Colin Kaepernick, the quarterback whose NFL career was cut short after he knelt in protest during the national anthem, would still have a job if he were a basketball player, according to former NBA commissioner David Stern.

Speaking on the "Bloomberg Business of Sports" podcast, Stern said that public criticism, particularly from President Donald Trump, may be weighing on NFL owners. It's different for the NBA, which has made a priority of letting players promote and express themselves, he said.

"As we were digging out of a terrible hole for us — in the late '70s and '80s, when there was a fair amount of racism exhibited about players — we felt as a matter of policy we had to promote our players and show that they were real people," he said during the podcast, which will air on Feb. 18. "And it worked."