HOLDING COURT

FOR ALL THE CLICHÉS about sudden death and there being no tomorrow, sports were always supposed to be a substitute for reality, a place where Americans could fight for three hours and hug it out afterward. The newspapers used to call the sports pages the “toy department” for a reason. It was, after all, only a game.

But sports were always more than that for the black athlete. Sports was the place, at least idealistically, that fit the American Dream, where the scoreboard guaranteed fairness. Even that was an exaggeration, for when black athletes used their wealth and fame to exercise their full citizenship—as rich people do across the world—they were inevitably told to stick to sports.

A recent example came in February, when LeBron James appeared in a video discussing President Donald Trump on his multimedia site, Uninterrupted. James, long the best basketball player in the world and increasingly an unflinching critic of Trump, said the president’s frequent, harmful comments were “laughable” and “scary.” Shortly