No Room for Racism

Abstract

The National Basketball Association (NBA) has a conflicted history navigating issues of race and Black identity. When audiotapes were released with Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling making racist comments, fans and players threatened to boycott playoff games. Within 4 days, the new NBA Commissioner Adam Silver banned Sterling for life. While Silver was lauded for his decision, coverage ignored the underlying structural issues that uphold inequality in the NBA. This article reviews recent communication and sport scholarship examining race and the NBA. By examining Silver’s decision using Kenneth Burke’s Terms of Order (1961), this article argues that the NBA continues to ignore how racism operates in the league.

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