Recently on the Joe and Jada Unfiltered podcast, Jalen Rose argued that the NBA’s core structure contains a “residue of slavery.” His comments sparked a firestorm online. Upon hearing this, some rolled their eyes and asked how Black men who make millions of dollars are in any position to say they are being treated like slaves?
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On the podcast, he explained that the only sports with salary caps are Black-led. He then highlighted how weird and arbitrary the barriers to entry are that keep mostly Black athletes from reaching their earning potential. For example, the NFL requires players to be three years removed from high school and the NBA requires one year. Mostly white sports like MLB and golf let players chase the bag as soon as they are ready for professional sports.
Rose then implies that the mostly white men who govern these systems want to make money off athletes before they can make money off themselves. What this does, he says, is create an ethos where institutions get rich off labor while athletes pay a literal tax before owning their full market value.
Rose makes a compelling argument. But is he right?
That’s like asking if Sisqó can sing. The answer is yes and no.
His claim that only Black-led sports have salary caps doesn’t quite hold water. While MLB and individual sports like golf or tennis don’t have them, the NHL (a league made up of people who would choose pumpkin pie over sweet potato pie) has one of the most restrictive salary caps in professional sports. While the NBA does have a salary cap, it is as soft as Charmin toilet tissue. Teams blow past it all the time. They just have to be willing to pay a luxury tax.
So, yeah. He is technically not right on that point. But that doesn’t mean he is wrong.
What Rose is really pointing to are mechanisms of control. The NFL and NBA have draft systems that decide where players live with little concern for what the players themselves would actually prefer. Then they get rookie contracts that suppress their early earning potential and are subject to league rules that dictate when athletes are allowed to enter the open market.
These structures do not exist because the athletes asked for them. They exist because leagues built them to control labor. He’s describing a system of high-level sharecropping where the labor is Black, the ownership is white, and because the former is making millions of dollars, they are told not to question the system they find themselves trapped in.
If you want to say that the phrase “residue of slavery” is wrong, fine. But what should we say about a system where Black labor produces billions, white ownership controls the rules, and everyone is told the arrangement is fair? Whatever you want to call it, the resemblance is hard to ignore.
Straight From 
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