Jazz center Davis questions if Kyrie would give it all up
Ed Davis was a fan- and teamfavorite during his brief stint with Nets. In one season, he played backup center to Jarrett Allen and was an enforcer, averaging six points and nine rebounds in 18 minutes off the bench last year.
Davis, now a member of the Utah Jazz, was also one of the 80 NBA players on Friday’s call led by Kyrie Irving, Chris Paul, Carmelo Anthony and others. According to multiple reports, Irving led the contingent on the call who wanted to consider potentially sitting out of the 22-team return to play in Orlando as a message to fight the racial injustices and police killings of black people in the United States.
“I’m willing to give up everything I have,” Irving reportedly said on the call. Davis, who is in favor of playing at the bubble, questioned how deep that commitment really goes.
“It’s easy for a guy like Kyrie to say that he’ll give everything back, but would he really give everything back? It’s easy for Dwight Howard to say that we don’t need to play when he’s in Atlanta in his $20 million mansion,” Davis told USA Today in a wide-ranging interview.
“But there are other guys on the rosters who need this money to provide for whoever they’re taking care of and things like that. It’s easy for the superstars in the league to say this and how they feel about this and that. But it means a lot more when it comes from the role players.”
Davis went on to explain that he’s taken a 25% pay cut due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which he quantified as approximately $30,000 lost every two weeks. In his view, the best thing the black players can do is take the money they’re owed.
“That’s hundreds of thousands of dollars, and that’s what is creating generational wealth and that’s what is really going to help the black community,” he continued.
“I get it, we need to take a stand; we got to do this, we got to do that. But you got to have money to do some of these things and make some of these things happen…. For me, I want to fight against police brutality. That’s my cause; that’s really what I want to focus on.”
From Davis’ perspective, the way to do that is to make money playing basketball. According to the Jazz center, most of his peers share his viewpoint.
“I’m about 99.9% sure we’ll finish the season,” he said.