Bucks boycott and playoff games postponed. What’s next for the NBA? And reaction from Heat

The NBA playoffs have been put on hold, as players inside the Disney bubble continue to discuss how they’ll move forward.

The police shooting of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man, on Sunday night in Kenosha, Wisconsin, led to an unprecedented boycott of one NBA playoff game and the cancellation of two others on Wednesday and elicited a strong reaction from the Miami Heat.

NBA players met Wednesday night to determine the next steps. The meeting concluded without any concrete resolution, according to reports, but The Athletic reported that every team besides the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers voted to continue playing.

“Miami’s Udonis Haslem spoke and essentially told everyone in room that — without Lakers and Clippers, how will season continue?” Shams Charania of The Athletic tweeted late Wednesday night, citing a source. “LeBron James walked out. Rest of Lakers and Clippers exited behind him.”

The NBA’s Board of Governors scheduled a Thursday morning meeting to discuss the situation, according to the Associated Press, as uncertainty looms over the remainder of the season.

The Milwaukee Bucks boycotted Game 5 of their playoff series against the Orlando Magic shortly after 4 p.m. on Wednesday. ESPN said the Bucks players were upset about the shooting of Blake and never left their locker-room before their scheduled game on the Disney campus.

“Salute, @Bucks,” Heat center Bam Adebayo tweeted in the aftermath of the Bucks declining to play on Wednesday.

The other two playoff games scheduled for Wednesday — Game 5 of the Oklahoma City Thunder-Houston Rockets series and Game 5 of the Lakers-Portland Trail Blazers series — were subsequently postponed and all three games will be rescheduled, the NBA said.

The league said in a statement: “The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association today announced that in light of the Milwaukee Bucks’ decision to not take the floor today for Game 5 against the Orlando Magic, today’s three games – Bucks vs. Magic, Houston Rockets vs. Oklahoma City Thunder and Los Angeles Lakers vs. Portland Trail Blazers - have been postponed. Game 5 of each series will be rescheduled.”

Speaking to reporters about 90 minutes before the Bucks’ boycott, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said the notion of the Heat boycotting any games has not been discussed internally.

Later in the day, the Heat declined to comment or say whether Wednesday’s developments will change their approach about boycotting any games.

If the season continues, the Heat will play the winner of the Bucks-Magic series in the next round, with Milwaukee holding a 3-1 lead in the series. It’s undetermined how the Bucks’ boycott could affect the timing of that next Heat series, which had been expected to begin as early as Sunday.

Heat guard Andre Iguodala, the assistant vice president of the players association, said during the Heat’s 2:30 p.m. media briefing that the possibility of any players boycotting a game in protest of police treatment of Black men and women is “not something that is agreed upon. There are a lot of ideas thrown out there. You are weighing your options.

“When you talk about boycotting a game, everyone’s antenna go up. It’s sad you have to make threats like that — I wouldn’t say threats — but you have to be willing to sacrifice corporate money for people to realize there’s a big problem out there. They don’t even show the anthem anymore.”

CNN reported Blake was unarmed and police shot him seven times in the back, with his children watching.

Iguodala said the Heat, as a team, has not discussed leaving the Disney campus in the wake of the Blake shooting, but “I think there are plenty of guys that have had those thoughts.”

Spoelstra broached the Blake incident with his players in a walk-through on Wednesday.

“ If you watch the [Blake] video over and over, it’s incredibly horrific and discouraging to see that is still happening,” Spoelstra said. “It feels like the definition of insanity, things keep on happening, that we’re all horrified. For me, when I saw the video I wanted to make sure I forced myself to watch it several times….

“This seems crazy. There needs to be change or reform on the police training level. It’s something we talked about that, will hopefully with more discussions or awareness and obviously voting, where things change where they need to change. Everyone is fed up watching it and not seeing change in that area. It’s pretty heavy, pretty raw, on all of our minds for sure.”

Iguodala, the only Heat player who spoke to reporters on Wednesday, said: “You thought there would be some type of progress and it seems every other week it continues to go on [police shooting of Black men and women]. This should throw you off. It’s very tough. I didn’t even find out about the Wisconsin situation until the walk through and Spo brought it up.

“It made me think, ‘This is something I should know right away.’ I take it as using this platform, one of the largest platforms in the world, where we have the most eyes and get our message out there. If it gets drowned out… come up with another message. I saw the initial part where Mr. Blake was walking [to his car, just before he was shot by police].. It’s coming to the point where we are becoming desensitized with senseless murders of our people.”

Iguodala called on district attorneys in cities where Black people have been shot by law enforcement “to hold [police] responsible for their actions.”

“We’re in a tough situation, mentally being here understanding it’s a lot on our plates that I don’t think is really being accounted for in terms of things happening in our communities, across the country and our duties as basketball players to win games and satisfy those requirements,” Iguodala said.

“In the grand scheme, what’s the most important thing as far as our livelihoods and what’s happening to our people? It’s not going to all happen in one day but doing our part and letting our communities know we stand with them, whether it’s using our platform or raising money.

“Guys have been able to express themselves. There was one time a fear of how an athlete could express himself and their feelings. We heard it very recently with [Fox host Laura Ingraham telling LeBron James to] shut up and dribble. That’s how it’s viewed. We reached the point where we said, ‘Enough.’ We realize the leverage we created for ourselves, not just to monetize it but bring change to what’s been happening in our communities.”

Iguodala was asked if he’s worried the Black Lives Matter movement doesn’t have the same impact as a few weeks ago and whether additional actions are needed.

“The technology we’re all accustomed to having at our disposal at any time — the attention span of humans has gone down — and that’s something I’ve been aware of since entering into that tech space,” he said. “The message we’re putting out, someone is going to try to cause hurdles.”

DOLPHINS REACTION

Earlier on Wednesday, Miami Dolphins safety Kavon Frazier delivered an impassioned commentary during the team’s media availability with reporters. Frazier previously marched with protesters in Waco, Texas, following the police shooting of George Floyd in Minnesota earlier this year.

“This is a tough topic for me because I had an incident when I was younger and I was racially profiled when I was 10 years old.,” Frazier said. “The police thought I had a gun on me, but I was just a 10-year-old innocent kid who went to Christian school all my life, who was doing all the right things.

“At that moment there, I knew anybody could be targeted just by the color of their skin. That’s why I’m so active in the community. I’m so active in trying to educate other people about what’s going on, about how America really is for us. But where we are right now, I’m really lost. I’m lost for words, I’m lost for hope.

“I really don’t understand how after people watch what happened to George Floyd and after they watch that eight or nine minute clip, how this last incident could’ve happened. I just don’t understand how somebody could – somebody who is unarmed, family in the car, how he could be a threat.

“I just don’t understand. We’re lost. We’re scared. I’m scared. I drive a pretty nice car and I’m scared if I get pulled over, that could happen to me. I have two daughters at home. Obviously this happens a lot with males, but my daughters still look like me. They still have some darkness to their skin. I’m just scared. Me as a male in America right now, I’m really, really scared. I just don’t understand. I don’t know. Because that could be me with my daughter in the car and they just unload seven shots on me. I’m just lost man. I’m lost.”

Frazier went on to say that, “Obviously the NBA has been taking knees, they’ve been wearing Black Lives Matter shirts and the same stuff is still going on. Obviously people don’t get the message. There are people out there that still don’t understand what us as Black males in America really go through.

“We’ve been telling them this for a long time now and they just think we’re lying. They victimize us and they think that we are the problem. Just because some of us may act a certain way or came up from certain neighborhood, that we’re always — that everybody is angry or everybody is upset at the world.

“Really, it’s the other way around. We’re lost for hope right now. We’re scared.”

NOTABLE

Spoelstra called the Indiana Pacers’ firing of coach Nate McMillan “totally ridiculous. You gave him an extension. It’s a media fake extension.”