Basketball stars get just-political-enough on ESPY Awards stage

q's sports culture panel thinks beyond the play-by-play to weigh in on the societal impact of sports stories. Not a fan? Not a problem. Our panel watches much more than the scoreboard. 

Today the Toronto Star's Morgan Campbell, Megan Greenwell of The Cut and Dave Zirin, sports editor at The Nation, join guest host Rachel Giese to discuss the biggest and strangest stories in sports. Today: 

• The ESPY awards: Four basketball stars, including Dwyane Wade and LeBron James, took the stage at the "Grammys of the sports world" to deliver a political message, calling "all to action" on gun violence and racial tensions. But was this a radical statement from within the sports world? Greenwell believes it was a step in the right direction . "For athletes who have big endorsement deals and ESPN to worry about, I thought it was a pretty big moment," Greenwell says. Ziren didn't see things quite so optimistically. "At the end of the day, what they really did was they spoke about an intent to do something. But we didn't really hear what that something was."
   
• The "lone wolf" tenor: Remigio Pereira altered the lyrics of O Canada to include the phrase "All Lives Matter." Campbell thinks Periera did a great job — of making himself a lot of enemies. "If you're looking for a way to insult the maximum number of people in the shortest amount of time with just three words, inserting 'All Lives Matter' into the national anthem is a good way to do it," says Campbell. According to Ziren, Pereira deserves "mad credit" for accomplishing the seemingly impossible task of  "uniting Morgan Campbell and Don Cherry in anger".
   
• UFC sells for $4 Billion: As a Hollywood talent agency scoops up the UFC, some are wondering whether the franchise has become too mainstream. "I think a decent number of people will stick around regardless of the corporate interests involved, and let's not fool ourselves, there are already corporate interests involved in UFC," says Greenwell. But Campbell says the real concern for the future of the UFC is with its strict drug testing policies. "Honestly, it takes a lot of performance enhancing drugs and painkillers to get people through these training camps and through these fights ... and the more drug testing they want to impose, especially if they are not in control of the drug testing, the more their stars are going to get popped, and they're going to have to reckon with that."