Never had such eloquent words of Jeter’s
PR flaks rung quite this hollow, the most inauthentic athlete of our time celebrating the most genuine. From
LeBron James to
Chris Paul to Serena Williams, plenty of athletes spent Saturday paying tribute to Ali, but none came off as insincerely as Derek Jeter, “real” personality for hire.
Freedom, Derek? Really? Jeter always had that, from the very moment he landed in the Big Apple spotlight in 1995, a superstar who could have addressed any issue he ever wanted. But Jeter, tone-deaf on Saturday because he never listened to the world in the first place, never understood what Ali really brought, that what he really did was offer a roadmap for today’s athlete to be an activist.