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Americans Send Loud and Clear Message About Claims 'NBA Owners' Is a Racist Term

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Fans aren’t impressed with the NBA’s decision to stop using the term “owner” in reference to the people who own its teams.

TMZ Sports noted earlier this month that several teams had dropped the word because it’s “racially insensitive.” The concern is that “owner” evokes America’s history of slavery given that the majority of the owners in the league are white and about 74 percent of the players are black.

In an interview Monday, TMZ asked Commissioner Adam Silver about the change.

“I don’t want to overreact to the term because, as I said earlier, people end up twisting themselves into knots avoiding the use of the word ‘owner,'” he said. “But we moved away from that term years ago in the league.”

Silver said the NBA now uses “governor” for its owners and “alternate governor” for its part-owners.

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It turns out most Americans think the NBA overreacted.

Yahoo Sports surveyed more than 1,200 people this week and asked, “To what extent do you view the word ‘owners’ as positive or negative when it comes to sports teams in general?”

In total, just 16 percent of respondents had a negative perception of the word. Meanwhile, 34 percent had a positive impression while 50 percent were neutral.

Silver probably would be surprised to learn black respondents had a more favorable view of the term “owners” than whites.

Do you think the NBA should reinstate the term "owner"?

Forty percent of black respondents said they viewed the term positively compared with 31 percent of whites. Another 40 percent of them were neutral on the word, while just 20 percent viewed it negatively.

The Yahoo survey results were similar to those from a poll Clay Travis of Fox Sports ran Monday on Twitter.

With more than 93,000 votes, the poll found that 91 percent of respondents did not agree with the NBA’s decision to replace the term “owner” with “governor.”

This seems like a good indication that fans aren’t on board with the NBA’s politically correct agenda.

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They understand that “owner” is the correct terminology to describe someone who owns a team — or any business, for that matter. NBA owners own their teams in the same way other people own restaurants, barber shops and ice cream parlors.

When players are paid an average salary of $6.4 million per season in the NBA, there is no comparison to be made about slavery and attempting to make it is downright absurd.

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Tom is a freelance writer from Massachusetts' South Shore. He covers sports, culture and politics and has written for The Washington Examiner, LifeZette and other outlets.
Tom is a freelance writer from Massachusetts' South Shore. He covers sports, culture and politics and has written for The Washington Examiner, LifeZette and other outlets.
Location
Massachusetts
Languages Spoken
English
Topics of Expertise
Sports, culture, politics




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