“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”
James Baldwin wrote those words in Time magazine in 1965. They still ring true in 2020.
Before the resumption of play in late July, Masai Ujiri said the Toronto Raptors would channel that rage and use the NBA bubble as a platform. For the last month he, his organization and the entire league have made good on that promise, using daily media coverage to eloquently educate on issues far greater than basketball schemes. Players and coaches alike have protested during national anthems, worn their convictions on their clothing, and used entire media availabilities to speak on pressing issues.
But what if all of that fell on deaf ears? What if it wasn’t enough to spark meaningful action in defence of Black lives?
On Sunday, police in Kenosha, Wisc., a city 40 miles from Milwaukee, responded to an alleged domestic disturbance. A man named Jacob Blake was present at the scene. According to Benjamin Crump, an attorney representing Blake’s family, the 29-year-old was there to break up an altercation between two women.
What happened next was captured in a graphic video filmed from the other side of the street. The video shows Blake walking toward the driver’s side door of a gray SUV. Two officers follow him with their guns drawn. As he opens the door, one officer grabs his tank top and multiple gunshots ring out. Blake collapses. It would later be reported that he was shot seven times from behind by officer Rusten Sheskey, and that Blake’s three children were inside the SUV at the time of the shooting.
Blake suffered organ damage and is now paralyzed from the waist down, according to Crump, his spinal cord severed as a result of the shooting.
On Wednesday, in response to this most recent tragedy, the Milwaukee Bucks declined to take the court for their game against the Orlando Magic as a form of protest. Their decision came exactly four years to the day after Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem for the first time to protest police brutality while playing a pre-season game in the state of Wisconsin. In the locker room, the Bucks reportedly called Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor, Mandela Barnes, and attorney general, Josh Kaul.
When the Houston Rockets, Oklahoma City Thunder, Los Angeles Lakers and Portland Trail Blazers all decided to join the Bucks and Magic in protest, the NBA postponed all three playoff games scheduled for Wednesday.
Athletes and teams from other sports quickly followed suit.
Washington Mystics players entered the arena in Bradenton, Fla., wearing shirts that spelled out Blake’s name, each with seven holes in the back signifying the bullets that hit Blake. The Mystics were scheduled to face the Atlanta Dream and both teams met on the court to decide whether to play. They originally planned to go ahead with the game and place the ball on the court every time the clock hit seven minutes, again to signify the seven shots that hit Blake, but three minutes before tipoff a consensus not to play was reached. Players knelt, locked arms and raised fists during the national anthem. All three games on the WNBA schedule were postponed.
It’s no surprise WNBA players would make a strong statement. They have been speaking with a unified voice on these issues since the inception of the league. It’s also worth noting that, if these games aren’t made up, the loss of income is a much riskier sacrifice for WNBA players than their male athlete counterparts.
In MLB, it was the game’s top Black players leading the way. Mookie Betts decided not to play, and the rest of his Dodgers teammates followed suit. Jason Heyward, Dexter Fowler and Jack Flaherty were other big names who decided not to play Wednesday. In all, three MLB games were postponed (they will be played as doubleheaders Thursday).
Five of six MLS matches were postponed after Atlanta United didn’t come out for the kickoff of their match against Inter Miami. And individual athletes also joined the protest, like Naomi Osaka, who decided to skip her Thursday semi-final match at the Western and Southern Open. The tournament itself is now taking a one-day pause.
In total, 14 games across four leagues were postponed Wednesday.
And then there is the NHL.
The NHL had three games scheduled. All three were played. Only in one was there an acknowledgment of what was going on in the wider world. Before the Boston Bruins and Tampa Bay Lighting faced off, they had a “moment of reflection” with “End Racism” and “We Skate for Black Lives” displayed on screens above the ice. Given that every other major sports league has once again taken more progressive and proactive action on these issues than the NHL, a more appropriate gesture might have been to stop skating for Black lives.
At a meeting of all the players in the bubble Wednesday night, the Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers reportedly voted to sit out the rest of the season. Just before noon on Thursday, it was reported that player’s had decided to resume the playoffs, with games likely beginning again on Friday. A meeting between players and owners is also expected Thursday.
Regardless of the steps they took moving forward, players were going to draw criticism, and the fact athletes have ended up in this position at all is unfair. Watching Fred VanVleet, Norman Powell, George Hill and Doc Rivers bare their souls is as educational as it is heart-wrenching. And it is their primary job to entertain us not to educate us.
Making the position even more difficult is the impossible task of dealing with your trauma while still performing your job at the highest level. After kneeling for the anthem, Mets first-baseman Dominic Smith broke down explaining the gravity of the moment.
On Monday, Bucks guard George Hill expressed how restarting the NBA season might have been a mistake because it took the focus away from pursuing meaningful reforms to address systemic racism and police brutality.
“First of all, we shouldn’t even have come to this damn place to be honest,” he told reporters. “Coming here just took all the focal points off what the issues are. But we’re here. It is what it is. We can’t do anything from right here. But definitely when it’s all settled, some things need to be done. This world has to change.”
The players had to advance the conversation somehow. At some point anthem protests became less of a statement. Kneeling before a game was a nice gesture but not exactly a bold statement when everyone including the referees are doing it. Unless you’re in the NHL, where the practice hasn’t been embraced. And the strike did seem to generate some traction, even in the immediate aftermath. Late Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced a federal civil rights investigation into the shooting of Blake.
We can tweet and talk and march but the question we all ultimately have to answer is what are you willing to give up so that someone else doesn’t have to give up their life, their child, their partner, their parent or their freedom?
Martin Luther King Jr. gave up his life.
Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave up their medals.
Colin Kaepernick gave up his career.
The Bucks and their NBA brethren have given up playoff games.
Many have sacrificed, but one notable exception is those who have the most to spare: The owners, the executives of companies who partner with leagues and, quite frankly, those like us at Sportsnet who broadcast the games.
The NBA’s owners launched the NBA Foundation in partnership with the NBAPA, which will see them contribute a collective $30 million annually for 10 years to support racial equality and social justice. It’s not an insignificant gesture but it’s also a rounding error for billionaires who own Fortune 500 companies. And for change to be enacted, we need more than their fiscal capital, we need their political capital.
At some point, if you benefit from Black talent but don’t work to eliminate Black trauma, you are part of the problem. If NBA stakeholders want players to stop using their power and refusing to play, they need to use some power of their own to create change.
And it’s not like the type of pressure the players are asking the league to apply is foreign or unreasonable. The NBA has used it’s might before as leverage to promote social change. The league refused to host the All-Star Game in North Carolina for two years in protest of the discriminatory HB2 “Bathroom Bill,” which singled out members of the transgender community and limited LGBTQ+ protections. The NBA didn’t respond with phrases on jerseys or writing on the court, they said, “We are taking the All-Star Game away from Charlotte unless your repeal this bill.” And they didn’t bring that positive economic impact back to Charlotte until they were satisfied. When the NCAA threatened to join the boycott, state lawmakers repealed the bathroom regulations within the bill.
Imagine if leagues and owners put a similar type of pressure on the state of Wisconsin on behalf of Jacob Blake, or the state of Kentucky on behalf of Breonna Taylor. That’s the type of tangible action a strike can force. Black athletes have realized their talents aren’t just for owners to profit off of, they’ve realized those talents have political power. By withholding their services, they not only gained leverage and a seat at the table, they showed the blueprint of the power of a Black labour movement.
This isn’t just about Jacob Blake being shot in the back in front of his kids, or Masai Ujiri not being able to celebrate in peace, or Breonna Taylor’s killers still being free, or George Floyd pleading for his life with a knee on his neck, or Dafonte Miller losing his eye. It’s about the systems that perpetuate a cycle of Black incarceration, voter suppression, racial wealth inequality, lack of access to education and health care, and state violence against Black people. This is about the fact that these deadly interactions with police will keep happening if we keep having the same reaction to them.
The players decided they had to use their status to disrupt the status quo.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” NBA players have put owners, leagues and their fellow athletes in other sports on notice. In removing themselves from the on-court conversation, they will see who speaks up and who stays silent. If Black lives matter, it’s time for those well-connected friends in high places to speak up and act to make some change for all of us.
