Jay Williams, a former Duke college basketball star and current NBA analyst for ESPN, expressed his disagreement with the sports industry's use of the term "Mount Rushmore" to refer to the greatest players or figures in a particular field.
Williams objected to Stephen A. Smith's assertion that if Stephen Curry were to beat LeBron James in their upcoming playoff series, it could potentially displace James from the NBA's "Mount Rushmore" of greatest players. However, Williams' primary dissatisfaction was with the usage of the term "Mount Rushmore."
"Can we first off just stop with the Mount Rushmore talk," he said, via Awful Announcing. "They’re not even the four best presidents this country has ever had. Everyone in this room was not even able to vote. I just want to say that off the top. That’s our metric for success? That’s our king?"
Jay Williams encourages everyone to stop the Mount Rushmore talk pic.twitter.com/S799VOQoeZ
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) May 4, 2023
In August, Williams' colleague Jalen Rose expressed a similar perspective.
Rose took a more extreme stance by characterizing the use of "Mount Rushmore" as "offensive," and advocated for cancelling the term altogether. He cited the monument's construction on Native American land, which was taken from them and resulted in the displacement of their communities and the loss of lives.
"Can we retire using Mount Rushmore? That should be offensive to all of us, especially Native Americans, Indigenous people who were the first people here before Christopher Columbus," Rose said in a video on Twitter. "That land was stolen from them when it was discovered that it contained gold.
We can all just stop using “Mount Rushmore” as a lazy term for every thought experiment, it’s not great! Jalen Rose explained this very well. pic.twitter.com/Kh8QduoisL https://t.co/Vqfs3QliGT
— Luke Knox (@lukeknox) May 4, 2023
"And 25 years later, to add insult to injury, four American presidents were put on what we call Mount Rushmore on the top of the dead bodies that is buried right underneath. So, I call for you and for myself — I'm owning this, too — let's stop using the term Mount Rushmore when we're talking about our favorite rappers, talking about our favorite movies, talking about our favorite players."
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