Like the rest of the world, Natasha Cloud and Bradley Beal were watching history unfold.

They saw the Milwaukee Bucks refuse to take the court for a playoff game against the Orlando Magic in protest of the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, in Wisconsin, the Bucks’ home state. They saw the N.B.A. postpone the remainder of the playoff games scheduled for that night, and the next two, as more players indicated they would not play, either.

“I was surprised initially,” Beal, a Washington Wizards guard, said in a phone interview. “But at the same time, you had no other feelings but respect, joy and this mind-set of: ‘That’s the right move. It’s the only move.’

“They set the example, and the rest of the league followed,” continued Beal, who is not at the N.B.A. restart in Florida because of an injury. “That just shows how much of a league we are, how much we pride ourselves on being more than just ballplayers.”

Hours later, Cloud saw her colleagues in the W.N.B.A. follow suit, causing the postponement of two days of games. Cloud, a guard for the Washington Mystics, was not there with them because she had opted out of the season to focus on social justice after the police killings of George Floyd, a Black man in Minnesota, and Breonna Taylor, a Black woman in Kentucky, gave rise to protests against racism and police brutality around the nation.

Source: New York Times

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