SOHH Squad
NBA superstar Kevin Durant‘s not here for ESPN. The Golden State Warriors champion has lashed out at the sports network for playing itself with an insensitive fantasy football fictional auction.
Last night, KD went to Twitter to go off on ESPN with some hard-hitting remarks.
Yesterday, ESPN issued a statement on its televised fantasy football segment.
“Auction drafts are a common part of fantasy football, and ESPN’s segments replicated an auction draft with a diverse slate of top professional football players. Without that context, we understand the optics could be portrayed as offensive, and we apologize,” ESPN said in a statement. (Fox Business)
Tensions primarily flared due to the lack of black people in the fictional bidding audience.
The more troublesome thing here is that the crowd was overwhelmingly white and no African-American men can be seen representing a group that they are part of–fantasy football and football fans. This group appears to be a group of ESPN employees likely drawn into the scene as “extras.” (The Big Lead)
The auction also went down less than 72 hours after white supremacists protested in Virginia.
“Certainly, a situation like this calls into question whether ESPN has enough people in leadership positions who would instinctively understand and make note of the potential reaction to this segment,” Matthew Zimmerman, an assistant professor of sport studies at Mississippi State University, told USA TODAY Sports via Facebook Messenger. (USA Today)
