Michael Jordan’s ex-teammate Etan Thomas criticizes Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones over Charlie Kirk moment of silence

Etan Thomas, a former teammate of NBA legend Michael Jordan, has recently accused Dallas Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones of breaking his own rules. The Cowboys held a moment of silence before Sunday's game against the New York Giants to honor Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist who was shot and killed in Utah on Wednesday. However, it appears that Jones broke his own rule by mixing politics and sports, which he said he would never do. The NFL ordered the Packers to hold a moment of silence one day after Charlie Kirk's murder. The Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones honored the politician and later said, via Jon Machota of TheAthletic.com:“We just all abhor violence.. And it’s impacting us all. And, certainly, we all stand together on any front, relative to the threat of violence. . . . I was a young guy, but aware, in the ‘60s when we had huge violence, lost President Kennedy and his brother and many, many others, Martin Luther King. It’s something that we all really need to just be aware of, support our law enforcement, and do everything we can to keep the violence in check.”Each host team was allowed to choose whether to participate in any kind of pregame reflection or observe a moment of silence. According to reports, some teams chose to participate in some kind of acknowledgement, while others chose not to.However, soon after Jones chose to honour the politician, Michael Jordan's former colleague Etan Thomas strongly criticised his behaviour. He wrote on X: “Oh so now Jerry Jones is OK with mixing sports and politics?” For context, Jerry Jones once said that politics has no place in sports. The owner of the Cowboys has frequently voiced opposition to political expression in sports. In 2017, he notably underlined that his team's players would be required to stand for the national anthem with their 'toes on the line'.Players who did not stand during the playing of the national anthem would be benched, he warned, enforcing a written guideline. Hence, his choice to observe Charlie Kirk's moment of silence apparently seems to go against his earlier guidelines. Kirk, a strong Trump admirer and the founder and chairman of the youth activist group Turning Post USA, was shot dead on Wednesday while giving a speech at Utah Valley University. Authorities detained and identified Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old Utah resident, as the suspect in Kirk's shooting following more than a two-day manhunt.In the wake of the heightened tensions and accusations regarding the spike in political violence within the US, Utah's governor declared that the suspect behind the murder reportedly had left-wing ideologies.Additionally, Robinson was charged with aggravated murder, criminal discharge of a firearm and causing serious bodily harm, and obstruction of justice. However, authorities are yet to specify a motive of the murder. Also read: “He’s more like LeBron” — Charles Barkley likens Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to LeBron James over Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan