Some sports postpone events as players boycott.
Keeping an eye on the world of sports during the pandemic:
All three NBA playoff games scheduled for Wednesday were postponed, with players around the league choosing to boycott in their strongest statement yet against racial injustice.
Called off: Game 5s in Lake Buena Vista, Florida between the Bucks and Magic, Rockets and Thunder and Lakers and Trail Blazers.
The NBA said all three games would be rescheduled, yet didn’t say when.
And the reverberations quickly moved into Major League Baseball and the WNBA. The Brewers’ home game with the Reds was called off, by player decision, as were the MarinersPadres and Dodgers- Giants games.
WNBA players chose not to play their three scheduled regular-season games.
Five of six MLS games also were postponed.
The dramatic series of moves began when the Bucks — the NBA’s team from Wisconsin, a state rocked in recent days by the shooting by police of Jacob Blake, a Black man — didn’t take the floor for their game against the Magic.
Players had been discussing boycotting games in the bubble after the shooting of Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Players and coaches in the bubble were invited to a meeting Wednesday to discuss how — or if — to go forward with the season.
Bucks guard Sterling Brown, who has a federal lawsuit pending against the city of Milwaukee alleging he was targeted because he was Black and that his civil rights were violated in January 2018 when officers used a stun gun on him after a parking violation, and teammate George Hill read a statement when the team emerged from its locker room nearly 31⁄ hours after its
2 game was to begin.
Brown called the video of the shooting “horrendous.”
“There has been no action, so our focus today cannot be on basketball,” Brown said, as he and Hill were flanked by their teammates in an arena hallway.
Their protest received significant support on social media from other players as well as team executives from across the league.
Demanding societal change and ending racial injustice has been a major part of the NBA’s restart at Walt Disney World.