Dwyane Wade, Chris Long call out Fox News’ Laura Ingraham for “shut up and dribble,” “Must they run their mouths?” LeBron comments

On Thursday, Fox News host Laura Ingraham went on an on-air rant about political comments from NBA players LeBron James and Kevin Durant as well as ESPN’s Cari Champion in an Uninterrupted “Rolling With Champion” podcast published earlier in the day, asking “Must they run their mouths like that?” and telling LeBron in particular to “shut up and dribble,” plus criticizing him for leaving high school before graduation. That’s since provoked plenty of rebuttal from journalists and others, but the most interesting may be the reactions from other athletes. First, here’s the video:

And a transcript of Ingraham’s remarks from Media Matters:

All right, we’re gonna create a new banner: “This is a dumb jock alert.” NBA superstar Lebron James is talking politics again and this time it’s R-rated. Here’s his barely intelligible — not to mention ungrammatical — take on President Trump in a new ESPN podcast.

…I’m numb to this commentary, “like.” Must they run their mouths like that? Unfortunately, a lot of kids and some adults take these ignorant comments seriously. Look, there might be a cautionary lesson in LeBron for kids. This is what happens when you attempt to leave high school a year early to join the NBA. And it’s always unwise to seek political advice from someone who gets paid $100 million a year to bounce a ball. Oh, and LeBron and Kevin, you’re great players, but no one voted for you. Millions elected Trump to be their coach. So keep the political commentary to yourself, or as someone once said, shut up and dribble.

(It’s not actually an ESPN podcast; Rolling With The Champion is from LeBron’s Uninterrupted company.) But beyond that, recent LeBron teammate and current Miami Heat guard Dwyane Wade was not a fan of Ingraham’s comments:

And neither was Philadelphia Eagles’ defensive end Chris Long, who illustrated the many, many people from outside the political world that Fox News has given forums to make extremely political comments over the years:

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— Treb (@treblaw) February 16, 2018

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The only unfortunate thing there is that he didn’t include Stephen A. Smith. But yeah, Fox News had an entire show called The Specialists, which was dedicated to letting people from outside politics opine about politics. (It was cancelled this fall after Fox parted ways with host Eric Bolling in the wake of sexual harassment allegations.) So it does seem a little odd for someone on that channel to take the tack that only political experts should weigh in. James hasn’t responded yet, but as Yahoo’s Ben Rohrbach noted, he did appear to anticipate this kind of criticism of him as out of touch:

This is just the latest fiery collision of sports and politics, and there will undoubtedly be more to come. But a Fox News host saying that athletes shouldn’t talk politics is definitely an interesting stance, considering how many former athletes and other celebrities they regularly have given platforms to do exactly that. Those athletes and celebrities tend to endorse the views commonly found on Fox News, though, whereas LeBron’s comments did not do that. Maybe that’s the problem here.