have bought thousands of copies of their own books to get on the list? Or resellers looking to cash in on Christians.
That response wasn't actually directly referencing Ivey, just sports in general. I wouldn't ever walk away from a team because of a player's religious beliefs. However, if they started spewing insane racism for example and it wasn't shut down, I absolutely would. Everybody will have certain lines in the sand that if crossed, will mean they no longer spend their money with that business,
Some people might. Most people don't. Someone brought up the case of Kyrie's stuff. He still has a job. And the Mavs aren't losing money having him. Think about it if you were a GM. One of your good players spewed something bad. Would you rather losing that player or losing a few fans? My beef isn't about getting rid of people from your org because of those things. My beef is that it's not applied equally based on the person's usefulness. That shows that the bottom line is more important than the "statement" they try to make. I have little respect for that kind of "statements" no matter if I agree with it or not.
OK, now re-evaluate whilst looking at Colin Kaepernick instead of Kyrie. It happens. Tommy Smith and John Carlos. John Rocker in the MLB. Like I say, everybody has a line. Cross the owners' line and kiss goodbye to your career. Now personally, I'd never do that based on somebody's religion, but then I live in a significantly less religious society than the USA, so for us it's mostly just a box people tick nobody really cares or discusses it the way you guys do. Ranting the way he did over here would be complete career suicide, just because of the completely different culture.
We all know that guy, whether they are preaching religion, a vegan diet, heating oil futures, supplements, or whatever. The are a time sink, no fun, and a team killer.
I really dont care if a person is gay or not that's between them and their maker. but if a persons religious beliefs are that LGBYQ is wrong biblically speaking, I certainly cant fault him for speaking his mind.
Irving had to publicly apologize and have a bunch of meetings with commish. Yes, he had an opportunity to do so, because he is good at his sport. He didn't get to talk sh*t scot-free though.
If he would have gone to a no kings rally and supported trans kids he would have gotten an extension...
That’s hilarious if you think you are smarter than anyone on this site. You are universally wrong on a consistent basis….not to mention in previous posts you’ve claimed to be a huge liberal. No thanks dude!
Manchester, England, United Kingdom. Most of western Europe is growing more and more secular though. That's not the reason it'd be career suicide though, even religious people would find it distasteful/bad form/poor manners to rant about something so sacred like that. I've got lots of American family and every time I've ever visited I've had at least one new person I've met open with "Oh cool, which church do you go to?" That would be a HUGE etiquette faux pas in the UK. Religion, politics and money/wealth are the 3 topics mostly avoided in polite conversation. Religion/spirituality is generally just considered a much more private affair, we don't have as many evangelical style Christians either, more typically they'd be Anglican or Catholic. That's also another difference, we had basically a religious war between 2 types of Christian for around 100 years of our history. The most destructive terror attack in my city's history was committed by Irish Catholics, for example (though we did also have an Islamist one a few years back at an Ariana Grande concert with a higher body count also, we're the #2 city economically after London so a high-risk target sadly.) Generally though, church/religion/spirituality gets treated with more reverence and privacy in comparison and most British Christians find a lot of the more ostentatious takes on Christianity in the USA fairly distasteful/over-commercialised. Overt "preachers" in the street also don't tend to be mainstream Christians here, it's more typically Jehovah's Witnesses/LDS/Imported (usually from the USA) zealot types and that tends to piss off/offend everybody regardless of denomination - many of them are considered roughly as "cult like" as Scientologists.
Many athletes express their religious beliefs all the time. Have you not watched sports at all? Have you never seen anyone thank God for a victory? Did you ever see Dream play during Ramadan? There is a difference between expressing your beliefs and militantly demanding others follow your beliefs--or constantly proselytizing to where that becomes the only kind of conversation people can have with you. It's not about beliefs at all, but how some personalities seize upon their one truth (whatever it might be) and demand you place the same importance upon it as they do. You know, fanatics.
I know crazy and this guy is there. Like, he needs help. You think the Bulls would just cut him for nothing?
Agree with this 100% I have the utmost respect for strong men of faith (Olajuwon is the GOAT, despite his religion being wildly unpopular amongst many these days.) The difference comes when you cross the line from "respectable man of faith" into "seemingly loony religious zealot."
It’s clear that @raining threes is clearly just here to talk about religion and not his actual current basketball talent. Ivey is not a basketball player you want on your team.
Too many people seem to take the legal idea of free speech to mean "I can say whatever I want and nobody is allowed to punish me for it". That's not what it means. It means the government is not allowed to punish you for it. If you say stupid bigoted stuff and go around at your workplace trying to convert people to your religion, facing personal and professional consequences is perfectly normal and justified. In fact, that's actually other people exercising their free speech.
