“Since May 25th, America has changed.”
That’s how Candace Buckner puts it. The murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police catalyzed a turbulent summer, characterized by record-setting protests and surging activism, all while the coronavirus pandemic worsened.
Sports have long been one of this country’s greatest distractions, but when it became clear that they could no longer afford to remain on pandemic pause, their return looked different not only for the absence of fans. Leagues could no longer be silent — not as thousands of people marched past downtown arenas to push for racial justice. The NBA stood out, enabling and encouraging its players to use their platform for the greater good. Messages like “Say Their Names” and “I Can’t Breathe” replaced surnames on player jerseys, and, in Boston, the same organization that was the last in all of baseball to integrate placed a 254-foot billboard alongside the Mass Turnpike stating “Black Lives Matter.”
Just as other institutions have responded to the racial justice movement, so too has sports media. Buckner’s role at The Washington Post is nominally as a sports journalist, but with a concentration on the intersection of race, gender and diversity, it stands apart from the beats of old. At a time when athletes are refusing to simply “shut up and dribble,” to borrow a now-infamous Fox News phrase, Buckner and her team are making it clear that journalists can’t ignore these issues either.
“You want to bring attention to what the nation is paying attention to,” says Buckner. “It was great foresight to say ‘Yo, this is happening, let’s follow it.’”
In some ways, Buckner’s journalism career trajectory reflects the changes of the industry itself. After starting as a high school prep sports reporter, she transitioned to covering the NBA for smaller papers before joining The Washington Post four years ago. Back then, it was strictly hard news.
Then came a tweet.
In Rio, Gabby Douglas had just helped the United States win their second consecutive gold medal in the team event at the 2016 Summer Olympics. But back home, the star gymnast was facing an onslaught of online abuse that included, among plenty more targets, attacks on the way she wore her hair.
Buckner was doing some blogging to pass the time before the NBA season started when editor Matt Vita noticed that, when Buckner wasn’t writing about hoops, she loved talking about hair, including tweets in defense of Douglas amidst the critical ire. He reached out to see if she’d be interested in penning a first-person piece on Black hair, specifically with regards to Black athletes. Buckner was shocked.
“‘You want this in the sports section, this is a sports section story?’” Buckner wondered at the time. But she was happy to see the article play so well. “We’re all human beings going through this experience together, and when you can get into the humanity of things, the ‘Why?’ in sports, that’s always good.”
Answering that “Why?” has taken different forms over the last few months. Buckner’s first article on the beat was first pitched as a Washington Wizards piece, but evolved into how white coaches in the NBA are starting to become more vocal on issues of race in America as the league pushes for racial justice.
San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich and Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr had historically been the only two white coaches to make vocal statements on topics like police brutality, and the shift emphasizes a new reality in sports and sports journalism: that the sports themselves are inseparable from the society in which they’re played, and that the issues that society faces aren’t checked at the ticket gate.
The racial justice movement reaches beyond just the players and staff. In July, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), also co-owner of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream, ignited protests from Dream players after sending a letter to the WNBA objecting to the league’s increasingly vocal stances on social issues. Calls for Loeffler to sell the team followed suit. Not since the Donald Sterling controversy with the Clippers had players threatened to stop playing in protest of team ownership.
Buckner’s “How politics transformed Kelly Loeffler from hoops junkie to WNBA villain,” is a remarkably nuanced piece on Loeffler’s complicated (and at times, contradictory) history as a politician and businesswoman. She entered into Dream ownership as a pro-business Republican, and one who still gladly honored several Black women at games during the 2018 season. Now, headed to fierce Senate runoff in a political climate heavily influenced by the presidency of Donald Trump, her stances seem to have strayed.
Only a few years ago, that may not have been a sports story. Today, both readers and journalists are coming to terms with a new reality: that sports stories extend beyond the realm of the box score, and that some of the most interesting and important journalism comes out of the intersection between beloved distractions and exigent social issues.
