Stephen Curry and Steve Kerr chastise Sports Illustrated for leaving Colin Kaepernick off its activist athletes cover

This week’s cover of Sports Illustrated.Sports Illustrated cover

Both Steve Kerr and Stephen Curry felt that Sports Illustrated’s latest cover was missing a key figure.

On Monday, SI unveiled its latest cover which shows several top athletes linking arms in light of President Donald Trump’s controversial comments about NFL players that kneel during the national anthem.

The cover shows LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell linking arms in the front, with notable vocal critics of Trump and social injustice like Kerr, Michael Bennett of the Seattle Seahawks, and Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers behind them.

The cover, however, does not have Colin Kaepernick, whose decision to kneel during the national anthem last season to draw awareness to social injustice and police brutality sparked the protests.

On Wednesday, Curry called the omission “terrible.”

“That was terrible,” Curry said (via Connor Letourneau of the San Francisco Chronicle). “It’s just kind capitalizing on the hoopla and the media and all that nonsense. The real people that understand exactly what’s been going on, and who’s really been active and vocal and truly making a difference, if you don’t have Kaepernick front and center on that, something’s wrong.”

Curry made headlines last week when he said the Warriors were likely not going to visit the White House because of Trump, though no official decision had been made. On Saturday, Trump tweeted that the Warriors were uninvited because they were hesitating, citing Curry’s comments.

Curry continued (via The Athletic’s Tim Kawakami):

Kerr was also critical of the cover.

According to Letourneau, SI executive editor Steve Cannella said that they chose the cover because it was “the news of the weekend” and that the enduring message from the NFL protests was “unity.”