Hail to legendary professional basketball coach Phil Jackson for having the guts to say sports shouldn’t be politicized.

During a recent podcast , the 11-time NBA coaching champion said he hasn’t followed the league since 2020 because it has become too political. Noting the pandemic-era habit of players wearing political catchphrases on their uniforms and teams writing “slogans on the floor and the baseline,” Jackson said, “People want to see sports as nonpolitical. ... It doesn’t need to be there.”

The proper way to analyze Jackson’s position is to ignore the specific content of the messages the NBA and its players promote. It should matter not which side of the political spectrum is much more in evidence. Jackson’s point wasn’t about the substance of the messages, but about the politicization itself, in any direction. And he is right. When players politicize the arena itself, they detract from the game. They also turn off fans by the droves — mostly, of course, fans who disagree with the particular politics being promulgated, but also fans who may even agree but want to watch sports for their unvarnished athleticism and, perhaps, sportsmanship. For many fans, sports are an escape. Politics ruin the escape.

This is definitely not to say, however, that athletes have no business speaking their minds. There’s no reason they shouldn’t use their prominence to push whatever political message they want, if they don’t mind the blowback from people who don’t agree. The problem isn’t the messenger or the particular message; the problem is the venue and the generic nature of the message. If athletes want to speak on issues outside the arena, more power to them. Inside the arena, though, their politics pierces the sanctum, not to mention putting other, more circumspect players on the spot, unnecessarily and unfairly drawing attention away from their actual performances.

There’s a broader point here than just about sports, however. For decades, the Left has insisted that “everything is political” — workplaces, playgrounds, charitable organizations, everything — while conservatives fought to keep perspective and say that not every element of life involves power struggles.

Well, now the Left not only is succeeding but is using power to push politics in all sorts of places it doesn’t belong. Government schools all over the country, with mandatory attendance and no choice for parents who can’t afford private education, are pushing political “activism” and highly ideological, controversial content onto children as young as 4 years old . In the Chicago area, a school district’s curriculum says third through fifth graders should be taught that “it is important to disrupt the Western nuclear family dynamics .” Again and again, the education establishment pushes ideology even into math classes .

Churches on both the Right and Left are frequently politicized. Workplaces now penalize employees who balk at going “woke.” TV shows push political agendas almost as a matter of course, without regard to whether those agendas add to or detract from the shows’ entertainment value and often so gratuitously that the plot thread actually gets lost.

Against all this, Jackson’s inclinations are wise. Just as there is good reason to the admonition to leave politics (and some other topics) aside at the dinner table, so is there reason to keep them away from other places and circumstances where they are an unnatural fit. Not only will such reticence have the practical effect of not driving away people who otherwise would stay engaged, but it also is just simple good manners. Manners may be out of fashion in the rough and crass modern ethos, but a society without good manners usually is a culture, and a polity, in decline.