Police shooting leaves Raptors frustrated
Latest shooting by police stirs doubts over impact of NBA’s symbolic gestures
Some Raptors want to go home.
They won’t say who, they will say why.
They can’t help but wonder how much they are actually accomplishing, taking a knee with arms locked, speaking out, making statements by wearing the Black Lives Matter T-shirts and having Black Lives Matter printed on the back of their NBA jerseys. It is all earnest and symbolic and seemingly meaningless.
They can’t help but wonder how little their basketball games matter right now in the big picture and how much the fight of their league and their players and the individual franchises of the NBA, and of society, really, is impacting anything.
What the Toronto Raptors have done here all looks and sounds impressive and politically savvy and necessary, yet sadly nothing seems to have changed.
There will be a playoff series beginning Thursday in Florida, a gigantic series on so many levels for the Toronto Raptors and the Boston Celtics, two of the very best teams in the NBA. But when the Raptors team got together for an unscheduled meeting Tuesday morning, playing basketball seemed to be the last thing on their minds. The Celtics were never discussed. Instead, the subject was Jacob Blake and the most recent and seemingly unnecessary police shooting in America.
And the question among many is: What now? What now for protesting NBA players, truly believing they could play a role in influencing the beginning of necessary change in North America. What matters more right now, they wonder, playing or not playing, staying in the Orlando NBA bubble or going home, staying active or changing their approach?
Some NBA players didn’t want to play in the first place. They thought it was the wrong time considering the state of America following the George Floyd murder in Minnesota.
George Hill of the Milwaukee Bucks called it a mistake on Monday, saying coming to the bubble took the focus off the real issues in America.
So players are asking questions now about what they can do and maybe what they can’t do. Wearing T-shirts and taking a knee with arms wrapped in arms, attempting to bring people together and having their voices heard, is as noble a gesture as there has been in modern professional sports. And the NBA statements have been loud and powerful.
But strong as they are, big as they are, loud as they are, are they strong enough, big enough, loud enough to defeat police brutality, to stomp out systemic racism?
You listen to Fred VanVleet and Norman Powell speak on Tuesday and they sound slightly defeated and somewhat defiant. And angry, very angry and really not certain what to do next.
“It’s just starting to feel like everything we’re doing is just going through the motions and nothing’s really changing,” said Raptors guard VanVleet. “And here we are again with another unfortunate incident.”
VanVleet has lived this life. When he was five, he lost his father, whom he barely knew, shot in a drug deal. On Sunday, he was in his hotel room on what should have been Kobe Bryant’s birthday, and was reading the online posting by Vanessa Bryant and thinking and crying, they lost their dad. “I lost my dad.”
And then came the video we’ve all seen by now. The shooting of Blake in the back that apparently paralyzed him in Wisconsin. “You can’t make sense of it,” said VanVleet. “You can’t.”
There is a game to play Thursday when the Raptors and Celtics meet and under closer to regular circumstances, this would be all we would be talking about right now. The basketball may still be great. These teams are that good. The series is important.
But VanVleet can’t wrap his head around that right now. This was Tuesday for him. He’ll be ready, he says, because that’s what he does, but not ready to talk much about basketball heading into Game 1.
“I’m tired of sitting up here and talking about Black Lives Matter and trying to effect change,” said Powell, who grew up in southeast San Diego. It wasn’t Compton. But it was close. “If I took a gun and killed somebody, we’re going to jail, we’re not going back home and continue on with our daily lives while they investigate what’s going on.” The police in Wisconsin were suspended with pay and not named.
The Raptors gathered together Tuesday and shared ideas and thoughts and frustrations and maybe some anger. Almost everything in the bubble has been scheduled. This meeting wasn’t. But the players needed to get together, needed to be together, hear each other, share ideas and thoughts, get out their frustrations.
“If nobody feels like playing basketball or practising basketball or talking about basketball, that’s OK,” said coach Nick Nurse.
Game 1 is Thursday night with the Celtics. Game 1 seemed a whole world away on Tuesday afternoon.