The NBA made the right decision to restart the playoffs
When the Milwaukee Bucks refused to take the floor last Wednesday prior to their playoff game against the Orlando Magic, it set off a bomb in the sports world. Soon, other NBA games, WNBA games, and some Major League Baseball games were canceled in solidarity with the Bucks’ stance on racial discrimination and police brutality.
But soon, the conversation steered to whether the league should cancel its flawlessly-executed playoffs in the hopes doing so would bring even more attention to racial injustice. On Thursday morning, the players decided to continue playing games — saving themselves from a disastrous decision that would have caused more harm than good.
The Bucks decided they could not take the court as the City of Kenosha, just 40 miles south of where they play home games, burned in response to the shooting of 29-year old African-American man Jacob Blake by police. On Tuesday night, as riots in Kenosha raged, 17-year old Kyle Rittenhouse of Antioch, Illinois, shot and killed two protesters before being apprehended.
For the Bucks, the issue of excessive police force is personal. In January 2018, Bucks forward Sterling Brown was confronted by officers after double-parking across two handicap parking spots outside a drug store. Brown was tasered and arrested, despite video showing he had not been aggressive towards the police at all.
“I gave in so they didn’t pull out their guns,” he later told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
It made sense for the team to take a game off to bring attention to the issues of racial discrimination in policing, and the team was backed fully by its owners.
But only several hours later, after other playoff games were cancelled, NBA players begun earnest conversations about whether to cancel the remainder of their season. According to reports, both the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers — teams with good chances of winning the NBA title this year — expressed their desire to end the playoffs.
Boycotting a game — much less a playoff game — was an unprecedented show of activism for a league dominated by African-American players. But ending the season would have not only be pulling the plug on deciding a league champion, it would have been giving away one large advantage players currently have — leverage.
After skipping their game Tuesday, the Bucks talked with a number of Wisconsin elected officials on how to effect change in the state. But the team can only pressure these politicians because they are still in the public eye — if they were to leave the COVID-19-proof “bubble” in Orlando and head back to their homes, the public would no longer have any interest in their thoughts about police aggression towards Black people.
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They would no longer be public figures acting in solidarity, sacrificing for a larger cause — outside the league’s biggest stars, they would simply be citizens sitting at home pontificating on Twitter like everyone else.
Some have argued that no change will come unless the whole system is broken — hitting rich NBA owners financially would be the only way to get them to listen and work for systemic reform.
And with the games back on, hopefully they can do just that.
That is not to say their decision to continue playing will be a salve for the complex array of social ills that plague our society. The Blake shooting occurred even after the NBA’s efforts to call attention to racial injustice following the death of Minneapolis man George Floyd months ago.
For example, every team’s owners have been publicly supportive of Tuesday’s cancellations. When the league restarted several weeks ago, players were allowed to put social justice messages on their jerseys, and the courts were adorned with the words “Black Lives Matter.” Announcers now frequently lecture viewers as to the benefits of the “great” Barack Obama and the benefits of reading the New York Times “1619 Project.”
Deciding to keep playing keeps fans from walking away, and keeps microphones in front of players who can now express their pain in personal ways. If the players had walked away from the season, it would have robbed them of the oxygen any social justice movement needs — attention.
Christian Schneider, who lives in Madison, Wisconsin, is a senior reporter at The College Fix and author of “1916: The Blog.” Follow him on Twitter: @Schneider_CM
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: NBA players have been brave to push for justice, but they should keep playing
