Players refuse to play, participating in walkout in Florida
Hours after the Milwaukee Bucks refused to participate in its playoff game against the Orlando Magic on Wednesday in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake, prompting the postponement of three NBA playoff games, WNBA players followed suit, choosing a walkout rather than playing the three scheduled games in Bradenton, Florida.
Before their 7 p.m.
EDT Wednesday game against the Atlanta Dream, the reigning WNBA champion Washington Mystics players walked into the arena wearing white T-shirts spelling out Jacob Blake’s name on the front. Each shirt showed seven bloody bullet holes in the back, symbolizing the number of times
Blake was shot by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The Los Angeles Sparks were scheduled to play the Minnesota Lynx at 8 p.m. EDT, the second game of the three-game slate.
The Sparks, Lynx,
Mystics and Dream, the four teams that had arrived to the arena early, gathered on the court and discussed whether they would play games. Briefly, it seemed that the games would happen; ESPN’S Holly Rowe reported that players had decided to play while honoring Blake by putting the ball down during the seventh minute of each quarter. But the players continued to huddle and instead chose to lock arms, kneel and raise a fist with their coaches and support staffs on the court.
The WNBA has made social justice a primary focus of its season, from honoring victims of police brutality to advocating on behalf of voting. Players wear Breonna Taylor’s name on their jerseys after the 26-year-old EMT was shot in her Louisville, Kentucky, home by police who were acting on a no-knock order. They held a conference call with Michelle Cusseaux’s mother, Frances Garrett, after Cusseaux was killed in 2014 by police in Phoenix, Arizona, who were responding to a mental wellness check.
“This is the reason for the 2020 season,” Dream center Elizabeth Williams said on ESPN2 as she read a statement. “It is in our DNA. We have been saying her name, we are lifting the names of Black and brown women whose murders have been forgotten. We will continue to use our platform to speak of these injustices that are still happening and demand action for change.”
To honor the “Say Her Name” movement, WNBA players have organized regular meetings with families of victims of police brutality. They spoke to both Taylor’s and Cusseaux’s mothers. This past weekend, players spoke on a large call with several members of different families.
“As a league, we’re standing by each other, trying to use our platform as best we can, getting in touch with those families and speaking to those families and trying to help them as much as we can to bring awareness to what’s going on in their situations,” Sparks guard Tierra Ruffin-pratt said Friday morning. “It may not be today, it may not be tomorrow, but we’re still trying to bring justice to people like Breonna Taylor.”