Don’t wait any longer: Time for the NBA players to take core option

By Matt Young, Chronicle of Houston

Renew

10:25 a.m. CDT, Thursday, August 27, 2020

Twelve years ago, an Illinois senator spoke words that resonate more today than they did on the 2008 presidential campaign track he spoke of.

“Change will not come if we wait for another person, or if we wait for another time,” Barack Obama told a motivated crowd one February night. ‘We are the ones we have been waiting for. We are the change we seek. ”

On Wednesday, those words were adorned on George Hill’s T-shirt as he informed the world that he and his NBA cohorts were sick and tired of waiting.

What started with Hill and the Milwaukee Bucks boycotting their playoff game against the Orlando Magic on Wednesday afternoon, ended with the entire NBA playoff schedule – including Game 5 of the colorful Rockets-Thunder series – screaming to a halt, five MLS games were called up and three games are scrapped in both Major League Baseball and the WNBA.

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Now is the time for the entire NBA to go one step further: Pop this bubble in Florida, cancel the season and go home to organize and demand more change.

If not now, then when?

Three months ago, George Floyd had taken his own life when a police officer – who, at best, is bad at his job – took a knee and a second on Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.

Athletes and celebrities shrugged their shoulders with everyday people taking to the streets and protesting against that injustice. When NBA players returned to action, they took a knee-jerk response to the national anthem, wore Black Lives Matter shirts and put slogans on their jerseys.

On Sunday, a Kenosha, Wis., Police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, seven times in the back.

“It’s great why we’re holding this country, and this country is not holding us back,” Clippers coach Doc Rivers said a day before the league strike.

That fueled the despair that NBA players feel and the mood in a meeting late Wednesday night where it is reported that the Lakers and Clippers both said they are ready to go home and end this whole thing. The players will meet again on Thursday to see where they go from here.

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When the Bucks stayed in their locker room Wednesday, they received a Zoom call with Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes urging players to “act for action at every governmental level.”

At the very least, the players need some sort of concrete plan. No more deciding on slogans. No more donations to charity. They need an audience with differentiators. They need to connect with local organizers who have already designed initiatives that can impact change in their communities, and can use the NBA swing to get these plans more traction.

And when they go home, they do not go home and go back into their pre-pandemic life. They take the passion that runs deep into them this week and pour that energy into their community.

Our country is ripe with cynics, and they will tell you what happened on Wednesday and what is to come is a waste of time.

They will tell you that these boycotts and cancellations can do nothing.

There is a part of this country that goes through the past of a victim or will find a way to justify what a shocked world saw on video with its own eyes.

Do not listen to those people. They are not here to nurture a better society. They are determined to walk through life with their eyelids comically tightly clasped and their hands over their ears.

We can all help save something from a craptastic 2020 by getting away from that nonsense, and the most talented basketball players in the world can do even more by going completely away.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.