There has been no NBA basketball since Wednesday, With three playoff games on the schedule, NBA players have decided to strike.
The move comes after Jacob Blake, a Black man in Kenosha, WI, was shot seven times in the back by police after trying to break up a fight. The Kenosha police officers, who do not wear body cameras, shot Blake in front of his three children.
Blake is now reportedly paralyzed from the waist down. As a result, protesters in Kenosha are demanding justice and accountability.
The NBA players said they wanted to use their platform to influence social justice before heading to the bubble, and now they are doing it. This is a day that will go down in history.
The Milwaukee Bucks put the movement into motion. The Bucks were scheduled to play the first game of the day against the Orlando Magic in Game 5 of their first round playoff series. Minutes before the game was supposed to tip-off, the Bucks informed officials they would not be taking the court. The Magic stood with Milwaukee, saying they wouldn’t accept a victory from the Bucks via forfeit.
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— @Dailyusanews (@DailyUSANews) August 26, 2020
The Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder players announced they wouldn’t play either not even an hour after the Bucks’ decision. Players from the Los Angeles Lakers and Portland Trail Blazers made the same decision shortly after.
The league reportedly did not see a player strike coming. The NBA anticipated all of the games on Wednesday would go on as scheduled in the hours leading up to Bucks-Magic, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
Former President Obama praised the Milwaukee Bucks for "standing up for what they believe in" following the team's decision to boycott their NBA playoff game in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in the team's home state of Wisconsin https://t.co/BVdd2FDC6G
— CNN (@CNN) August 27, 2020
The league has now announced that the three games have been postponed and will be rescheduled. The NBA can put a make-up date on the calendar, but it won’t matter if the players are committed to striking in protest of police brutality.
There was some speculation that players could take a stand on Wednesday, but no one was sure what it would look like. Before Bucks players made their decision, members of the Boston Celtics and Toronto Raptors sounded off on how the shooting of Blake was impacting them.
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