{"id":602570,"date":"2026-04-24T00:03:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T00:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/602570\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T00:03:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T00:03:26","slug":"the-risk-in-being-more-than-an-athlete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/602570\/","title":{"rendered":"The Risk in Being More Than an Athlete"},"content":{"rendered":"

Activism<\/a><\/p>\n

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\n April 23, 2026<\/p>\n

The conscience of the 2026 sports world remains unsigned. Is she being blackballed?<\/p>\n

Natasha Cloud became one of only a few professional athletes to speak about Gaza. Now she can\u2019t find a WNBA team.<\/p>\n

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\"\"(Leonardo Fernandez \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

There is an expression I have heard from young athletes: \u201cgetting Kapped.\u201d To get \u201ccapped\u201d is slang for being shot and killed. To get \u201cKapped\u201d is to be blackballed from your sports league for being politically outspoken. The slang derives from San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who took a knee during the national anthem in protest of racist police violence and subsequently lost his career. Among players, he has become more of a cautionary tale than an enduring inspiration. If he could get \u201cKapped,\u201d then you could be next.<\/p>\n

Enter Natasha Cloud. The free-agent guard known across the WNBA universe as Tasha, averaged 10 points and five assists last year with the New York Liberty while also becoming a fan favorite for her charisma and rousing defensive play. She was broadly praised for her leadership on and off the court.<\/p>\n

And yet, with the 2026 season about to begin, Cloud finds herself unsigned. Given Cloud\u2019s skillset and championship pedigree, USA Today called her place in free-agent purgatory, \u201cgenuinely baffling<\/a>.\u201d But in the current athletic environment, it is perhaps not that baffling at all. Maybe the beloved Cloud is \u201cgetting Kapped.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cloud has always aspired to be more than an athlete and use her platform for social good. She has spoken out on a host of issues, but most notably in recent years she has advocated for a free Palestine. In the face of Israel\u2019s genocidal war, the people of Gaza have had few allies in the US sports world quite like Cloud. In May 2024, Cloud told the ESPN site Andscape<\/a>, \u201cThere\u2019s a genocide happening. People are scared to use that word\u2014it is what it is. It\u2019s a genocide. It\u2019s ethnic cleansing. It\u2019s intentional.\u2026 We\u2019re not paying attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Andscape breaks down, Cloud started speaking out for the Palestinian people on October 11 2023, just two days after Israel ordered a \u201ctotal siege\u201d of Gaza following the Hamas attacks on October 7. She then posted: \u201cBeing honest. I haven\u2019t known what to say. And that makes me a hypocrite. Because I am constantly trying to encourage people to speak up for my communities. This situation is not simple in any sense. But what is simple is PEOPLE are not just \u2018collateral damage.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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But Cloud didn\u2019t just talk it. She walked it, joining demonstrations in Washington, DC, calling for a ceasefire and an end to the siege. She also joined the online group Athletes for a Ceasefire and has been arguably the most prominent active athlete willing to be vocal and take this stance.<\/p>\n

Before October 2023, Cloud was already politically active. Her work was rooted in the Black Lives Matter movement against racist police violence. She even sat out the 2020 Covid bubble season following the police murder of George Floyd, saying, \u201cI chose the path that was much greater than myself and much greater than basketball.\u201d At one demonstration, she carried a sign that read, \u201cIf you are silent, I don\u2019t fuck with you, period.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, like many public figures inside and outside the sports world, Cloud began to see the similarities between the oppressed social position of Black people in the United States and that of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. And yet unlike most of them, Cloud chose to say something. \u201cWe understand the struggle,\u201d Cloud said. \u201cThere are so many similarities in the Palestinian struggle and the African American struggle here in the United States. If we can\u2019t see that and if we can\u2019t care about other people, how do we expect people to fight for us when we\u2019re saying Black Lives Matter, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

Cloud has also never been shy about asking her league and her teammates to look in the mirror on this question. She even critiqued the NBA\u2019s selective humanity in speaking out for Israeli lives while saying nothing about the Palestinian genocide. She has also called out athletes\u2014male and female, inside and outside the WNBA\u2014for not raising their voices more about Palestine or much else since 2021. Cloud has said that while she understands that players lose endorsements or even their jobs for saying something, \u201cWe need collective voices to stand up and say what\u2019s right. We know right and wrong. If your morals and values are not at the top of your list, your top priority, then, man, I don\u2019t know what I can do for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now many are wondering openly across the WNBA world whether Cloud is \u201cgetting Kapped\u201d for the crime of being the conscience of professional sports. One of the great misconceptions in the sports world is that the NBA, which oversees the WNBA, and its commissioner Adam Silver are somehow these secret lefties who encourage their players to be on the political front lines. That\u2019s hogwash. Before 2021, Silver permitted a \u201cPEP\u201d approach aka \u201cprogressive except for Palestine.\u201d The message was that players could speak out about racism and voting rights with support of the league, but also needed to know that there was a thin, powder-blue line that one should not dare to cross. (Ask Dwight Howard about that.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

In the ensuing years, the political compass of the league has been \u201cNEP\u201d aka \u201cnothing, especially Palestine.\u201d Candid discussions about politics in the NBA are gone. Instead, seemingly every player has their own podcast and social-media strategy and all produce a great deal of sound and fury while saying nothing of note or political substance. This is what \u201cplayer empowerment\u201d looks like in 2026: a cacophony of branding. As genocide raged in Gaza, the league\u2019s biggest stars\u2014players who were outspoken on BLM issues\u2014were instead cutting lucrative deals with companies connected to the Israeli security state<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In this arid landscape, Cloud has stood tall: not just in terms of her solidarity with the Palestinian people but also on the rights of athletes to speak out and be more than robots that do product placements on Instagram. \u201cThe least that I can do with this God-given platform\u2014in which I know He intended it to be much more than just going out here and winning games\u2014is to be a servant for my community and others,\u201d she told Andscape.<\/p>\n

Cloud has carried the torch in the face of a monsoon of a backlash and that\u2019s why the question demands to be asked: Is she paying the price for speaking her mind? Is she \u201cgetting Kapped\u201d? Let\u2019s see if she gets signed in the days and weeks to come. One thing is certain: Any kind of banishment, blackballing, or pariah status won\u2019t change how adored she is among WNBA fans, and it won\u2019t change Cloud. \u201cI\u2019ll throw myself in the line of fire anytime,\u201d she once said. \u201cMy goal is to protect other innocent people and innocent lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

From illegal war on Iran to an inhumane fuel blockade of Cuba, from AI weapons to crypto corruption, this is a time of staggering chaos, cruelty, and violence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unlike other publications that parrot the views of authoritarians, billionaires, and corporations, The Nation publishes stories that hold the powerful to account and center the communities too often denied a voice in the national media\u2014stories like the one you\u2019ve just read.<\/p>\n

Each day, our journalism cuts through lies and distortions, contextualizes the developments reshaping politics around the globe, and advances progressive ideas that oxygenate our movements and instigate change in the halls of power.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This independent journalism is only possible with the support of our readers. If you want to see more urgent coverage like this, please donate to The Nation today.<\/p>\n

Dave Zirin<\/a><\/p>\n

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Dave Zirin is the sports editor at\u00a0The Nation. He is the author of 11 books on the politics of sports. He is also the coproducer and writer of the new documentary Behind the Shield: The Power and Politics of the NFL<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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