The Milwaukee Bucks made a huge statement by deciding not to take the court for Game 5 of the NBA Playoffs against Orlando Magic on Wednesday in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
Blake, 29, was shot seven times in the back by three Kenosha, Wisc., police officers on Sunday. Blake was shot while getting into his car, after breaking up a fight in the neighborhood. His three young children were sitting in the car.
Blake’s attorneys said Blake survived but is paralyzed from the waist down. They added it will be a miracle if Blake can ever walk again. The bullets severed his spinal cord and shattered some of his vertebrae.
The Bucks’ decision ricocheted through the league as the Thunder, Rockets, Lakers and Blazers, who were supposed to play Wednesday night, followed suit. The NBA and NBPA released a statement saying the three playoff games are postponed and will be rescheduled.
“It’s radical disruption,” Ben Carrington, author of Race, Sport and Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora said. “Sometimes when you say no, that’s a really radical form of politics, to disrupt the normal way in which things are operating. This is a really significant moment and the fact that it looks like a number of NBA teams have followed shows it’s not just about this one NBA team but it’s about the whole and the players, especially the Black players, finding their voice.”
Lakers forward LeBron James took to his Instagram to comment on a television headline reading, “All three NBA playoff games postponed today.” James clarified the games were, “Boycotted not *postponed,” leaving the future of the NBA bubble unknown.
The Bucks have been vocal about speaking out against police brutality and racial injustices in the past. Their boycott tonight strengthens that part of their organization’s identity.
In 2015, a store worker at Schwanke-Kasten Jewelers in Whitefish Bay, Wisc., called 911 on then-Milwaukee forward John Henson. Henson was waiting to be let into the store but never made it in because the store worker did not feel comfortable with him entering, claiming Henson did not sound like a “legitimate customer” in her 911 call.
The Bucks released a statement, calling Henson’s encounter “incredibly upsetting and frustrating.” The organization said it illustrates “a very real issue in our society.”
Three years later, Bucks forward Sterling Brown came under question from police about a parking violation. What started with questions ended in drawn stun guns and physical force to detain Brown. Two officers stood on Brown’s ankle and kneeled on his neck while another tased him.
“The abuse and intimidation that Sterling experienced at the hands of Milwaukee Police was shameful and inexcusable,” Milwaukee said in response to Brown’s encounter. “Sterling has our full support as he shares his story and takes action to provide accountability.”
Now, the Bucks’ silence during Game 5 is demanding accountability as loud as ever.
“What the NBA players are saying is that you can’t have normal relations in an abnormal society,” Carrington said.
Less than an hour after the Bucks boycott, Lakers star LeBron James tweeted, “F--- this man!!!! We demand change. Sick of it.”
This same change was demanded more than 50 years ago when Celtics center Bill Russell left a Kentucky hotel prior to playing a scheduled exhibition game after the hotel’s restaurant denied service to him and his Black teammates.
“Things haven’t changed,” Carrington said. “That’s the bottom line, and the players got tired of taking symbolic change as a substitute for substantive change.”
Now, the NBA and its players are a part of creating a new normal.
“We can’t go back to how things were in February before COVID,” Carrington said. “The NBA Players are saying very powerfully, ‘No, we’re not going back to the normal because the normal was part of the problem.’”
Many WNBA and MLB players stood with the NBA. All WNBA games were canceled on Wednesday and the Dodgers, Giants, Brewers and Reds games were all postponed in protest of the Jacob Blake shooting.