In his apt criticism of team owner Stephen Ross’s support of Donald Trump, Dolphins wide receiver Kenny Stills has the truth, accuracy, and righteousness on his side—but not, it seems, his own head coach.
Stills took Ross to task for his considerable financial support of Trump’s reelection campaign, which is of vastly greater significance to the world than whatever limp-dicked overtures Ross claims to make to the constitutionally disinterested moron-in-chief on behalf of racial equality. When Ross defended himself by attempting to separate Trump’s white nationalist platform from some of the superficial policy concepts strewn across it, Stills reiterated his correct assertion that supporting a racist president is incompatible with the mission of Ross’s RISE initiative.
Dolphins rookie head coach Brian Flores was asked about this tension between player and owner Thursday night, following Miami’s preseason win over the Atlanta Falcons. Flores doesn’t have to be Gregg Popovich on this, but the very least he could do is get the hell out of the way with a platitude about this being a free country or whatever in support of a player of his who has received death threats for his comments. Instead, he hung Stills out to dry, going with some keep it all in-house crap. From the South Florida Sun Sentinel:
“I talked to Kenny. The one thing I said to Kenny was — I understand kind of where Kenny is coming from. He wants to be a voice. I talked to him about that a couple weeks ago. I understand him wanting to be a voice for people who don’t have a voice. I respect that. My conversation with Kenny, I asked him why he didn’t talk to the owner, why he didn’t talk to Steve [Ross] first before putting something out. And I think that’s something that we have to do more of. There’s got to be more communication, more conversation, more communication if we want to really make change. And I wish he would have done that. I told him that.”
Stills’s recollection of their chat reportedly has Flores telling him “to remain focused on the game and don’t let this stuff become a distraction to our team,” as if Stills’s simple tweet was a greater distraction than the team owner’s public, deeply invested support of a historically shitty and despised president. Flores can’t be dumb enough to fail to grasp that there’s value in speaking publicly that can’t be gained in private, so his reason to do this is to be either a good little middle manager or a good Football Man, or both. Either way, nice job supporting your players, doofus.