LeBron James on ‘The Shop’: NFL owners are old white men with slave mentality toward players

For LeBron James, the fundamental difference between the NBA and the NFL is the level of respect shown to players by the respective leagues and their team owners. The Lakers forward, who in recent years has become an increasingly outspoken advocate for professional athletes on matters of race and politics, took the NFL and its owners to task on the latest episode of The Shop which aired Friday on HBO.

“In the NFL they got a bunch of old white men owning teams and they got that slave mentality,” James said. “And it’s like, ‘This is my team. You do what the f*** I tell y’all to do. Or we get rid of y’all.’ ”

James, a four-time NBA MVP, made the comments in an extended conversation with his business partner Maverick Carter, Los Angeles Rams running back Todd Gurley, and the actor and rapper Ice Cube.

“I’m so appreciative in our league of our commissioner [Adam Silver],” James continued. “He doesn’t mind us having … a real feeling and to be able to express that. It doesn’t even matter if Adam agrees with what we are saying, he at least wants to hear us out. As long as we are doing it in a very educational, non-violent way, then he’s absolutely OK with it.”

The NBA and the NFL have had strikingly different approaches to player activism. In the NBA, James and others have worn T-shirts during warm-ups in recognition of victims of police violence with no repercussions from the league.

By contrast, former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick set off years of controversy and debate when he knelt during the national anthem as a means to protest racial injustice. The NFL and Commissioner Roger Goodell responded by instituting strict guidelines for player conduct during the anthem. Kaepernick, who has not appeared in an NFL game since the 2016 season, ultimately filed a grievance against the league’s owners, alleging they colluded to keep him sidelined as a response to his protest.