Earlier this month, the NBA Board of Governors agreed to make a $300 million contribution over the next 10 years to financially empower the black community.
Three hundred million dollars to defeat systemic racism in response to George Floyd’s police killing and another bureaucracy of racial injustice. What more can players ask for from the league’s 30 groups of league owners?
Sounds like a massive monetary commitment. But here’s a key word: reaction.
Shocked by Jacob Blake’s police shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Sunday, players negotiated for more. This time, just big checks, but action.
Collectively, they demanded, and won, tangible action from NBA owners, partners, and employees.
“It’s very vital that these owners come out and not just stand or our side, but stand in front of us,” former NBA player-turned-activist Caron Butler told Bleacher Report. “Come to the front of us and say, ‘It’s not just your fight. We’ve noticed you’re fighting this fight for too long, and we also need a change.'”
On Friday, the NBA and NBPA announced in combination that the team, whenever they own their stadium, “will work with local election officials to turn the facilities into a polling floor for the 2020 general election.”
Players and the league will also collaborate with netpainting partners to create classified ads “dedicated to selling greater civic engagement in national and local elections and raising awareness of voters and opportunities.”
A new social justice coalition, made up of players, coaches and team owners, will be formed on a number of issues, and “advocacy for meaningful reform of police and criminal justice” will be added.
“I don’t think it’s a challenge that cash can solve,” former player and commentator Greg Anthony told Bleacher Report. “I don’t think cash is going to have much to do with it. You can’t buy what you think.”
The NBA’s commitment to monetary resources is a start. But fighting institutional racism is just an annual expense on an effects account.
“We want more of all. It’s probably not just a check,” Butler said. “We want others to come out and sacrifice and have awkward conversations about social replacement in America right now.”
The tension of the players obviously worked. Earlier this month, Andre Iguodala, vice president of the National Basketball Players Association, asked Mark Medina of USA Today a sharp question: “Is this a marketing tactic or are we just doing it to build relationships? In the grand scheme of things, it’s $10 million consistent with the equipment, and it’s necessarily a tax. Arrangement.. It can’t be a one-of-a-kind thing.”
The players were right to be skeptical. NBA homeowners a wide variety of politicians and politicians. Many do not correspond to the interests of the players.
Many homeowners who make a $1 million-a-year contribution to the NBA program have also sent giant sums of cash to politicians and political action committees with conflicting programs.
In ESPN’s The Jump, Jefferson said the days of exploiting blacks’ hard work for profit were coming to an end.
“When you start thinking about who those groups belong to Array … and if you’re going to invest your money in something that’s absolutely contrary to what it is” Black Lives Matters”… when you know the NBA is more commonly black, and if its prospects don’t necessarily fit one’s prospects, it means it’s only there for the cash,” Jefferson said.
Police violence and profiling of black citizens is a human rights factor affecting too many players.
Bucks guard Sterling Brown wrote about his spree with the Milwaukee Police Department, “who knelt over my neck, stood on my ankle and assigned me a parking lot.”
Thabo Sefolosha had a damaged leg at the hands of the New York Police Department. The wing forced the playoffs to be missed. The city settled Sefolosha’s next lawsuit for $4 million.
Even high black leaders are not immune to racism in the workplace. Toronto Raptors basketball operations president Masai Ujiri pushed twice as he tried to enter courthouse through security guard Alan Strickland, an Alameda County sheriff’s deputy, after the Raptors won the 2018-19 NBA championship in Oakland.