During Tuesday’s “Undisputed” on Fox Sports 1, co-host Skip Bayless argued that NBA players wearing team hoodies on the bench symbolizes Trayvon Martin and gets viewers back on Colin Kaepernick’s “message” when he first started kneeling in protest in 2016.
“This is my gut reaction when I saw the video of Kevin Durant sitting on the bench with his hoodie up: I really liked it. I really appreciated the message it sent to me,” said Bayless. “And I’m not even suggesting that Kevin was trying to send this message to anybody else. I don’t know what his intent was, but he’s a really smart guy. I think he gets the more powerful, deeper meaning, the symbol that the hoodie represents. When I see hoodie, I think Trayvon Martin. I think of the original flashpoint, cop shooting unarmed black man.”
He continued, “It gets me back to where you wanted to be with Colin Kaepernick from the first flash of this, right? It gets where everyone was trying to get with the protests in the National Football League. And it’s a cool way to send a powerful message with a symbol.”
Bayless later added that even white people get the “subliminal” message.
“In this case, you have a symbol that everybody gets. White people get this symbol. They know what it means. So, go ahead and do that, because it’s subliminal,” he stated.
Bayless’ comments come a day after his former ESPN partner, Stephen A. Smith, slammed the hoodies because they would remind white people of Trayvon Martin.
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