This is a moment.
And for some, it may seem fleeting. Perhaps it is considered ‘short-lived.’ It will undoubtedly be called a hollow trick.
But what happened Wednesday, starting with the Milwaukee Bucks taking the unusual step of striking out before Game 5 of their playoff series in the first round in protest against the shooting of Jacob Blake – an unarmed Black man – by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, should be viewed as a seminal moment.
The world of sports will never be the same. And America will not America either.
This was not bad weather that canceled a game. It was not a virus that killed the world as we know it, including sports.
No, this was a moment of real activism by a basketball team calling for meaningful change in the real world.
The NBA strike also allowed the WNBA to attend games on Wednesday. The Giants called up their game, as did the Milwaukee Brewers and Seattle Mariners. The San Jose earthquakes pulled the plug – they would have played the Portland Timbers in the first live sporting event in Santa Clara County since the shutdown in mid-March – less than two hours before kick-off.
The Bucks put their season on the line. The dreams of the players to win a championship were willingly sacrificed. And when the five other NBA teams that were to play on Wednesday refused to play, they threw the future of the league, and, ergo, their own personal financial future into the air.
They deserve the benefit of the doubt that they knew exactly what they were doing. All the evidence coming out of the NBA bubble in Florida points that way. The Bucks players issued a statement Wednesday night, asking the police officers who shot Blake to “hold accountable” and for the Wisconsin State Legislature to come back and “take significant action to address issues of police responsibility, brutality and criminal law reform.” to pack. ”
And if you agree with their protest and message or not, then the level of sacrifice of these players must be respected.
The Bucks and the rest of the NBA players who went on strike put it all on the line, without an exit strategy.
That’s fat. That’s admirable. That’s real action.
“We reached the point where we said, ‘Enough,'” Andre Iguodala, the former Warrior who now plays for the Miami Heat, told the Miami Herald. “We realize the leverage we have created for ourselves, not just to monetize it, but to bring about change in what happened in our communities.”
And when you shut down the world of sports like the NBA players did, you grab people’s attention. There will be something bad that comes with that attention. Such is the world today.
But, hopefully, it will be good too.
No matter how hard some want otherwise, athletes have a huge influence in this country. And as Iguodala remarked, they have realized for some time that they can take advantage of this influence. But it was not until recently that these influencers collectively lent their power to larger, systemic problems.
Also, do not expect Wednesday’s protest to be the last. We’re over the Rubicon now.
A resolution for this protest can be found next time. Games can restart as soon as Thursday. Or not. Maybe the NBA season is over. There is no schedule or section for what happens then. There is no bubble for police brutality and systemic racism.
But anyway, these players – led by the Bucks – went all-in for a cause.
In doing so, they rejected the hair-raising notion that sport should exist only as an escape – that the real people are separate from the “real” world.
Are the ball games inherently unnecessary? Of course. We have learned that in ways we have never expected in recent months.
But sport has never been meaningless. And all it took was calling up three scheduled games to prove that point and, in turn, shed some light on something much more significant.
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