National Basketball Association players will lace up on Saturday and continue the playoffs, three days after the Milwaukee Bucks and Orlando Magic initiated a strike by staying in their locker rooms as a protest to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. That direct action led to a cascade of similar maneuvers by players in Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer and the WNBA.
Michele Roberts, executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, and Adam Silver, NBA Commissioner, released a joint statement on Friday. It detailed how the NBA plans to further their “collective efforts and actions in support of social justice and racial equality.” They outlined three specific points ahead of the resumed games.
The NBA will quickly establish a “social justice coalition” between players, coaches and governors with the purpose of “increasing access to voting, promoting civic engagement, and advocating for meaningful police and criminal justice reform.”
Secondly, and perhaps most strikingly, the NBA intends to covert their arenas into voting locations this year “to allow for a safe in-person voting option for communities vulnerable to COVID.”
There are some asterisks to this point; not every facility is owned by the teams themselves, and in some states the deadline to establish a polling center has passed. In spots where this may be the case “team governors will work with local elections officials to find another election-related use for the facility.”
Lastly, Roberts and Silver said that they would be working with their “network partners to create and include advertising spots in each NBA playoff game dedicated to promoting greater civic engagement in national and local elections and raising awareness around voter access and opportunity.”
When the announcement was made, the social media arms of many NBA teams implored their fans to go out and vote.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump said that the NBA had become like “a political organization.” Earlier in the month he called played “very nasty” and “very dumb.”
Also on Thursday the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, referred to NBA players who were striking for social change “very fortunate that they have the financial position where they’re able to take a night off from work.”
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