STATEMENT GAME
Thunder-Rockets playoff series on hold as NBA players protest racial injustice
Playoffs still give players best platform for change
If you're mad about the Thunder-Rockets strike Wednesday in the NBA's Orlando bubble, let me ask you a question.
Were you mad at the NBA already?
Were you angry about the “BLACK LIVES MATTER” in large print on the hardwoods? Were you seething over the nationalanthem kneeling? Over the back-of-jersey messages?
The answer is, probably so. I know. I've heard from a bunch of you Thunder fans who say they were staging their own boycotts. They have refused to watch the games from Orlando and have said they will no longer darken the doors of Thunder home games. I assume every NBA market, some more than others, has experienced something similar.
American empathy is in short supply.
Which helps explain why first the Milwaukee Bucks, followed by the Thunder and Rockets, stepped away from Game 5's, putting the playoffs in purgatory but the sport in the spotlight.
The players don't know what else to do, in the wake of the Jacob Blake shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Not that many people
have changed their minds since mid-summer. If you believed that racial injustice rages in our nation, you likely still believe it. If you believed that Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization, you likely still believe it.
The gulf is wide. The bridge is narrow.
But the players' action Wednesday has a chance to affect change. It's not going to change many minds. But it could change some actions.
The players agreed to assemble in Orlando only with the assurance that social justice would be a resounding theme.
The NBA moneychangers had to know that would come at a cost, which it will.
Thunder fans are among the NBA's most passionate, but many were turned off by the constant messaging. Nothing surprising about that. We're a red state. A conservative state. A law-and-order state.
Everybody loses, of course. The NBA will lose money. The players lose popularity. The boycotting fans lose entertainment that has enhanced their lives. The state, eventually, could lose a civic institution that has raised Oklahoma's profile like nothing else.
But here is some solace. The players' walkout Wednesday wasn't directed at people on the opposite side. Wasn't directed at the Republican Convention, in full bloom this week. Wasn't directed at politicians or police.
This walkout, it seems to me, is a message to people on the players' side. The people who understand what Black lives matter means. The people who know that Black parents feel they must educate their sons about being wary of police.
The people who understand what Clippers coach Doc Rivers meant Tuesday when he said Blacks love America and America doesn't love them back.
Of all the messages down in Orlando, the most effective was the most simple,
VOTE. Several players wore it on the backs of their jerseys.
For all the cries of social change, that's the quickest way to achieve it.
From city councils to Pennsylvania Avenue, from the State House to the U.S. Capitol, that's the surest way to affect change.
Players say voter suppression is a key issue, and that no doubt has been a scourge in our history. Maybe still is. I'm no expert.
But self-suppression has been a problem, too. Getting people out to vote is critical for a cause.
That explains the 2016 presidential election. Trump's supporters were more motivated to turn out than were Clinton's.
Walking out of the NBA playoffs won't alarm a bunch of 60-year-old Oklahomans, but it might sway a bunch of 21-year-olds in Milwaukee or Pittsburgh or Detroit.
That's why NBA players are better off resuming the playoffs, at some point. The players have the nation's attention.
Sure, they believe it's trivial to be playing basketball games at such a time of social unrest, and they're right.
But those ballgames provide a platform.
If Chris Paul wants to be heard, he's going to have a bigger audience playing in the Western Conference semifinals than he does standing on the steps of the courthouse in Oklahoma City or Raleigh or Los Angeles.
The players aren't likely to change the hearts and minds of the angry. They've got a chance with the undecided.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. You can also view his personality page at oklahoman.com/berrytramel.