Sunday, August 23, 2020 – Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Another police-shooting.
POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW! POW!
This time seven bullet holes in the back. Thankfully, the 29-year-old black man survives. But according to his father he’s paralyzed from the waist down, and they don’t know if he will ever be able to walk again.
Wednesday, August 26, 2020 – Orlando, Florida
Meanwhile, over at Disneyworld, black men (with some other races too) are gearing up to PLAY a GAME of basketball. They may be in a bubble, but they get the news. Now the team that represents the city just 45 minutes outside the scene of the crime, decides that that night they weren’t gonna shut-up or dribble.
There comes a time, by faith and/or frustration, you have to reach in your back pocket and show us what you got. The Milwaukee Bucks players did that and collectively pulled out a stop.
It’s been said that they were simply going to forfeit the game, take an L, and gift the Orlando Magic with more time in the coveted post-season of the NBA.
Instead, their act of protest was soon taken on by every team in the playoffs. It was a decision that was later bolstered by much of the sports world when they too decided to pause play.
As a result, NBA players showed a power I didn’t know they had. I wonder did they know? Regardless, it was a power that was always there. Suppressed, maybe? Overlooked, perhaps? Ignored, certainly. Nevertheless, always there.
But it also proved to be a power that they were unused to wielding. That left the door open for those with something to lose (and ultimately those more astute at making such power plays) to immediately spot cracks in the coalition.
No sooner was the announcement made, did reporters scramble to get the behind-the-scenes story that the NBA’s polished statement did not convey. They started revealing sides, naming names.
All of a sudden we heard that LeBron James walked out of a meeting. That the Lakers and the Clippers – the two most consequential teams in the NBA right now – wanted to boycott the rest of the season, even as all the other teams, including the Bucks that started the whole thing – wanted to keep playing.
Over on Inside the NBA, Charles Barkley talked about the consequences of walking out for lower-paid players versus their higher-paid counterparts. We saw Stephen A. Smith on ESPN talking about players feeling LeBron James was being condescending to them as if he was actually king.
And who knows what other doubts were cast in the minds of players by those who had a stake in the game – owners, agents, maybe even family and so on. They even got President Obama into the mix, persuading them to resume play.
And, well, that’s how the ball bounces.
However, in continuing to play, I think they forfeited some of their power. They can have Black Lives Matter splayed across the court, with conscious sayings on the back of their jerseys, and shoes painted with the faces of those slain – but in the grand scheme of things, what does that really mean? What does it really matter other than to bring awareness? While awareness is necessary, at some point it becomes moot if there is no action, if there is no change.
And maybe this awareness campaign was moot from the beginning given the extreme circumstances from which it came. There was a confluence of maladies – the spread of the corona virus and the sickness of unabashed racism on worldwide-display that forced the NBA to lean that way, else they suffer even more financial loss. With that looming possibility, they didn’t care if players shut-up and dribble or be vocal and dribble as long as they just dribbled.
The NBA needed to secure that bank – not bag, bank. ‘Cause if these players got a bag, best believe the NBA got bank. They handed out those bags to the players from they bank. They be like, here’s one for you – power to the people. And one for you – no justice no peace. Whatever it takes as long as they just keep dribbling.
That’s why I believe not playing was so important, because it would hit the NBA in the one area that has the potential to create lasting change – their bank.
And yes it’s a sacrifice and people will stand to lose a lot of money, not just owners and NBA brass, but the players themselves. But if history has taught us anything, it’s shown us that’s the only way to do it.
The reason the Montgomery Bus Boycott worked is not because people saw how crazy it was that Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat. It worked because black people said we’re not going to continue to make you money when you’re treating us subhuman. They endured that present inconvenience because they realized it was an even bigger inconvenience for black people to be sitting on the back of the bus into the unforeseen future.
And so for 381 days they walked. Some people may have lost their jobs, and we’re not talking NBA salary jobs. The majority of them, if not all of them, were likely working-class people. As a result, today when black people sit in the back of the bus, it’s a preference not a requirement.
Yet as I watch these YouTube vlogs from inside The NBA Bubble, I realize that these are still just regular people like the rest of us. Sure the Montgomery Bus Boycott people were too, but these NBA players are making a lot of money, living their dreams. That brings a-whole-nother dynamic to this thing.
I would like to think that if I were a millionaire, or a multimillionaire with potential of winning an award I coveted like an Oscar, or a Pulitzer, that I would make the sacrifice for the cause just the same. I mean, I’ve lost money, jobs and forfeited opportunities by taking a stance for what I believe, so I know that pain.
Though I don’t regret it, sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I would have done it differently.
I wonder if the NBA players will look back someday and wonder the same thing.
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