Stan Van Gundy (file photo)
Stan Van Gundy (file photo)
Sports figures seldom make political statements about presidents' policies.
But the President Donald Trump era is different.
Pistons' Coach Stan Van Gundy was highly critical of Trump after the election.
And on Monday, he weighed in on the travel ban of people coming from seven Muslim nations.
“This travel ban is starting to get to really scary stuff. Now we’re judging people by their religion and we’re trying to keep Muslims out,” Van Gundy said Monday afternoon following the Pistons’ shootaround in Boston, according to Rob Beard of The Detroit News.
“(CNN’s) Fareed Zakaria had a great thing … none of those seven nations has been responsible for an American death, but we’re barring everybody from those seven. It’s just playing to people’s fears and prejudices.” . . .
“We’re getting back to the days of putting the Japanese in relocation camps, of Hitler registering the Jews — that’s where we’re heading. It’s just fear-mongering and playing to a certain base of people that have some built-in prejudices that aren’t fair. There’s no reasonable reason to do it. If they haven’t been responsible for a single American fatality, how is doing it making us safer?
Van Gundy isn't the only NBA coach speaking out against Trump.
Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr did as well. He was born in Lebanon and his father was assassinated in a 1984 Beirut attack.
"I would just say that as someone whose family member was a victim of terrorism, having lost my father," Kerr said, according to CBS Sports. "if we're trying to combat terrorism by banishing people from coming to this country, by really going against the principles that this country is about and creating fear, it's the wrong way to go about it.
"If anything, we could be breeding anger and terror, so I'm completely against what's happening. I think it's shocking and a horrible idea, and I really feel for all the people who are affected. Families that are being torn apart, and I worry in the big picture what this means to the security of the world. It's going about it completely opposite. You want to solve terror, you want to solve crime, this is not the way to do it."
San Antonio Spur's Coach Gregg Popovich is quoted by ESPN's Michael C. Wright:
"I have lots of thoughts about what we've done to ourselves as a country and what we've allowed to happen. But we'll see where this goes. Obviously the rollout [Saturday] was Keystone Cops-like by any measure with objectivity.
"Whether you want to say it's good or bad is irrelevant. But it was Keystone Cops, and that's scary."
