And the grip has never been tighter than it has been for the past 12 hours.
While the season was just confirmed to be back on thanks to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski hitting the send button on his phone’s Twitter app, getting a profuse amount of interactions to a tweet proclaiming the league would resume games as soon as Friday, a wide array of emotions were pulled from the mental Rolodex from all league fans alike. Most anticipated for the life support upholding the abbreviated season to ultimately be pulled, as a firestorm of reports escaped just about all sports media outlets in the hours leading up to 11:56 A.M. ET when Woj confirmed the season to be back.
Those reports were spearheaded by the groundbreaking announcement that both the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers were open to boycotting and scrapping the season while the rest of the teams complied to finish the season, as they were empathetic to the NBA who pulled out all the stops to finish the resumed season.
These debates had run rampant throughout the bubble, and civic discourse among players in regards to their voices not being heard as they had wanted them to had grown in fervor. Players and coaches had become notably infuriated over the unjust shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old black man who was paralyzed from the waist down as a result of multiple brutish police officers inflicting their brutality onto another defenseless citizen of color, and the continuous violence against black men, women, and children in a nation that’s lied under oath to protect them.
Milwaukee Bucks guard George Hill, while using dysphemistic language to explicitly paint the canvas of the players’ questioning of the league’s return and if it’s done enough to amplify the players’ messages, exclaimed his perspective to journalists and fans listening.
“We shouldn’t have even come to this damn place, to be honest,” Hill said. “I think coming here just took all the focal points off what the issues are”.
And yesterday, mutual agreements with Hill’s sentiments were felt, with boiling points and centralized opinions of unrest finally reached.
The Milwaukee Bucks, who were up 3 games to that of the Orlando Magic’s one game in the first round of the NBA Playoffs, stunned league officials by refusing to step foot on the court inside the HP Field House in the Disney Springs bubble, organizing a boycott that would grab national headlines. The reason? The Kenosha Police Department had yet to indict the officer who fired seven unwarranted shots into Blake’s back, and he needed to be held accountable for the infraction he had against black life.
As Kenosha was the closest city to Milwaukee, — 40 miles south of the city, to be exact — the Bucks decided to not only set the precedent of saying that entertainment and sports must take a backseat to the fight against social injustice by boycotting NBA games in order to put pressure on NBA owners.
Talks about boycotting game one of the Raptors – Celtics Eastern Conference Semi-Finals were deep into discussions as a result of the repeated offenses of police brutality Thursday when the Bucks staged their groundbreaking walk-out. This undoubtedly launched the argument of suspending the games into the stratosphere.
In retrospect, however, the players forced owners and league officials’ hands, to make a decision with the possibility of the money being spent on them being relinquished and the ultimate sacrifice of their livelihoods being erased in order for the billionaire owners to see them, and acknowledge what they really came to the bubble for: the achievement of equal justice under the law for Black Americans.
And across the league, other players and teams would concurrently follow suit. The Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder were set to tip-off Game 6 on Wednesday evening and decided to boycott NBA play in lockstep for the reasons mentioned. The Lakers and Trail Blazers did the same later on.
But it didn’t stop there in the basketball bubble. Major League Soccer postponed five games Wednesday after players objected to setting foot on the pitch while a sixth match between Orlando F.C. and Nashville F.C. played on — a sign that the situation’s details were still developing at the time.
The WNBA postponed all of its games as a means of being a voice to the voiceless, showing their support to the families of Jacob Blake and the many lives victimized to the plague that is police violence and unnecessary force against minorities with this touching tribute.
Major League Baseball called off three games because of the players’ voices, as the Milwaukee Brewers followed their fellow Bucks and decided not to play against the Cincinnati Reds, the Seattle Mariners (who have the most black players on a team of any team in the majors, by the way) postponed their game against the San Diego Padres, and Mookie Betts’ Los Angeles Dodgers not playing the San Francisco Giants.
The Bucks, who as a team collectively decided to take matters into their own hands Wednesday afternoon, contacted the Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul and the Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes in a team-wide conference call to demand justice for Jacob Blake, who’s life will forever be affected by the transgressions of this past week.
Players in both the NBA and WNBA have long been at the forefront of protests against racism and police brutality. This is nothing new. But for this year, in particular, this summer’s tragic murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and last year’s killing of Elijah McClain all had the same things in common: zero accountability and due process under the law for their callous murderers who were still brandishing their police badges after committing such heinous crimes.
The night of Wednesday, August 26th, players hosted a consensus on whether or not it was appropriate to continue playing a spectator sport while the rest of the country continues to wallow in the pit of dystopic ruin from the social unrest, COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide stress of the upcoming election in November.
Though it was reported that a wide majority of players felt like finishing the playoffs was the right thing to do, a lot expressed the sentiment that they were beginning to grow tired of the bubble, and not being with their families during the stress that the playoffs usually have on all competing NBA athletes. They came to a unified decision to continue playing Thursday afternoon, but even with the growing anxieties about the play being stalled and money potentially being sacrificed for the greater good in this boycott, their voices were heard.
So yes, play will go on.
And yes, in a week’s time we’ll be back debating about whether or not LeBron’s Lakers or Kawhi’s Clippers will be in the finals.
But now, the focus is on the topic of the players truly realizing and recognizing their power and leverage on the league’s overall influence on, essentially, how this country is run. It’s rather within the incorrect frame to see the athlete as just the entertainer who avoids politics at every turn and not the advocate for social change.
And obviously, history tells us that’s not the case at all.
Just how differently would The Plight Of The Black Athlete In America by Dr. Ben Salazar be written if the legendary Bill Russell, who as we know endured countless threats of racial hate crimes as the first Black head coach to win an NBA title with the Boston Celtics, had said enough is enough, openly opting out of the role of head coach amidst fears of himself being in danger?
If a Jackie Robinson or Roberto Clemente shied away from their responsibilities of creating a brighter, less racially charged future for players that looked like them?
If a certain John Carlos and Tommie Smith refuse to raise their black-gloved fists in support of Black Power at the ’68 Olympics?
And in recent terms, for a Colin Kaepernick, who literally became a martyr for that conversation of equality under the law to keep afloat in the national discourse, as yesterday marked the four-year anniversary of his National Anthem protest?
NBA owners who carry a large financial stake in how the league is run aren’t Public Enemy No. 1 to the players. The players know that they have the influence and power to motorize change and steer those billionaires in power who call the shots and who are buddy-buddy with some of the country’s most powerful legislators into making the right decisions to help change the nation for the better.
If they refuse to buy into what the players are selling, letting apathy and disregard for their infrastructure to pave the way, so be it. They have a plan to make them change their minds: hitting them in their wallets.
Just having “Black Lives Matter” on a basketball court and on warm-up shirts is a quarter of the battle. Simply sending a tweet to raise awareness isn’t and never will be enough. NBA history says that the exertion of financial leverage shows us that (see how the league’s boycott of the 1964 All-Star game ties into player unions here.) Players threaten the power of higher-ups by sitting out, thus forcing owners to act on fighting for the justice of the helpless black lives being lost to police brutality in this country.
The time for kind words and PR-written statements is behind us. The time for action must be now, or never.
Photo cred: AP/ Ashley Landis, Pool.
