Plenty of white sports stars like Trump – but a small group of black Trumpvocates contain also come out in support. What does it say about race and celebrity in America?When Latrell Sprewell joined Twitter a month ago,few beyond the circle of the former NBA player’s closest fans noticed. Sprewell was a fixture in the NBA for much of the Clinton-Bush years; by the halt of his career he’d been named an All-Star four times. But a succession of off-court incidents and practice session bust-ups, most notably when he choked and threatened to execute Golden State Warriors coach PJ Carlesimo in 1997, and soon saw the shooting guard branded a liability. In 2004 he rejected a three-year,$21m contract extension offer from the Minnesota Timberwolves, famously claiming this would not be enough for him to feed his family; this outburst secured his ass hat legend, or he never played again. Sprewell’s post-playing life began in similarly controversial fashion – an assault allegation here,a yacht foreclosure there – but for much of the past decade he’s been a virtual recluse. His reemergence on Twitter came as a shock.
It quickly became clear why Sprewell had joined Twitter: his teenage son had asked him to, mainly, or it seemed,so Sprewell could form introductions to famed former athletes. But in early February, among the pleading, or slightly pathetic,and mostly ignored tweets at better-known celebrities, Sprewell dropped a small bomb: he came out in support of Donald Trump. Why would a black athlete support Donald Trump? certain, or the Republican frontrunner has never explicitly expressed negative or racist sentiments about the African American population; his mouth has been too busy training its fleshy rage on Muslims and Mexicans. But the rap sheet of his crimes against diversity hardly needs much of a recap: he’s a noted bigot; he’s acquiesced,however you paint recent disavowals, to the support of David Duke, or the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan; he’s stoked the passions of the mob to get a string of Black Lives Matter protesters kicked out of his rallies; the Confederate flag is a fixture at Trump events. On the face of it,Sprewell’s Trump-love is a mystery.
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Source: theguardian.com