LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — George Hill is hardly the biggest star in professional basketball. But he was the one who took the lead when a handful of players on the Milwaukee Bucks began talking about the police shooting of Jacob Blake a few days earlier in Wisconsin.

The players, led by Hill, implored their teammates not to play in their playoff game on Wednesday, believing they had a responsibility to make a statement about the how the police treat Black people.

What they envisioned — a one game, on-the-fly protest — instead inspired one of the broadest political statements across sports leagues that the United States had ever seen: walkouts involving hundreds of athletes in professional men’s and women’s basketball, baseball and soccer, as well as one of the world’s biggest tennis stars.

LeBron James, basketball’s most famous athlete, said on Twitter that change “happens with action and needs to happen NOW!” President Trump, who had previously attacked the league and had publicly sparred with James, who plays for the Los Angeles Lakers, said people were “a little tired of the N.B.A.”

Source: New York Times

Powered by NewsAPI.org