Jalen Rose Walks Back Comment Calling Kevin Love ‘Token White Player’

ESPN analyst Jalen Rose walked back comments that Cleveland Cavaliers power forward Kevin Love had only made the United States’s Olympic basketball team because it needed a token white player. The apology comes after comments Rose made on a podcast last week when the ESPN analyst argued Love was only selected to play for Team USA because it didn’t want to send an “all-black” team to the Olympics, calling the decision “tokenism.”

ESPN Analyst Says US Olympic Team Added Token White Player To Its Roster https://t.co/JlvfjMSj4m

— SideAction (@SideActionHQ) June 25, 2021

Here’s his apology:

“If I feel like Kevin Love should make the team or not, I’m entitled to my opinion,” Rose said. “You don’t have to like my opinion, you don’t have to like me. There’s a lot of people trying to assassinate my character or whatever, but those people, some of them, have been doing to for like 30 years … that’s how it is when you have the nerve in a lot of peoples’ estimation to be outspoken.”

“But you know why I’m apologizing right now? To the game. Because I’m what the game made me,” Rose said while apologizing for his comments. “I was raised by the all-time greats, and you know what I would never want to do? Disappoint [Rose’s late mother] Jeanie Rose or disappoint the all-time greats that raised me.”

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He still said Love shouldn’t have made the team.

“Not that I believe that you deserve to make the team,” he said of Love. “I’m pretty sure when you got the call too you were like ‘Word?! I’m on the squad.’ I know how this works ya’ll. He looked down at his phone and was like, ‘Yo, they want me? They’re gonna ignore these Cleveland Cav lost tape years?’”

He added:

“If I felt like the reasoning is because we didn’t necessarily want to send an all-Black squad … it don’t mean that I don’t know we hadn’t sent one in the past.”

He made clear that no one told him to make the apology video.

“But like Katt Williams said, ‘Sometimes playas mess up,’ so I apologize to the game. That’s who I apologize to.”

Jalen plays the game as well as anybody. He doesn’t want his pocketbook affected so he puts this out.

This is what Cancel Culture will make you do.

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