Players in the NBA have been told for years to "shut up and dribble." Well...can't dribble right now so many are speaking up during the George Floyd protests. We've seen players like Jaylen Brown protest in Atlanta, LeBron James post messages on his social media, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar write insightful op-eds.
Today I wanted to make sure you saw the last of those examples. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is arguably the greatest player of all time (I know Michael Jordan but people argue for it) and he wrote an incredible piece for the LA Times.
In it he wrote:
What do you see when you see angry black protesters amassing outside police stations with raised fists? If you’re white, you may be thinking, “They certainly aren’t social distancing.” Then you notice the black faces looting Target and you think, “Well, that just hurts their cause.” Then you see the police station on fire and you wag a finger saying, “That’s putting the cause backward.”
You’re not wrong — but you’re not right, either. The black community is used to the institutional racism inherent in education, the justice system and jobs. And even though we do all the conventional things to raise public and political awareness — write articulate and insightful pieces in the Atlantic, explain the continued devastation on CNN, support candidates who promise change — the needle hardly budges.