LeBron James Accuses NFL Ownership Of ‘Slave Owner Mentality’

The tension between NFL ownership and the players that comprise the league have been no secret over the past several years. Between the non-guaranteed contracts that fill rosters, the disinformation campaign around concussions that last for most of the league’s history and the entire national anthem controversy that swirled around the 2017 season, players and ownership have seen their relationship go from strained to downright ugly. But few NFL players are in position to criticize the league.

But LeBron James has no such concerns. He plays in the NBA, a league that is far friendlier to players who speak out on social issues, and even if he didn’t, his status is so secure that no team or league would dare act against him. He has always spoken his mind on the issue of the day, and he just took his fiercest stance yet on his HBO Show, The Shop (h/t Ben Golliver of The Washington Post) in comparing the NFL to slavery.

“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.’”

LeBron isn’t the only player who has made the comparison. Adrian Peterson did so in 2011, and NFL ownership has done little to dissuade players from thinking that way. At a meeting between NFL owners and players last season, Houston Texans owner Bob McNair compared players to prisoners by saying that the league couldn’t let “the inmates run the prison.” The NBA has taken a very different approach to working with its players, empowering them to speak out whenever the opportunity strikes. James obviously thinks that’s the right approach.

“The players are who make the ship go,” he said. “We make it go. Every Sunday, without Todd Gurley and without Odell Beckham Jr., without those players, those guys, there is no football. And it’s the same in the NBA. … The difference between the NBA and the NFL: the NBA [cares about] what we believe [a player] can be, the potential. In the NFL, it’s what can you do for me this Sunday or this Monday or this Thursday. And if you ain’t it, we moving on.”