Sports's latest overlap with politics demonstrates it isn't the unifying force we're told it is

If you watched Monday night’s NBA Finals game between the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs, then followed up afterward on social media, you probably noticed a discrepancy in the volume of crowd’s reaction to seeing U.S. president Donald Trump on the big screen at Madison Square Garden.

On Instagram, you heard arena-shaking jeers as the camera cut to Trump during the national anthem, overlooking the court from his spot in a luxury box, right hand at his temple in a military salute. But on the TV broadcast you heard only muted boos. Comparing those sounds to the raw social media audio, maybe you thought you had uncovered a conspiracy, with ESPN’s broadcast team working to make the least-popular president in modern history seem a touch less unpopular.

But it’s also possible that the broadcast truck opted to lower the background noise to keep the focus on all-world R&B tenor Avery Wilson, who was midway through the most electric rendition of the Star Spangled Banner we’ve heard in decades. If you haven’t heard it, go back and listen, then venture down the Avery Wilson rabbit hole. Pound-for-pound, a top-5 singer on the planet, and it’s a shame the Trump controversy siphoned attention from his performance.

Still, the capacity crowd’s overwhelmingly negative reaction to 10 seconds of Donald Trump gives us useful information.

The president’s unpopularity isn’t just a columnist’s opinion. Poll numbers bear it out weekly. Criticism abounds, and attending a sports event is a chance to shield himself from it.

Except the list of safe spaces keeps shrinking. Trump has been booed everywhere from the U.S. Open tennis tournament to a Washington Commanders home game. He should receive a huge ovation at the UFC Freedom 250 event this weekend, but that fight card will take place in his literal backyard, before guests who, unlike Tom Brady and The Rock, didn’t decline the invitation.

Last Monday represented a level playing field, and organizers tried to tilt it in Trump’s favour by putting him on screen during the national anthem, when most of us figure a true patriot wouldn’t boo.

Well, most of us would have figured wrong, because the audience let loose the kind of full-throated catcalls rassling fans reserve for the most odious heels. And they reinforced a valuable lesson about the unifying power of sports.

It’s limited, context-dependent and subject to manipulation by bad-faith actors.

If we’re honest with ourselves, we can concede that unity is rarely even the point.

Canadians don’t revere Paul Henderson because his series-winning goal helped unite us with the Soviet Series in the Summit Series of 1972. We celebrate him because Team Canada’s triumph was supposed to teach the Soviets a lesson, and symbolized a victory for democracy itself.

For Americans, a more useful parallel is track star Jesse Owens, whose four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics still resonate with historical importance, but not because they promoted a sense of unity between the U.S. and Nazi Germany. Americans treasure Owens because his victories took the tall tale of Aryan supremacy and chopped it down to size.

Then he returned to the U.S. and lived as a second-class citizen.

Why?

Because he was Black, and his exploits on the track couldn’t inspire white Americans to see past his colour, or anybody else’s. And because when concepts like sports, politics, patriotism and unity overlap, race often ripples just below the surface.

So you could hear echoes of Owens in Wilson, that powerhouse tenor tasked with delivering an anthem so stirring that it would short-circuit the audience's reflexive tendency to boo Trump.

The Knicks, the Spurs and that anthem were supposed to deflect criticism from a president who posts racist memes. To soften the reaction to a president whose policies disproportionately harm the Black, Brown and foreign-born. To turn down the temperature on the head of state who nominated three of the Supreme Court Justices who last month voted to take a hatchet to Black voting rights in the South.

Just a few sources of the disunity that a basketball game and Wilson’s anthem were supposed to remedy.

Wilson, who is not a Trump fan, reacted like a pro, powered through the boos without missing a note, and delivered the best U.S. anthem at a pro sports event since Whitney Houston in Super Bowl XXV.

And the crowd jeered anyway, because the division that allegedly is the real problem doesn’t stem from a simple difference in opinion. If your favourite muscle car is an Audi S7 and mine is a Dodge Challenger, we can agree to disagree and watch the game. But if you’re OK with ICE gunning down American citizens in the streets, or Trump threatening to annex Canada, the NBA Finals can’t close the gap between us.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver was either oblivious to that dynamic, or he ignored it on purpose as he told ESPN’s pre-game panel that Trump’s presence would allow him to bond with the rest of us over our shared love of pro hoops.

“What makes sport so special, especially when there’s so much that divides people, is that it’s something that we have in common,” Silver told ESPN. “We should look for those things that we have in common and build off that.”

Judging by their body language, especially Shaquille O’Neal’s deadpan glare into the camera, the Inside The NBA panel didn’t buy what Silver was selling.

The other reality is that sports can only foster meaningful unity if we’ve already addressed the source of the division in question. Otherwise, sports is just a distraction, and not a very good one. It’s like handing me an aspirin for a compound fracture. It might take the edge off the pain for a while, but my leg’s still broken.

Trump and his administration could prove me wrong during the World Cup. But instead of promoting unity across geopolitical divides, we have visa problems for Iranian players, fans marooned due to travel bans, and the U.S. outright denying entry to a Somali referee who had secured the proper immigration papers to work the tournament. If the world’s biggest sports event can’t override the Trump administration’s beef with Somalia, then maybe sport, by itself, isn’t the unifying force that some folks keep telling us it is.

A disappointing development, but it’s something even more valuable for the Sports Can Bridge Any Ideological Gap crowd.

It’s a reality check.