If we have learned anything over the last several months with the NBA, it’s that the leadership and the players love two things: money, and virtue signaling.

Their love of money over virtue was displayed when Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey was forced to delete a “Stand With Hong Kong” tweet because the NBA couldn’t risk offending their dear, compassionate, rich Chinese overlords. This was compounded when superstar LeBron James commented that maybe free speech wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and that Morey was both uneducated and selfish for speaking up and risking those Chinese paychecks.

As opposed to the highly educated James, who later compared playing for the NFL to “slavery.”

And now we are going to get to witness their love of virtue signaling yet again. First, it was the warm-up t-shirts. Now, all their virtue will be written on to their actual jerseys.

The NBA announced that players will be able to show social-justice statements on the backs of their jerseys when the season restarts on July 30 in Orlando, following delays linked to the coronavirus pandemic.​ https://t.co/iet6QaFTbm

— FOX 32 News (@fox32news) June 28, 2020

After all, what could possibly go wrong, with such pure motives?

Oklahoma City Thunder guard Chris Paul, president of the National Basketball Players Association, told ESPN’s The Undefeated on Saturday that the players’ union and the league are collaborating to allow players to wear jerseys with personalized social justice, social cause or charity messages on the backs instead of their last names during the upcoming restart of the NBA season.”

The personalized statements on jerseys are part of a long list of social justice messages the players plan to make through the remainder of the season, which restarts July 30 in Orlando, Florida. The NBA and the NBPA announced an agreement on Wednesday to continue to discuss fighting systemic racism and to make it one of the main focuses of the restart. Personalized jerseys could say such things as “Black Lives Matter” or “I Can’t Breathe,” bring light to a social or charitable cause or even display the names of George Floyd or Breonna Taylor, who were killed by police in recent months.”

“We’re just trying to continue to shed light on the different social justice issues that guys around our league continue to talk about day in and day out,” Paul told The Undefeated. “People are saying that social justice will be off of everybody’s mind in Orlando. With these jerseys, it doesn’t go away.”

This will end one of two ways, because it is too messy, too chaotic, and too much for it to last beyond this COVID-19 shortened season.

The first way this ends is when a player puts something like “FREE HONG KONG” on his jersey. Or “GOOGLE UYGHERS.” Or “PRO-LIFE,” or maybe “BABY LIVES MATTER.” Twitter threads are just full of great suggestions that would probably send NBA top brass into panic attacks. After all, who are they to say that if a player can put “BLACK LIVES MATTER” on a jersey, that another player with more backbone can’t put “FREE HONG KONG” on his jersey? After all, this is supposed to be “personalized,” so how on earth can the NBA block anything if it doesn’t contain profanity? Imagine the jerseys flying up and down the basketball court. You could see “BLACK LIVES MATTER,” then “GEORGE FLOYD,” then “JESUS SAVES,” followed by “BABY LIVES MATTER” and “I CAN’T BREATHE.” Maybe some players would get really brave and put names like Mekhi James, Amaria Jones, and Sincere Gaston on the backs of their jerseys to draw attention to the constant bloodshed claiming the lives of children in Chicago. And how much time will color commentators spend on what a player has put on the back of his jersey? If the players really go “personal” and don’t just numbly fall in line with the accepted social justice cause du jour, this virtue signalling will be VERY short-lived.

The other way this ends is when players start getting pressured by fans or groups to support “their” pet cause – and then call the players out when their cause is not on the back of the jersey.

This starts out as a voluntary option for players. But soon it's going to be "why isn't Lebron supporting Black Trans Lives Matter on his jersey?"

If the players were smart they'd stay out of this. https://t.co/5T9a93asZ8

— Holden (@Holden114) June 28, 2020

Can you imagine NBA players getting “canceled” for not being politically correct ENOUGH? That will, quite frankly, be hilarious. And it will happen in some form, because no amount of virtue signaling is ever enough for the woke mob. And the NBA is going to walk right into that trap, and will likely end up being broadsided for it.

At this point, the NBA deserves whatever is coming to them. I hope they enjoy it.

Featured image via Pixabay, Pixabay license