NBA leads way: Bucks start wave of protests
Sports history took place at about 4 p.m. Florida time Wednesday. Righteous history.
The Milwaukee Bucks went on strike minutes before their playoff game against the Orlando Magic. They did it in the name of social justice. With outrage in their hearts over the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis.
In a town just 50 minutes south of the Bucks’ headquarters, a police officer shot Blake seven times in the back; he is reported to be paralyzed, perhaps for life.
How are you supposed to be the nation’s entertainment when you — as human beings — are under attack? When the ongoing American tragedy of police brutality and lethal use of force against people of color — an issue that NBA players have been among those in the forefront protes
ting for years — continues on almost a daily basis? When you are not only outraged but traumatized?
What the Bucks did set off an immediate domino effect throughout sports. The other four NBA teams scheduled to resume playoff series Wednesday — Oklahoma City Thunder and Houston Rockets, Los Angeles Lakers and Portland Trail Blazers — said they would not play.
In the wake of the Bucks’ decision, the Milwaukee Brewers decided not to play their game against the Cincinnati Reds on Wednesday evening. The Seattle Mariners and San Diego Padres opted not to play, as did the Giants and the Dodgers. The WNBA, also typically a leader in social justice, called off its three Wednesday games. Major League Soccer scratched five matches. How far will the movement spread?
Remember the date Aug. 26: It was four years ago on the same date that a reporter noticed that Colin Kaepernick was not standing for the national anthem before a 49ers preseason game.
He was alone, on an island, for the most part. But not on this Aug. 26. This is a collective effort, the likes of which we have never seen.
These are some of the biggest sports stars on the planet. They will not shut up. They will not dribble for your pleasure. They are not your escape. They are on strike.
What’s happening is bigger than sports. We heard again and again Wednesday that this is bigger than basketball. And the NBA players who have been in Orlando for weeks, separated from their families, in order to be your entertainment, are seeing the very big, very grim, picture. The victims don’t have a voice, from their graves, their hospital beds. These athletes want to be the collective voice.
The NBA announced their games were postponed, but until when? There’s a full schedule Thursday. And in the coming days. Who will play? When will anyone play again? Will the carefully constructed, successful bubble collapse not from the coronavirus but from the virus of hate?
All players in the bubble were invited to a Wednesday evening meeting to discuss how to move forward, and a board of governors meeting was called for Thursday morning, according to multiple reports.
This is a personal issue for athletes. Particularly in a league like the NBA, which is made primarily of Black men. They are angry. They are hurt. They are demanding change.
Once again, as with the coronavirus shutdown, the NBA is leading the way. The league has been out front on this issue, with the blessing of its league ownership groups and leaders. For more than a month, the players have been using their platform — in a globally televised bubble — to express their concerns. To shine a light on injustice.
They have been wearing jerseys that say, “How Many More,” shoes with Breonna Taylor’s face, playing on courts that say Black Lives
Matter. They have used their interview time to try to raise awareness, to ask for social justice.
But the killings and the shootings keep happening.
The Bucks decided that words were not enough. This was no time for a game. All of the players, including one of the biggest stars in the world in Giannis Antetokounmpo, chose to strike.
This is not some sort of casual concern by millionaire athletes. This is personal. These players have had “the talk” with their parents, and had to give “the talk” to their children, about what to do if pulled over by the police. Many, many of them know people who have been killed or brutalized by law enforcement. So many of them have their own stories of brutality.
Sterling Brown, the Bucks’ guard, was tackled, shocked with a Taser and arrested by Milwaukee police two years ago. His crime? Straddling the line in a parking space while parking his car in a mostly empty Walgreens parking lot.
Doc Rivers, the Clippers’ head coach whose father was a police officer and who spoke with heartbreak in his voice and tears in his eyes Tuesday night, once had his house burned in a racially motivated arson.
“We keep loving this country and this country does not love us back,” Rivers said.
These men are wealthy and comfortable. They are privileged. But they know that they are still viewed, by too many police and too many Americans, as “the other.” They have power, and access to power, and are ready to use it.
Will there be league or legal trouble coming out of this move? Trouble because their views and actions might be distorted for political purposes? If so, it will be, in the words of the late Congressman John Lewis, “good trouble.”
Righteous trouble. Ann Killion is a columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle. Email: akillion@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @annkillion