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Virginia basketball joins Colin Kaepernick in protest against police brutality

By Brad Berreman

DURHAM, NC - FEBRUARY 13: Darius Thompson
DURHAM, NC - FEBRUARY 13: Darius Thompson /
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Colin Kaepernick’s national anthem protest against racial inequality has widened to athletes in other sports, and now the University of Virginia basketball team has joined the cause.

The views on Colin Kaepernick’s decision to sit, then kneel, for our national anthem have been wide-ranging. It’s at a point where it’s easy to forget he’s an NFL player and not exclusively a social activist. It helps that the drop-off in his play over the last couple years is on the back burner too. Fellow NFL players have taken up some form of Kaepernick’s protest against racial inequality, and athletes in other sports have done similar things in their own form of joining the cause against inequality.

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Basketball season is on the horizon, on the pro and college level. It will be interesting to see what NBA players do during the national anthem, and the biggest names will absolutely continue to be asked their thoughts on Kaepernick’s protest.  But college basketball players are surely not without thoughts on racial inequality, with some possible recent and direct experience with it.

On that note, the University of Virginia men’s basketball team made a statement on social media Thursday night.

The Cavaliers finished No. 5 in USA Today’s final coaches poll last season. Things look promising for this year too, with a notable incoming recruiting class and Memphis transfer Austin Nichols set to make an immediate impact. Senior guard London Perrantes is the team’s leading returning scorer from last season (11.0 points per game). So it’s safe to assume he’s a team leader setting a tone for everyone else, and it’s worth noting the above tweet originated from his account.

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Virginia will open their 2016-17 season on the road against UNC-Greensboro on Friday, Nov. 11. It’s unclear if the entire team will kneel for the national anthem that night, or for every game during the coming season, but the chances seem very good.