‘HIT CLOSE TO HOME’
Players, staff turn out to pay respects at Floyd visitation
Outside The Fountain of Praise church, Justin Gorham stood solemnly, wearing a black polo shirt and pants, as he waited to pay respects to George Floyd, the black man who died in police custody two weeks previously in Minneapolis.
A woman passed by with a T-shirt reading “I can’t breathe,” among the words from Floyd that were ignored as Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, pressed his knee to Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes, even, as video shows, Floyd was no longer responsive.
“Eye-opening and sad,” Gorham, a redshirt senior forward from Columbia, Md., said after a contingent of 23 UH basketball players and staff attended Monday’s public viewing of Floyd. “We just came out here to support the cause and the movement because a lot of things in the world need to change.”
Nearby, a man held up a sign: “Enough is enough.” Another group, adhering to safety guidelines in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, wore black
masks that read: “Black Lives Matter.”
In the two weeks since Floyd’s killing May 25, protests have erupted around the world amid calls to address police violence and systemic racism.
“What this has done is awakened the world,” UH coach Kelvin Sampson said outside the Guy V. Lewis Development Facility shortly before the team loaded into two vans and made the 20-minute drive to southwest Houston. He later added: “The thing this has done is caused every American to take an inventory of yourself and forced us to answer some questions that maybe we don’t like talking about.”
Gorham said Floyd’s death “hit close to home” with the UH campus located in the Third Ward, just a few blocks from where Floyd grew up. Sampson added, “We lost somebody from our community.” In a show of support, Gorham and teammates Brison Gresham, DeJon Jarreau, J’Wan Roberts and Kiyron Powell marched in protests last week in downtown Houston.
“Just to show love,” said Roberts, a redshirt freshman from Killeen. “To take a stand to what’s going on. It was a really good experience.”
Quentin Grimes, a junior guard from The Woodlands, summarized the message from the last two weeks: “Respect everybody for who they are and love everybody. Try and make a difference for the future.”
Just days earlier, Sampson had strong words about Floyd’s death during a webinar hosted by the National Association of Basketball Coaches. At 64, Sampson is old enough to remember racism while growing up in the South, and he recalls the wave of riots that swept the nation during the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
“To me, he might as well (have) had a pillowcase over his head with his eyes dotted out and his nose dotted out,” Sampson said of Chauvin, who is among four police officers charged in connection to Floyd’s death. “It just brought back memories of the Ku Klux Klan from the ’50s and ’60s.
“(Watching the video) almost brought you to tears. It’s almost, like, a call to arms. It motivated me. It made me want to go hug my players, hug my family, tell them I love them and take care of them.”
In the ensuing days, Sampson sent a text message to his players and staff, offering a “platform to educate” and share their emotions.
“He let us freely talk our mind, get it off our chest and let him know how we feel,” Gorham said.
One player showed Sampson a book he’s reading about the plight of black Americans in society.
“Wouldn’t have had that book before,” Sampson said. “Now he’s reading it and learning something from it. That’s why you have hope.”
Sampson mentioned a lengthy text message from Cameron Tyson, a redshirt sophomore guard from Bothell, Wash.
“I don’t know what’s the most words you can put in a text, but he was bordered on it,” Sampson said. “It was his emotions coming out.”
Sampson added: “Some of the most emotional things I read came from some of our white coaches.”
Sampson is hopeful of change after watching the large gatherings around the globe against racial injustice.
“You see people in Germany, people in London, people all over the world holding up signs (saying) ‘Black Lives Matter,’ ” Sampson said. “We have a chance here. Not always do you have a chance. Sometimes hope and faith are important words. I have hope that, across our country and all across the world, we will seize this opportunity to continue this fight forward.”
After about a 20-minute wait,
UH players and staff walked into the lobby at The Fountain of Praise. They briefly stopped for a group photo in front of bouquets of flowers that lined a wall. As they walked into the main sanctuary, two at a time, players had their hands clasped together. Each stood for a few seconds in front of the golden casket with Floyd’s body.
Mikhail McLean, a former UH player and currently the Cougars’ assistant director for player development, walked out a back door and immediately let out a loud sigh.
“Came as a family to honor George Floyd,” McLean later tweeted. “Rest in paradise brother!”
Before departing, each player and staff member signed a condolence book for Floyd.
“It may not be today, it may not be tomorrow, but it’s coming,” Sampson said. “Change is on the way.”
“The thing this has done is caused every American to take an inventory of yourself and forced us to answer some questions that maybe we don’t like talking about.” UH basketball coach Kelvin Sampson