Steph Curry on SI cover: 'If you don’t have Kaepernick front and center on that, something’s wrong'

Curry had a good reason to be annoyed about the new Sports Illustrated cover featuring him.

Stephen Curry thinks that it’s “terrible” that the latest Sports Illustrated magazine left off Colin Kaepernick, expressing his feelings after the Warriors practice on Wednesday.

“It’s just kind of capitalizing on the hoopla and the media and all that nonsense,” Curry told the San Francisco Chronicle’s Connor Letourneau. “The real people that understand exactly what’s been going on, and who’s really been active and vocal and truly making a difference, if you don’t have Kaepernick front and center on that, something’s wrong.”

The cover comes after this weekend’s events when President Donald Trump called NFL protestors “sons of bitches,” argued that the NFL should create a rule banning players from kneeling, and also disinvited Curry from the traditional White House visit that champions make. Curry had said earlier in the week that he would not visit because of Trump. On Sunday, dozens of NFL players knelt during the anthem, continuing Kaepernick’s protest intended to raise awareness about national problems such as racial injustice and police brutality.

While the Sports Illustrated is a somewhat accurate display of this weekend alone, it fails to summarize the entire movement. That’s a problem, as SB Nation’s Zito Madu explained:

If the word “unity” that the NFL now stands behind meant something, then Kaepernick should have been backed by the entire league from the beginning. He should still have a job. But what happened was that he saw a fault in the country that he loved, said that we should be unified in an effort to fix it, and was roundly condemned for it.

Many athletes expressed this same problem: by embellishing the “unity” talking point that was co-opted by the league, the protest was simplified and stripped of its real cause.

“It’s kind of hard to see how certain narratives take place, being prisoners of the moment,” Curry told The San Francisco Chronicle. “At the end of the day, that stuff really doesn’t matter. It’s about the true message and really highlighting the people that are doing the right thing.”

Warriors head coach Steve Kerr — who wrote an essay for Sports Illustrated about the topic — agreed with his star guard.

“I looked it and went, 'Where the hell is Kap?’” Kerr said.