NBA player Jonathan Isaac of the Orlando Magic recently suffered an ACL injury during Sunday’s game against the Sacramento Kings. Unfortunately, the injury will probably mean the end of the season for Isaac.
Incredibly, ESPN radio host Dan Le Batard decided to put a poll up on Monday to get people to vote on whether the injury was “funny” or not. The pushback was immediate and widespread from all over professional sports.
The poll was taken down later that same day, and Le Batard issued an apology. “We apologize for this poll question. I said on the front and back end of the on-air conversation that I didn’t think it was funny. Regardless of the context, we missed the mark. We took the tweet down when we realized our mistake in how we posed the question to the audience.” Batard said later.
However, some people feel that the apology doesn’t go nearly far enough, and question the mindset that would even think of putting up such a poll in the first place.
The controversy stems from the fact that on Friday, Isaac became the first NBA athlete this season who refused to kneel for the national anthem before a game, and remained standing. He also didn’t see fit to don the “black lives matter” shirt his teammates were playing, although in a post-game interview he did say he supported the organization on general principle.
“A lot went into my decision … kneeling or wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt don’t go hand-in-hand with supporting black lives … I do believe that black lives matter, but I just felt like it was a decision that I had to make, and I didn’t feel like putting that shirt on and kneeling went hand-in-hand with supporting black lives.” Isaac said in the interview.
Aside from the obvious issues surrounding the insensitivity of such a poll, people are highly concerned with apparent far-left biases at ESPN. As Outkick the Coverage wrote: “Could you imagine Le Batard running a similar poll if Colin Kaepernick went down with an injury? Of course not. He’d be met with a termination letter before he had time to check his Twitter account.”
Le Batard famously had previously lashed out at NFL owners for not hiring Kaepernick, calling them cowards.
ESPN so far has declined to comment on why that poll was considered acceptable by them.
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