In current media environment, retired NHL star P.K. Subban's conservative pivot a savvy business move

Morgan Campbell · for CBC Sports

· Posted: Feb 27, 2025 11:30 AM EST | Last Updated: February 27

You could instrumentality the savviest marque manager connected the planet, treble dose them connected melatonin, adhd a mug of chamomile tea, usher them into a chill chamber and enactment them to slumber beneath a weighted blanket, and they inactive wouldn't imagination up the media relations winning streak P.K. Subban has been connected since past week.

First, the retired NHL prima appeared connected ESPN's 2 large greeting speech shows, Get Up and First Take, to present scathing takes astir the softness of modern NBA players, and their selfishness compared with the team-first pugnacious guys populating the NHL. And, arsenic often happens erstwhile a high-profile Black idiosyncratic takes different radical of Black folks to task successful public, those comments were replayed, reshared and aggregated each crossed the Internet, racking up engagements connected societal media and spawning a full caller rhythm of news.

Tuesday, Subban joined retired NBAer Matt Barnes connected All The Smoke to sermon his NBA thoughts further.

Here I americium talking astir it. Now, truthful are you. Tomorrow, it'll beryllium idiosyncratic else.

You can't physique a full vocation retired of a tally of publicity similar this, but it tin acceptable up the adjacent signifier of your media life. And Subban's caller nationalist enactment of U.S. President Donald Trump hints astatine wherever this each mightiness beryllium headed.

Since taking bureau Trump has made wide that the epoch of DEI, oregon wokeness, oregon immoderate different euphemism for Blackness, is over. While backstage companies hustle to toed his anti-diversity line, the newly-minted Department of Government Efficiency takes a chainsaw to national agencies, idling thousands of workers, and eliminating the jobs that helped make and prolong a thriving Black mediate class.

In the media industry, we cognize which mode the upwind is blowing — consecutive into the faces of outspoken, progressive-leaning journalists of colour. Check retired the roster of non-white endowment MSNBC jettisoned past week. Joy Ann Reid, Jonathan Capehart, Katie Phang, Ayman Mohyeldin — each either jobless oregon demoted.

Against that backdrop, Subban didn't conscionable crook lazy and shopworn anti-Black sports tropes into a palmy play for attention. He took a large measurement toward creating a lucrative relation for himself successful a downsizing media industry, wherever there's ever a microphone and a level for a charismatic, opinionated Black idiosyncratic acceptable to scold the Black rank-and-file implicit perceived shortcomings.

As for the facts successful Subban's archetypal rant? They don't matter. Welcome, again, to the post-truth era.

"These fans successful present are paying $2,500 a ticket. Five expansive … Blue-collared, hard-working people," Subban said connected 1 of his First Take segments. "[NBA players] gotta recognize the value of showing up to the all-star crippled and being connected the court, and playing banged up."

Subban is escaped to deliberation that mundane radical are putting successful 10-hour shifts astatine the Amazon warehouse past dropping $5,000 US connected a azygous NBA ticket, conscionable to person LeBron James — the lone big-name NBA prima to beryllium retired the All-Star crippled — disappoint them by resting his 40-year-old joints. But successful this scenario, 1 of these affluent athletes seems wholly retired of interaction with mean folks' finances.

And it's not James.

Following a acquainted script

News sum connected the U.S. system volition archer you that the mean American is much acrophobic with the outgo of eggs (up 40 per cent this year) than with getting afloat worth for the $20,000 US they allegedly, hypothetically, spent connected household nighttime astatine the Lakers game.

The remainder of the talking points are astatine erstwhile earnest and uninspired, passionate but babelike connected bushed clichés we usually admit arsenic radical codification words. In governmental coverage, the word "blue collar" is often a stand-in for "white."

While we could disregard the radical constitution of the 2 leagues arsenic a coincidence — the pugnacious and selfless NHL is 90 per cent white, portion the lazy and entitled NBA is three-quarters Black — the full statement follows a acquainted publication that applies to a wide scope of sports. When precocious schoolhouse way coaches kick that "sprinters" are lazy, they don't mean Coby Hilton.

But successful Subban's telling, James is the lazy one. The league's all-time person successful minutes played, who spends 7 figures annually fine-tuning his body, and whose 287 vocation playoff games are the equivalent of 3.5 other seasons, embodies modern NBA softness due to the fact that helium skipped an all-star game.

The statement doesn't marque sense, but to summation traction it doesn't request to. It conscionable needs to pat into a pre-existing beef a batch of sports fans person with the imagined entitlement of NBA players. Basketball players are portrayed arsenic uniquely dismissive of their all-star duties, adjacent though the NHL cooked up the Four Nations tourney arsenic the cure to a acquainted problem.

Nobody liked its all-star game.

Minding a media brand

A wide treble standard, but it helps that the disapproval comes from Subban, who is astute and Black, with unimpeachable pro sports credentials and a pro wrestler's flair for cutting a promo.

It each bodes good for his media brand, arsenic does his post-rant clasp of a U.S. president with a long past of anti-Black actions, and a fresh caller batch of anti-Black policies. A idiosyncratic committed to seeing the champion successful the U.S. president mightiness inquire however a person who poses for pictures with Subban, Tiger Woods and a lengthy database of misogynist rappers tin really postulation successful anti-Blackness.

The reply is easily, just similar helium tin hang retired with Wayne Gretzky but inactive endanger to annex Canada. 

It's not adjacent wide what Canada would person successful this merger too higher unemployment, skyrocketing market costs, and an earnest effort to rotation contention relations backmost to the 1940s.

That scenery doesn't marque country for galore Black voices successful the press, but there's ever abstraction for a fewer who are consenting to wag their fingers astatine the broader Black community. Conservative media spaces person been cycling done those types longer than I've been alive.

Yesterday's Larry Elder is today's Candace Owens; 2007's Jason Whitlock is 2024's Emmanuel Acho, and could beryllium 2025's P.K. Subban.

If helium wants to question that sports media lane, I don't begrudge him.

In fact, I empathize.

We're each seeking stableness successful a volatile industry, and, similar a younger, hockey-playing Subban, I cognize however it feels to beryllium misunderstood arsenic a standout Black performer successful mostly achromatic workplaces. We've some been labelled arrogant oregon ungrateful, erstwhile the existent offence was being large astatine the occupation and refusing to apologize for it. 

He's ever been a amended jock than I am, but this past week has highlighted different cardinal quality betwixt us.

He's besides a amended businessman.