FILE - Members of the Orlando Magic and Brooklyn Nets kneel around a Black Lives Matter logo during the national anthem before the start of an NBA basketball game, in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., July 31, 2020. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis, Pool, File) The Associated Press.
Two of the NBA’s most significant dynasties emerged in the second decade oTwo of the NBA's most significant dynasties emerged in the second decade of the 2000s.
LeBron James teamed up with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh to form a Miami Heat super team that reached four straight finals, winning a pair of championships.
Then came the ascension of Steph Curry’s fling-it-up-from anywhere Golden State Warriors, who claimed three titles of their own and shredded all conventional wisdom on how far from the basket constituted a good shotf the 2000s.
With James, Curry and others setting the tone, NBA players increasingly led a clarion call for social justice in the 2010s.
James and Wade posed in hoodies with their Miami teammates for a dramatic picture protesting the shooting death of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin.
Chris Paul and Jamal Crawford staged a silent protest that helped lead the NBA to issue a lifetime ban against Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling over racist comments that were caught on tape.
Players across the league donned “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts -- the last words of Eric Garner before his death after being placed in a chokehold by a New York City police officer.
The players of the WNBA also stepped up their activism, from wearing shirts that proclaimed “Black Lives Matter” to kneeling during the national anthem to show solidarity with Colin Kaepernick’s NFL campaign against police violence. They even campaigned against one of their owners in a U.S. Senate election.
“I will not just shut up and dribble,” James said, in what could very well be the mantra of the decade. “I mean too much to so many kids that feel like they don’t have a way out and they need someone to help lead them out of the situation they’re in.”
A decade of social activism merged seamlessly into America's racial reckoning in the summer of 2020, which again found the NBA in the middle of things.
That shouldn't have been a surprise, given the NBA has generally scored better than North America’s other men's sports leagues on racial and gender equity issues.
Richard Lapchick, who issues an annual report card through The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, credits long-time NBA Commissioner David Stern with establishing the culture that led to a decade of activism.
Outside of Pete Rozelle, who oversaw the rise of the NFL, Stern is perhaps the most influential leader in the history of U.S. sports. He guided the NBA for three decades before giving way to Adam Silver in 2014.
Stern died on New Year's Day 2020 — one day after the end of a decade that might be his most lasting legacy.
“When he took over the league, a lot of critics and people were negative about the NBA. They said it was ‘too Black,’” Lapchick recalled. “But he said, ‘Let’s put the best players on the court and hire the best people to run the organizations.'"
Lapchick said a conversation he had with Stern in the late 1990s was especially profound.
“My goal is not only for you, nor anybody else, to not notice when we hire a Black coach,” Stern told Lapchick, “but to not notice when we fire a Black coach.”
Of course, it's the players who make the game.
James stood above them all in the 2010s. It didn't even matter if he had a ball in his hands.
The King was increasingly willing to speak out on divisive issues, and he dipped generously into his ample financial resources to support real change in everything from education to voter registration.
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