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NBA teams were scheduled to return to practice on Friday, but the league did not immediately announce when playoff games would be scheduled to resume. (AF)
NBA playoff games will resume Saturday after the league and players agreed Friday on plans for greater social justice and racial equality measures following the Jacob Blake police shooting.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and National Basketball Players Association Executive Director Michele Roberts said in a joint statement that “all parties have agreed to resume NBA playoff games on Saturday.”
“We look forward to the resumption of the playoffs and to continue working together, in Orlando and across all NBA team markets, to drive meaningful and sustainable change,” the NBA / NBPA statement said.
The players and the league agreed to form a social justice coalition to address a wide range of issues, including access to voting, promoting civic engagement, and police and criminal justice reform.
Among the agreed initiatives, in cities where an NBA team owns and controls its own stadium, team owners will work with local election officials to convert the facility into a polling place for the U.S. General Election. 2020, enabling secure in-person voting options in communities fearful of COVID-19.
If that option doesn’t work, NBA team owners will try to find another election-related use for the arena, such as voter registration or vote counting.
The announcement came on a third day of postponed NBA playoff games after the Milwaukee Bucks refused to go to the court Wednesday for a scheduled Eastern Conference first-round showdown against Orlando in the COVID quarantine bubble. -19 at Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
The move prompted postponements in support of social justice in Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, the women’s NBA, and the National Hockey League and tennis.
Saturday’s NBA playoff games include Milwaukee vs. Orlando, Oklahoma City vs. Houston and the Los Angeles Lakers vs. Portland.
When the 13 teams in Orlando resumed practice on Friday, nearly 100 NBA employees in all departments staged a one-day strike in solidarity with the players, USA Today reported.
Oklahoma City star point guard Chris Paul, president of the players’ union since 2013, said the solidarity shown by the players is unprecedented in his experience.
“Fifteen years in this league and I’ve never seen anything like it,” Paul said of the hours of meetings where players expressed their feelings and looked for ways to use their public platform to combat racism and inequality in the world at large. “The voices that were heard, I will never forget.”
Players lobbied NBA club owners to take broader action for social change, frustrated by video of Blake, a black man, shot in the back seven times by a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, while he was trying to get into a car where his three children were. They were sitting.
Paul choked when he told reporters about talking to Blake’s father, saying that NBA players, most of whom are black, were exhausted as similar stories continue to emerge in the United States, where death George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police. in May it sparked protests across the country and beyond.
“We are all tired of seeing the same thing over and over again,” he said. “And everyone expects us to be fine because they pay us a lot of money.”
Ultimately, Paul said, players realized that continuing the season would give them greater visibility as they push for a change.
“We are going to keep playing, but we are also going to keep making sure our voices are heard.”
Silver had told league employees that action would be taken and expressed his full support for the players’ departure.
“I wholeheartedly support NBA and WNBA players and their commitment to shedding light on important social justice issues,” Silver wrote in an open letter to NBA employees posted on the league’s website.
“While I don’t walk in the same shoes as black men and women, I can see the trauma and fear that racial violence causes and how the painful legacy of racial inequality that persists in our country continues.” (AFP)
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