In sports, it is not uncommon to hear rhetoric about values and integrity, role models and the virtues of teamwork. Such ideals are noble in and of themselves, but are so easily co-opted. ‘Family values’ especially is often no more than a code work for repression and narrow orthodoxy; ‘teamwork’ is familiar to any employee as a warning that you are about to be asked to sacrifice your individuality, pride, creativity, and intelligence in order to more consistently and easily ensure a level of productive mediocrity.

In a way, this could be argued as the inevitable and more or less desired result of a successful democracy; nobody stands out, so everyone is equal. We are mediocre people, represented by mediocre leaders, distracting ourselves with mediocre entertainers.

We resent and suspect excellence, as it is so often unattainable by the majority; to compensate, we elevate individuals only on the basis of luck and popular opinion…all the time clinging to the religion of economics, in which the pursuit of money is not simply a practical consideration, but expected and exalted.

Take LeBron James and Damon Jones, for example — the only two players who refused to sign Ira Newble’s 2007 letter condemning China for its role in the Sudanese genocide. Of course, LeBron James is representing the NBA’s project to start a league in China, as well as getting nearly a billion dollars from good ol’ Nike, who would marry China if it could. And Jones has a less lucrative but still unimaginably huge deal with Li Ning, a shoe company from (where? You guessed it).

So extra kudos to Newble, and decent-sized congrats to basically every other player in the NBA who signed the letter. Obviously there is still some semblance of a conscience left in professional sports. As in the world at large, you can find it a lot more often near the bottom than you can at the top.