Front Burner - The NBA players’ unprecedented protest

Episode Date: August 28, 2020

On Wednesday, the Milwaukee Bucks refused to come out on the court, protesting the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis. Soon after, other NBA teams followed — and so did other athletes in other leagues, from the WNBA to MLS to Major League Baseball. Subsequently, the NBA postponed games on Thursday, but officials said in a statement that they hope playoffs would resume this weekend. Today on Front Burner, Morgan Campbell, a senior contributor to CBC Sports, joins us to talk about the significance of this unprecedented act of protest in the sports world, and the pressure on Black athletes to push for social justice.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. The Milwaukee Bucks, the number one team in the East, were scheduled to play game five of their opening playoff series against the Orlando Magic on Wednesday afternoon. But the Bucks didn't come out of their locker room for pregame warm-ups.

And when the buzzer went off, no one was on the court. Later in the day, they explained why. Despite the overwhelming plea for change, there has been no action. So our focus today cannot be on basketball. We are calling for justice for Jacob Blake and demand the officers be held accountable. The players were responding to the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot seven times in the back by police. After the Bucs refused to play, other teams within the NBA followed.

Then athletes in other sports leagues, from the WNBA to the MLB and MLS, decided to do the same. In an afternoon meeting, the Brewers joined their fellow Milwaukee Pro franchise, postponing their game at Miller Park against the Cincinnati Reds. After speaking with representatives from teams playing tonight, as well as our WNBPA leadership, the consensus is to not play in tonight's slate of games and to kneel, lock arms, and raise fists during the national anthem. On Thursday, all playoff games were postponed,

including one between the Toronto Raptors and the Boston Celtics. It's an unprecedented stance being taken in the sports world against systemic racism. Today, CBC Sports senior contributor Morgan Campbell on the significance of this move. I'm Josh Bloch. This is FromBurger. Hello, Morgan. Hey, great to be here. I want to go back to Wednesday afternoon when the Bucs refused to leave their locker room to play in Game 5 against Orlando. This is the situation just moments ago. The clock hit 0.0 and the Bucs were not on the floor, still in their locker room.

Why do you think they decided to take that stance at that time? Because it's better than taking that stance any other time. stance at that time? Because it's better than taking that stance any other time. Think about the fact, more generally, the 75% of NBA players who identify as black, most of these guys are American. Even the ones that aren't American come to understand very quickly the role race plays in America and the danger that can place them in, in terms of racial profiling, police brutality, and the tentacles of systemic racism that can reach around your privilege, right? This is before George Floyd. And then there's George Floyd and the death of George Floyd and the heightened scrutiny and the heightened sensitivity towards

police brutality and racism in the very big space where those two issues overlap. those two issues overlap. And against those two backdrops, we have Jacob Blake. And so that shooting, again, it's a triggering event to a lot of NBA players because of everything I just laid out. But it's even more sensitive for the Bucs and for the Raptors because of proximity, because the Milwaukee Bucs, Milwaukee is about 40 minutes north of Kenosha, and the Milwaukee Bucks have a player on their team, Sterling Brown, who a couple years back was racially profiled and assaulted by police in Milwaukee. What started as one officer engaging with a Black man

over a routine parking violation turns violent in an instant. Taser, taser, taser! Milwaukee Bucks player Sterling Brown tased on the ground, surrounded by police officers, all in a matter of minutes. The incident caught on police body cameras. And for the Toronto Raptors, who before all this, before the Bucks walked out of their game,

the Raptors were discussing not playing. They were having these discussions with the Celtics. And we got to remember the Raptors are just one week removed from having seen video published of the team president, Masai Ujiri, getting shoved not once but twice, unprovoked by a police officer in the stadium in Oakland the moment after the Raptors won the NBA titles. So all of these circumstances converge right before this playoff game. And so the Bucs said the best way to show our displeasure with everything that's happening and not happening in terms of progress, and also to call attention to the steps the Bucs felt needed to be made. They felt this was the best place and best time to withhold their services. They were in that locker room for three hours, and when they emerged, they had a press conference.

The starting guards, George Hill and Sterling Brown, gave a statement calling for justice for Jacob Blake. They also talked about how, as players, they're expected to give maximum effort, but law enforcement and lawmakers have to do the same. When we take the court and represent Milwaukee and Wisconsin, we are expected to play at a high level, give maximum effort, and hold each other accountable. We hold ourselves to that standard. And in this moment, we are demanding the same from lawmakers and law enforcement. What struck you about the statement they made and seeing the whole team standing there behind George Hill and Sterling Brown?

When the solidarity was compelling, not just the solidarity amongst team members, but again, across teams, across the the league and then across leagues because one of the things that came out was that the bucks hadn't consulted all the other teams about not playing they just didn't come out and then the magic got the picture and then quickly word spread and then the other team scheduled to play that night said you you know what, this is a good idea. Let's let our voices be heard on this issue by not playing. And second is that, and I personally am not a protest shamer, and protest shame is one of these things that's happening and building momentum right now as we speak. What do you mean by, what's protest shame?

Something that white people and black people do to black people when black people protest, when black people find a way to protest racism. And whichever way you protest racism, there's always a white person to tell you you did it the wrong way, right? So you get out in the street and protest, they tell you you should be silent. You take a knee in protest, they tell you taking a knee is inappropriate, it's disrespectful. You get out and riot and they say rioting is unconstitutional. President Trump and I will always support the right of Americans to peaceful protest, but rioting and looting is not peaceful protest. Tearing down statues is not free speech, and those who do so will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

You go get you a gun like the Black Panthers and they say you're a terrorist, even though you have Second Amendment rights to do this. And no matter what way black people choose to protest, there's always going to be a white person telling you it's the wrong way to do it. And one of the common ways of protest shaming is to tell people they don't have a plan. They don't. You're just protesting. You don't have a plan to solve the problem.

It is my contention, and I could be wrong, that Colin Kaepernick does not understand the big picture of his country. I'll be very interested to see these so-called policy suggestions that he comes out with. As if the person on the receiving end of the problem is also supposed to figure out how to rewire the brain of the person that's causing the problem.

But the Bucks, to the extent that they could, had a plan. They spent those three hours laying out concrete steps, what they wanted to see and what they wanted to see legislators in Wisconsin and prosecutors' offices in Wisconsin do. And so to anyone who wanted to criticize them about protesting without a plan, protesting without concrete steps or outcomes they wanted, they had that base covered. I feel, you know, we saw in the lead up to that moment where the Bucs refused to play, the players and coaches in the bubble really reacting with this in a very raw way to the shooting of Jacob Blake. And in many press

conferences, I mean, there was a press conference with Doc Rivers, the coach of the Los Angeles Clippers, where he was fighting back tears. All you hear is Donald Trump and all of them talking about fear. We're the ones getting killed. We're the ones getting shot. We're the ones that were denied to live in certain communities. We've been hung. We've been hung. We've been shot.

And all you do is keep hearing my fear. What did you make of the level of emotion and the vulnerability that we were seeing all week? It's funny because white people ask me, what do I make of seeing black men vulnerable? Only because what gets presented and what gets projected so many times, so often about black men, especially athletes, is invulnerability.

And this idea that these guys are not human they all they are is basketball players essentially robots programmed to go out and perform perfectly and entertaining and when they show some humanity yeah it's raw it's compelling and it takes people off guard because they haven't seen that before whereas like for me surprised like to your listeners that don't know i I am black and not just black, but I grew up with a black family, African-American family on both sides of the border. And so it's funny to me when people ask me how I react to seeing, you know, very normal human dimensions of a black person. But with Doc Rivers, he said something that resonated with me because, again, I'm a dual citizen. My parents are from the United States, as are my grandparents.

And one of the reasons they came to Canada is that they had to ask themselves the same question Doc Rivers asked, which was, how long can you expect us to love this country that doesn't love us back? Expect us to love this country that doesn't love us back. It's amazing why we keep loving this country and this country does not love us back. In a press conference, the Raptors point guard Fred Van Vliet responded to the Jacob Blake shooting, too. And he sounded exhausted and frustrated about the lack of change around issues of police brutality. But, you know, he also turned a question back around on the reporter and asked, you know, why is it that Black people and Black athletes, especially, are the ones who have to speak out about these injustices? You know, coming down here, making a choice to play, you know, we're supposed to not be in vain, but it's just starting to feel like everything we're doing is just going through the motions and nothing's really changing.

I mean, it seems like he was really grappling in real time about what, you know, on the one hand, having this platform and this opportunity to speak out. And then on the other hand, being really frustrated that speaking out in this way was maybe, was not doing enough, that change was not happening. change was not happening. When I heard that comment, what I felt was a profound sense of sadness for Fred VanVleet, that he would take this burden on himself. And it's unfortunate, again, that especially white members of the mainstream media help place this burden on the shoulders of players who don't necessarily deserve it. So it's completely unfair, unreasonable to expect a group of basketball players protesting or even sitting out some games to dismantle, by those two actions, dismantle generations of systemic racism in a summer or a half a week. But this is the expectation now that we in the mainstream media have placed on these guys. And now you have Fred VanVleet, you know, feeling bad

behind that. And he shouldn't. Because it's not he he does everything he can. It's not his fault that this cop shot Jacob Blake. It's not any player's fault for not having done enough. But again, this is also related to protest shaming. And this burden is unique to black athletes in the United States. No one else is no one's asking white guys to give up more, stop working, give up your job. If you really care about this, why are you playing basketball? Go join the protest full time. If you really care about this, invest your whole fortune in insert cause here. No one's asking anyone else to do that. But somehow it's this expectation that black athletes should not only use their

platform, whatever that term means now these days, but also be prepared to give up that platform to go fight in the trenches. And if somehow you're not willing to do that, then you're not doing enough. And even if you do that and white people still do racist stuff, somehow that's your fault, which is insane. But these are the questions we're over here asking Black athletes. Well, not me and y'all. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization.

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That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. There are reports of a really heated discussion about whether players could do more to support the Black Lives Matter movement from inside the bubble in Orlando or whether it was better to be outside. And that debate really goes back to when the NBA was considering resuming the season in the midst of the protests over George Floyd's death. What was the argument back then, back in June, that each side was making about resuming the season? that each side was making about resuming the season.

There's always this tension between playing and not playing, you know, investing more time and more energy in protests and whatever constitutes an effect in change. Kyrie Irving reportedly breaking with his former championship teammate LeBron James. According to The Athletic, the Brooklyn Nets star put it bluntly, I don't support going to Orlando, adding, I'm willing to give up everything I have. of basketball and you have the spotlight on you. And now the message is now that you have the spotlight, leave the spotlight and go do something else to prove to me, right? To prove not to me, but prove to some white person that you're really committed to ending racism. And so the other kind of false conflict this sets up, and I make this point over and over again is that any prominent black

american you can name entertainer athlete rose to the top of their industry mastered their craft against the backdrop of some different but similar civil rights struggle right so we don't say duke ellington took attention away from a philipolph, right? And that A. Philip Randolph would be more famous if Duke Ellington was not here writing songs. We don't say Smokey Robinson and the Temptations took momentum away from Martin Luther King, that the March on Washington would have been even bigger if not for Motown. And even Muhammad Ali, because this is the guy that every Black athlete gets compared to. The thing that people forget about Muhammad Ali is that he did not leave boxing. He lost his license. So Muhammad Ali did not say, I'm going to retire

from boxing so I can fight against the government and not have to go to Vietnam. He was happy to keep fighting. And so unless someone comes in and tells LeBron James, well, you've lost your basketball license. You can't play anymore. We're not talking about the same thing. And none of these guys should be expected to give up something when you compare them to Muhammad Ali, that Muhammad Ali himself did not willingly give up. He had his titles taken from him. He had his license taken from him. He had his livelihood taken from him. He did not give these things up. My Qaithans won't let me go shoot my brother or some darker people or some poor, hungry people in the mud for big, powerful America. And shoot them for what? How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.

In this case, though, there is an interesting, you know, the players did come back into the bubble with the agreement that there would be more integration of the symbols and the slogans of the Black Lives Matter movement. There'd be more opportunity to talk about the movement and its message. But now it does seem that the players have taken the activism to the next level by saying, we're not going to work, we're withholding our work, and doing so with a great degree of solidarity. And it feels like we've reached a different level of that activism, or at least a different tactic. What do you make of that move? In some ways, it was inevitable because what we've seen even recently, just looking at recent history in the sports industry, is Black athletes doing two things. One, prioritizing their Blackness, their identities as Black people over their identities as football player, basketball player, student, et cetera. And then also

recognizing that what they do has value and that they can leverage that value by withdrawing their labor to create situations that are more favorable to them. So even five years ago at the University of Missouri, when there was a bunch of racist incidents happening on campus and the president wasn't doing enough about it. So the black players on the football team said was, OK, well, unless you guys fire the president, we're not playing next week because we don't play next week. You can't send just the white guys out on the field because you lose and you might not even be able to fill the full team without the black guys. And so we are not playing unless you guys fire this president. And you might not even be able to fill the full team without the black guys. And so we are not playing unless you guys fire this president. And guess what? For months, it simmered largely unnoticed outside the university community. But now the whole country is awakening to the racial

tensions and growing revolt that boiled over today at the University of Missouri. A hunger strike, a threatened walkout by members of the football team, and protests from students and faculty alike leading up to today's abrupt resignation of the university's president, accused by black student groups of indifference to a series of reported racist acts on the overwhelmingly white campus. They fired the president. You know why? Because they needed those black players to get out there and play that football game and keep the money coming in. And the black players recognize that. And what was special about that event was that it was black players using their power and their privilege as athletes to help rank and file black students, like civilian black students that weren't athletes and weren't privy to those privileges. So we have very recent examples of Black athletes understanding that it's their talent that makes all of these

enterprises valuable. However many billions of dollars the NBA brings in, that happens because the talent level is so high, and the talent level is so high because of the 75 percent of the players in that league who are black because if you take all of them out of the league you're still going to have your luka donchich's you're still gonna have your nicola jokic's but everybody else is nowhere near as good you're not going to find another lebron james you're not going to find another giannis and so those guys understand that their presence makes this whole enterprise valuable and so their absence creates a lot of big problems that people will be willing to solve.

To see pro athletes do that right now is a big step. And what do you think is at stake for these players when they refuse to play like this? Well, is there anything that you feel strongly enough about that someone could ask you, anything that you feel strongly enough about that someone could ask you and you really think about it to put off a year two years of work to go do this thing and there's no guarantee you know of coming back to work so i said that to say there's a lot at stake anytime you as a player you know engage in a wildcat strike but that should illustrate how seriously people take these issues. We're talking on Thursday afternoon, the NBA released a statement saying that it hopes to resume the playoffs on the weekend. But even so, I know it's difficult to speculate, but what do you think the longer term impacts of this protest is going to be going forward? happens from here but what we have seen is evidence that the highest profile performers in that sport are willing to put that sport on hold for racial justice for the fight against police brutality

systemic racism and again that big area where they overlap and so we're a long way from Colin Kaepernick sitting out the anthem we're a long way from a few players kneeling and incurring the wrath of coaches and team owners for having done that. Coaches and team owners now understand that this is where people, a lot of people's minds and hearts have been for a long time. And it's just taken everyone else this long to catch up. What I'm interested to see is how the leagues react and how the teams react and how players in other leagues that don't have as many Black players react. Because again, if the issue is only Black people making it known that we hate being the targets of systemic racism, we have been making that known from the time we

arrived on these shores. And so the thing that has to change is whether white people are ready to set aside the privilege that comes with not being on the receiving end of systemic racism. Morgan, thank you so much for your insight into this. No problem. Before I let you go, some related news. Prosecutors have charged 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse in the killing of two protesters and the wounding of a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The protesters were taking part in demonstrations against police brutality and the shooting of Jacob Blake. Rittenhouse is charged on six criminal counts, including first-degree intentional homicide, the most severe crime in the state. He could face a mandatory life sentence if he's convicted of that. That's all for today. FrontBurner is brought to you by CBC News and CBC Podcasts. The show was produced by the incredible FrontBurner team of Mark Apollonio, Imogen Burchard, Shannon Higgins, Allie James, Thank you. Chao. I'm Josh Bloch. Thanks for listening. Back on Monday.