As the year draws to a close, it was quick and easy to pick out the high and low points of the year.

The moment I heard about US university basketball player Ariyana Smith, it immediately became my sporting highlight of the past 12 months.

She started a movement without meaning to, without fear of the repercussions and without thinking about how much money she could make from interviews and endorsements.

The athletes that followed her showed how interconnected sport and politics are.

It was such a powerful image, the basketball and American football players with their “I can’t breathe” T-shirts, their hands raised in the iconic “hands up, don’t shoot” pose demanding justice for black teenager Michael Brown, shot dead by a white policeman.

But the fact that sportspeople took such principled stands also brings us to what I consider the low point of the year: no footballers joined in, despite solidarity demonstrations taking place across Britain.

Football continued as if Brown and Eric Garner, choked to death by police in New York, never existed.

I asked US sports columnist Dave Zirin why he thought no footballers had added their voice to the chorus of condemnation.

Were they too afraid of being fined for being in touch with wider society?

Did they think that sponsors would pull out of deals because no-one wants to buy a can of Coke from someone who thinks the situation in the US is wrong?

Or, more worryingly, did they just not care? Are they that protected from the rest of civilisation in their mansions and gated communities?

“Only one player has,” says Zirin. “One player, to my knowledge, lifted his shirt and it said: ‘I can’t breathe.’ It was an African player. There have been protests in Europe and I don’t know why it hasn’t (come to Britain).

“One thing I could guess is that so much of it in the United States is community based, these demonstrations have taken place with people marching on basketball arenas.

“People have stopped fans from getting inside so there is a way in which it is very visceral and tangible for the players in a way that maybe it wouldn’t be if it was 1,000 miles away.”

So maybe because the killings were not in Britain, it didn’t affect the players.

But in 2011 Mark Duggan was shot dead by police in Tottenham, north London. Riots took place around White Hart Lane but not one Spurs player lifted up their shirt to reveal a demand for justice.

Zirin points out that the killing of Duggan was more of an anomaly, while Brown and Garner are just two of countless black people killed by police in the US.

Asked if US sportspeople have stopped caring about money and felt no hesitation to join the protests, Zirin says: “The players in the US, especially the big players, have been scared for decades (of losing sponsorships).

“I think what we are seeing now represents something very new — there has been a decisive shift away from the old way of thinking and it is very recent.

“So I think we have to wait and see how it plays out internationally but just as there was the killing in Tottenham in 2011 there have been killings in the United States and police violence for centuries.

“This is the first time the sports world has responded to it in all these years.”

But what makes the killings in 2014 different? Why are players taking a stand now?

“That’s a question all of us are asking ourselves,” Zirin says. “What makes this different? A big thing that makes it different is social media and the way in which it has been broadcast in peoples’ rooms makes it very different and the way athletes are accessing it, that makes it different.

“The other thing is the way in which there were this series of high-profile cases one after the other and I think that had a big effect, but once again it was social media that made them so high-profile.

“Lastly, it was the way in which Michael Brown was left in the street for four-and-half hours because the killing of Michael Brown wasn’t caught on video. But after he was killed that’s when it started.

“There were just hours of people crying in the street, screams for people to call an ambulance and I think that wounded people in a particular way.

“Because it wasn’t just: ‘OK, a police officer felt threatened, he shot, that’s what happened. It’s the nature of the police, blah blah blah. It’s a dangerous job.’

“But then it’s like you see all of this institutional not giving a shit. That’s why the ‘black lives matter’ part is really important.

“‘Let him lie in the street, who cares?’ and then it’s not just about being an officer who panicked again but it’s institutional — it’s a prosecutor who doesn’t try to bring charges, everything about people just not giving a shit institutionally.

“And I think the fact that it played out for people in real time made the difference.”