Kyrie won’t shut up & dribble
Injured Net becomes key force as NBA weighs social issues over Disney return
This is no different from the time Kyrie Irving side-stepped Stephen Curry and hit the shot that delivered the Cavaliers their first title in 2016. It’s no different from the turnaround fadeaway shot he hit over Klay Thompson seven months later on Christmas Day.
It’s no different from the would-have-been game-winner he attempted over Josh Okogie in his first game as a Net, and it’s no different from the gamewinning shot he hit over RJ Barrett — from the same spot with the same move he used on Curry — to beat the Knicks earlier this season.
Irving is trying to win this game. Only this is a game being played off the court.
The Nets point guard isn’t even healthy. If the NBA does in- deed return from its coronavirus hiatus in the agreedupon bubble at Walt Disney Resorts in Orlando, Irving will be less player and more cheerleader. He underwent arthroscopic surgery on March 3 after enduring a right shoulder impingement with bursitis that limited him to 20 games this season.
Functionally, Irving’s opinion shouldn’t matter as a player with little risk compared to those who plan to compete. But Irving wants to make sure it’s the revolution that is televised — not basketball.
Things are far from functional in a United States where black people are targeted and killed by police officers at an alarming, disturbingly disproportionate rate — the same black people who comprise 80.7% of NBA players (as of 2018) but account for just six of the league’s 30 full-time head coaches and only one (Michael Jordan) of the 30 team owners. (Bucks co-owner Marc Lasry is the only other owner of color. He is Moroccan-American.)
George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis Police Department officer who kneeled on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds has spurred mass protests across the nation.
That’s why Irving spearheaded a call of approximately 80 players — including Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard, Chris Paul, Kevin Durant, Donovan Mitchell and Avery Bradley — on Friday night, during which the players discussed ways to use their platform in order to attack racial injustice, systemic racism and police brutality, according to The Athletic.
“I don’t support going into Orlando,” Irving reportedly told
the players. “I’m not with the systematic racism and the (BS). … Something smells a little fishy. Whether we want to admit it or not, we are targeted as black men every day we wake up.”
Howard publicly supported Irving’s stance on Sunday.
“I agree with Kyrie,” he wrote in a statement to CNN. “Basketball, or entertainment period, isn’t what’s needed at the moment and will only be a distraction. … No basketball until we get things resolved.”
The revolution has been televised, but the resolution remains undefined. One popular course of action has been to call for defunding police departments and giving taxpayers autonomy over where their tax dollars go. The Minneapolis City Council has already unanimously voted to abolish its police department and replace it with a community-led public safety system.
Another has been quite simply arresting, charging and sentencing the officers responsible for senseless black deaths who have yet to be brought to justice.
Breonna Taylor, for example, was killed on March 13 by police officers in plain clothes who used a battering ram to execute a no-knock warrant in search of a suspect who had already been located elsewhere.
They shot Taylor “at least” eight times. None of the officers responsible for her death have been arrested.
NBA players are in a unique position, able to leverage their platform and influence on the public to bring about change. Irving and others who have banded together in the wake of the Friday players’ call want to make sure the players truly use that platform for good, not to take attention away from social issues.
They want to do the same thing Paul, Anthony, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade did, using their platform during the 2016 ESPYs to divert attention from sports to the killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castille.
“The system is broken. The problems are not new. The violence is not new. And the racial divide definitely is not new,” Anthony said in his introduction that night. “But the urgency to create change is at an all-time high.”
Irving, Howard and others will not shut up and dribble — and it’s admirable for Howard, a player who has yet to win a championship currently playing for the championship favorite. Irving is seizing the moment — a moment many have never experienced and one that has arisen under circumstances that may not be replicated for another two-thousand and twenty years.
A viral infection has put the world on lockdown. Basketball, along with other pro sports and other forms of televised entertainment, is a common getaway from the harsh realities of everyday life.
Players could very well use their return to play to spread a message of unity in Orlando. But they will eventually return to play. Headlines will read unity and activism one day, then box score and basketball every day after.
A return to play could have no more of an impact than other corporate attempts to make a statement, such as Call of Duty’s Black Lives Matter splash page: A short-lived message condemning racial inequality that quickly fades to black when you start the game, becoming nothing more than a forgotten plea overtaken by kill-death ratio and an eventual winner and loser.
And it’s important to note that not all players feel the same way Irving and Howard. “Some of us want to hoop and compete,” Lakers forward Kyle Kuzma tweeted in response to news of Irving’s call, “don’t get it twisted.”
“Hoopers say what y’all want. If (LeBron James) said he hooping, we all hooping,” Clippers point guard Patrick Beverley tweeted on Sunday. “Not personal, only business.”
James, of course, has been the most outspoken proponent of resuming the season amid the pandemic: “Saw some reports about execs and agents wanting to cancel season??? That’s absolutely not true,” he tweeted on April 30. “Nobody I know saying anything like that. As soon as it’s safe we would like to finish our season. I’m ready and our team is ready. Nobody should be canceling anything.”
A week later, video of two white men pursuing then shooting and killing 26-year-old Ahmaud Arbery — who was out for a jog in his own neighborhood of Brunswick, Ga. — went viral. James was outspoken about Arbery’s death, as well.
James, though, wants a return to play, ostensibly to win championship ring No. 4 and shorten the gap between himself and Michael Jordan as the greatest NBA player of all-time. Irving filed for divorce from James in July of 2017.
The only thing Irving is disrupting other than James’ championship hopes is the status quo: of black lives being valued less by police than their white counterparts, and of protests and social activism movements that gain traction then fall flat after months of work with no tangible results. That’s something worth disrupting.
Even if it costs a hundred million dollars.