We wondered openly on the newest episode of Crossing Streams who it was exactly that made the decision to cancel Sevyn Streeter’s National Anthem performance, and how the aftermath was going for them. Thanks to our old pal John Gonzalez, who we’re pretty sure just lives in board shorts now, we know:

The “afraid she’d do more” thing likely comes in response to the pre-season game in Miami, when their anthem singer opened her jacket to reveal a “Black Lives Matter” shirt and sang the song from a knee. Streeter wasn’t hiding her shirt, but Wiley was still concerned.

Wiley, who is black, reportedly addressed the team in their 40-minute meeting yesterday, and either encouraged the players to speak out or they left the meeting deciding to do so. According to the Associated Press, the players “may take action” in the aftermath of this whole fiasco. “Everybody expressed their emotions about it,” Robert Covington told the AP. “We want to take steps about it. We just don’t know exactly what steps we want to take. We talked about a lot of different things.” Brett Brown also said “as a group, we will try to find a way to deal with this.”

Let’s look at what the two outcomes of this were:

  1. Sevyn sings the National Anthem in a “We Matter” shirt. Maybe she even takes a knee. The headlines are about something happening “at a Sixers game” and it’s in the news for two days.
  2. You tell her she can’t sing. The story blows up and you’re the subject of it. You release a tone-deaf statement. Your players get upset. You meet with them for almost an hour, and they come out of it planning to speak out in some way. And now, the outside look is that they’re not only speaking out against injustice, but also the organization they play for.

Remind me which one of those is better.