Jalen Rose Makes Racist Remark on ESPN, Will Face No Consequences

CLAY: This is yesterday, ESPN, Jalen Rose, who talks about the NBA for a living at ESPN. He was talking about the new United States Olympic team and all of the people that were named on it. Kevin Love is a white guy, and that’s totally unacceptable to Jalen Rose. Listen to this.

ROSE: I’m excited about the roster, and I assume — and I know — we gonna win the gold. But I’m disappointed in something. As I do this show every day, I do it in front of a picture of Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fists at the Olympics. I also know the favoritism that Christian Laettner was shown when he got a chance to be put on the Dream Team ahead of Shaq and Alonzo.

But they made it so that a college player could even get on and gave him favoritism. But this level of — and I got a word for it — Kevin Love is on the team because of “tokenism.” Don’t be scared to make an all-black team representing the United States of America. I’m disappointed by that.

Anybody that watched the league this year knows Kevin Love did not have a stellar season, was not the best player on his team, and did not necessarily deserve to be on this squad. And I’m not gonna take him off the squad and not put somebody else on it. I’m gonna tell you whose spot that should be. Deandre Ayton should have Kevin Love’s spot, and I’m disappointed in Team USA for not having the courage to send a [sic] all-black team to Olympics.

BUCK: Wow. Clay, I —

CLAY: Had you heard that yet?

BUCK: I had not. That was a first reaction from me, and we all know we’re about to get into how if we changed around some of the details here, it would just be a story that the media would be a five-alarm fire on how they were covering this. But Kevin Love, on the merits, should he be on this team? I wanted to ask you that. What’s the deal?

CLAY: It’s a good question.

BUCK: People used to try to pretend that Colin Kaepernick was a much better player than he actually he was —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — by the time he went woke, and I knew enough about football to know, no, he actually wasn’t that good.

CLAY: So challenge that Olympic team has in general is lots of players don’t want to play because there’s been such a compressed schedule since covid happened. So a lot of people have turned down the opportunity. They need a big man. The one that Jalen Rose referenced, Deandre Ayton, is actually from the Bahamas. So technically he’s not an American citizen.

I’m not sure if he’s become a full naturalized American citizen yet. He plays for the Phoenix Suns right now. I don’t believe that he has. Also, Jalen Rose saying that the reason why Kevin Love is on is because he’s a white guy and because he’s tokenism and because they’re afraid of having an all-black team?

They had an all-black team in 2016 and nobody cared because they were the best players in the country, and I think the shift here is really kind of fascinating because if a white commentator — hockey, an overwhelmingly white sport, right? It’s not a big surprise there. We have an American hockey team that plays for the Olympics, the Winter Olympics.

If we had a black hockey player and a white commentator came out and said, “This is tokenism; that player is on only because of their race,” that commentator would be fired within the hour of the statement being made. Jalen Rose can falsely, first of all, assert that America’s not willing to have an all-black basketball team for the Olympics.

We’ve had it before in 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2016. Kevin Love was previously on the team in 2012. To the extent, Buck, he’s getting favoritism, it’s because he’s already been a member of the team before and they know that he’s a good teammate and that he’s a big man, something that is in short supply.

But what I think is utterly fascinating here is, Rush Limbaugh lost his job at this same network for pointing out a truth which was many media members were rooting for Donovan McNabb because he was black and they wanted to see a black quarterback succeed. That’s 100% true! Rush Limbaugh lost his job for that. Jalen Rose will get almost no criticism because the standard of speech is not even in the world of sports or in the larger universe when it comes to race.

BUCK: And everyone has to keep in mind that what Clay’s talking about here as it applies to the sports world, we’re seeing now all across the country in corporate America, in schools, in teaching.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: We point out that there’s a double standard.