When Laura Ingraham of Fox News recommended that LeBron James and Kevin Durant “shut up and dribble” earlier this month, she conjured the standard, insidious argument that athletes should stick to sports. Her remark came in response to an interview with ESPN’s Cari Champion, in which the two basketball stars discussed social inequality and the country’s political divisions. In it, James said of Trump, “The No. 1 job in America, the appointed person is someone who doesn’t understand the people, and really don’t give a fuck about the people.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ingraham’s remarks—in which she also called James’s argument barely intelligible and ungrammatical—became the main topic of conversation at the NBA’s All-Star weekend in Los Angeles.“I will definitely not do that,” James said, replying to the Fox News host’s suggestion in front of a throng of media from all over the world. “I mean too much to society, I mean too much to the youth.” Durant noted that Ingraham’s comments were, in his eyes, “racist.” (In response, Ingraham pointed to her longtime use of the “shut up and” critique and said there was “no racial intent in my remarks.”)
Meanwhile, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said he was proud of the athletes’ response to the comments; Michele Roberts, the executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, called Ingraham “intolerant and narrow-minded.” The Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, asked on Sunday to weigh in before his team played in Cleveland, characterized Ingraham’s words as “an unbelievable show of arrogance.”