NBA will address concerns before return, says Silver
NBA commissioner Adam Silver plans to listen for now, but he expects the league to address all player concerns before games resume in Orlando next month.
Silver said he has a sense that players and the league should be able to “work through most of those issues over the next few weeks,” when asked this week about how the NBA is handling concerns over the optics of playing during the Black Lives Matter movement as well as health and safety matters around the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s not an ideal situation,” Silver said regarding a series of issues the NBA is facing in an appearance on “The Return of Sports” special on ESPN. “We are trying to find a way to our own normalcy in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of essentially a recession or worse with 40 million unemployed, and now with enormous social unrest in the country.
“And so as we work through these issues, I can understand how some players may feel, that it’s not for them … it may be for family reasons, it may be for health reasons they have, or it may be because they feel — as some players have said very recently — that their time is best spent elsewhere.”
A coalition of players including Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving has held a series of players-only calls and also communicated concerns to the league regarding how to use the NBA platform to continue the BLM movement — and not detract from it while playing.
ESPN reported that the coalition wants to see a detailed plan on how the NBA and its sponsors plan to address issues of importance to the black community before the restart in Orlando.
Los Angeles Lakers guard Avery Bradley, one of the coalition leaders along with Irving, detailed to ESPN a number of issues the players want more details on, including improving hiring practices for Black head coaches and front-office management, donations to organizations serving Black communities, and partnerships with Blackowned businesses and arena vendors.
“Regardless of how much media coverage will be received, talking and raising awareness about social injustice isn’t enough,” Bradley told ESPN. “Are we that selfcentered to believe no one in the world is aware of racism right now? That, as athletes, we solve the real issues by using our platforms to speak?
“We don’t need to say more. We need to find a way to achieve more. Protesting during an anthem, wearing Tshirts is great, but we need to see real actions being put into the works.”