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Team USA's Coach K: North Carolina HB2 'an embarrassing bill'
Mike Krzyzewski, the head coach of the U.S. men’s basketball team that will compete at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, did not mince words when asked for his thoughts on House Bill 2, a law passed in March by North Carolina legislators and signed by Republican Gov. Pat McCrory that reversed a Charlotte city ordinance expanding rights and protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
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“It’s an embarrassing bill,” said Krzyzewski, who has for 36 years served as the head men’s basketball coach at Duke University in Durham, N.C., to Scott Gleeson and Jeff Zillgitt of USA TODAY Sports. “That’s all I’m going to say about it.”
Krzyzewski’s comments came less than a week after the revelation that one of Duke’s previously planned games for the upcoming college basketball season — a Nov. 12 visit from the University of Albany — had been canceled as a result of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s executive order banning non-essential travel by all New York state agencies, including state universities like Albany, to North Carolina in a sign of opposition to House Bill 2. Governors of four other U.S. states issued similar executive orders. Mark Gottfried and Roy Williams, Krzyzewski’s coaching counterparts at North Carolina State and the University of North Carolina, have also spoken against the law, with Gottfried telling USA TODAY he’s “appalled” by HB2 and is “embarrassed” when parents ask him about it during recruiting trips.
Gregg Popovich, the coach of the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs and the man who will take Team USA’s reins from Coach K for the 2020 Summer Games, offered a similar take.
“Enter the real world, I would say to some states,” he said. “I agree with the league and … everybody else who pulled out.”
McCrory communications director Josh Ellis responded to Coach K’s comments by sharing the following statement with multiple media outlets: “Twenty-two states, including North Carolina, are embarrassed the Obama administration is forcing a mandate that requires one gender to share locker room and shower facilities with the opposite gender in our middle school, high schools and universities as opposed to allowing each school to make reasonable accommodations for unique circumstances. The courts will now resolve this issue.”
On Thursday, the NBA officially followed through on multiple previous threats by announcing it was pulling the 2017 NBA All-Star Game out of Charlotte in response to the continued existence of HB2 on the books in North Carolina. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has said in the past that the law — which requires transgender people to use public restrooms corresponding to the sex listed on their birth certificates, rather than the ones that align with their gender identities, and which omits gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from North Carolina’s anti-discrimination protections, forbids local governments from widening LGBT protections and excludes all forms of workplace discrimination lawsuits from North Carolina state courts — runs counter to the league’s “core principles” of inclusion and diversity.
“Our week-long schedule of All-Star events and activities is intended to be a global celebration of basketball, our league, and the values for which we stand, and to bring together all members of the NBA community – current and former players, league and team officials, business partners, and fans,” the league said in a statement. “While we recognize that the NBA cannot choose the law in every city, state, and country in which we do business, we do not believe we can successfully host our All-Star festivities in Charlotte in the climate created by HB2.”
That decision, which will reportedly cost the NBA more than $3 million and the state of North Carolina more than $100 million, rankled McCrory, who continues to claim that the provision requiring people to use the public facilities corresponding to the genders listed on their birth certificates is simply “common sense” legislation.
“The sports and entertainment elite, Attorney General Roy Cooper and the liberal media have for months misrepresented our laws and maligned the people of North Carolina simply because most people believe boys and girls should be able to use school bathrooms, locker rooms and showers without the opposite sex present,” McCrory said in a Thursday statement.
The National Center for Transgender Equality, the Human Rights Campaign and the American Civil Liberties Union all say there is no statistical evidence of the kind of sexual violence perpetrated by male perverts and pedophiles disguised as women to justify laws like HB2.
Team USA will begin its exhibition slate in preparation for next month’s Olympics on Friday night, taking on 2012 fourth-place finishers Argentina in a tune-up game at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The U.S. will begin preliminary round group play in Brazil against China on Saturday, Aug. 6, 2016.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
