Black players were next to white players. Coaches from one team were next to their compatriots from the opposing side. Many locked arms with the man next to them, some shut their eyes tightly, a few raised their fists into the air.
The NBA had a strong, powerful re-opening night message.
When it comes to demanding change, the league stands united and on Thursday, the Utah Jazz and New Orleans Pelicans showed that by not standing.
An unprecedented image for the league in unprecedented times: The Jazz and Pelicans knelt alongside one another during “The Star-Spangled Banner,” their way of joining the chorus of those demanding racial justice and equality in society.
The NBA has a rule that dates back to the early 1980s decreeing that players must stand for the national anthem, and Commissioner Adam Silver quickly announced that the policy is being adjusted.
“I respect our teams’ unified act of peaceful protest for social justice and under these unique circumstances will not enforce our long-standing rule requiring standing during the playing of our national anthem,” said Silver, who watched from a plexiglass-enclosed suite because he has not been quarantined and therefore cannot be around players and coaches who are living inside the NBA’s so-called bubble at Walt Disney World.
The coaches, New Orleans’ Alvin Gentry and Utah’s Quin Snyder, were next to one another, their arms locked together. The scene, which occurred with the teams lined up along the sideline nearest where “Black Lives Matter” was painted onto the court, was the first of what is expected to be many silent game-day statements by players and coaches who will kneel to call attention to many issues foremost among them, police brutality following the deaths of, among others, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in recent months.
Even the game referees took a knee during the pregame scene. The Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers repeated the demonstration before the second game of the re-opening night doubleheader later Thursday.
“I think it’s critical that all of us, in a unified way, turn attention to social justice,” Snyder said during a televised in-game interview. “And all the players, all the coaches, are united in that fact and committed to do what we can do to effect long-term change.”
Many players warmed up wearing shirts that said ‘Black Lives Matter’. Thursday also marked the debut of new jerseys bearing messages that many players chose to have added, such as ‘Equality’ and ‘Peace’.
The NBA season was suspended when Rudy Gobert who also scored the first basket of the restarted season of the Jazz tested positive for the coronavirus and became the first player in the league with such a diagnosis.
Gobert was diagnosed on 11 March; two days later, Taylor, a 26-year-old black woman, was fatally shot when police officers burst into her Louisville, Kentucky apartment using a no-knock warrant during a narcotics investigation. The warrant was in connection with a suspect who did not live there and no drugs were found.
Then on 25 March, Floyd died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee into the Black man’s neck for nearly eight minutes. That happened on a street, with the images and sounds of the man saying he couldn’t breathe, then crying out for his mother all captured on a cell phone video.
NBA players have used their platforms both in the bubble and on social media to demand equality, to demand justice for Taylor. Coaches have also said it is incumbent on them to demand change and educate themselves and others. And the pregame actions by the Jazz and the Pelicans were just the start of what is expected to be a constant during the remainder of this season.
“We want our lives to be valued as much as everybody else,” Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum said in a video that aired before the game, a project organized by both the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association. “We don’t think that we’re better. We want to be seen as equals.”
Added Chris Paul, the Oklahoma City Thunder guard and president of the NBPA, speaking in the same video: “Things aren’t going to change until we sort of make them change.”
Gentry said he appreciated the accidental symmetry that came from the first games of the restarted season coming only hours after the funeral for US representative John Lewis, who died July 17 at the age of 80.
Lewis spent most of his life championing civil rights and equality and was the youngest speaker at the 1963 March on Washington the one where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. Gentry said he believes this movement, like the one Lewis helped spark six decades ago, will endure.
“If you talk to some of the younger generation, I think this is here to stay. I really do,” Gentry said. “I have a 20-year-old son and a 22-year-old son, and I know that they feel like this is the most opportune time for us to try to have change in this country.”
Utah Jazz 106-104 New Orleans Pelicans
Rudy Gobert sank two free throws with 6.9 seconds left to cap a 14-point, 12-rebound and three-block performance, giving the Utah Jazz a 106-104 victory over the New Orleans Pelicans in the first game of the NBA’s restart.
New Orleans, which led for most of the game and by as many as 16 points, nearly pulled out the victory as time expired when Brandon Ingram’s three-point attempt rimmed out in a bitter end to his 23-point night.
Zion Williamson, who missed nearly two weeks of practice after leaving the team for a family medical matter on July 16, was deemed fit to start, although his playing time was limited.
He scored 13 points in just more than 15 minutes, highlighted by a couple alley-oop dunks, one on a nearly half-court lob from Lonzo Ball.
But Williamson checked out for good with 7:19 left in the fourth quarter and had to watch the tense finish from the sideline.
Jordan Clarkson scored 23 points for Utah and helped lead a second-half comeback, while Donovan Mitchell and Mike Conley each added 20.
JJ Redick scored 21, including a clutch 3 to tie it at 102, while Jrue Holiday added 20 points for New Orleans.
The game was tied at 104 after Ingram’s free throws with 32 seconds left and Conley missed inside with just less than 20 seconds to go, but got his own rebound. The Jazz moved the ball to Mitchell, whose drive forced New Orleans to collapse on him before he fed Gobert for a dunk attempt that Derrick Favors could only stop with forceful foul.
Gobert, who’d featured prominently on defense with clean rejections of Williamson and Favors, calmly made the deciding foul shots.
With Williamson on the bench, New Orleans closed the first quarter with an 18-4 run, highlighted by Ingram’s dunk, finger roll and 3, to take a lead they would hold until late in the fourth quarter.
New Orleans had its biggest lead when Holiday’s fadeaway made it 60-44 late in the second quarter, and the Pelicans took a 60-48 advantage into halftime.
After Utah methodically pulled within one possession in the middle of the fourth quarter, New Orleans threatened to pull away again when Ingram hit a pull-up and E’Twaun Moore hit a three made possible by Jaxson Hayes’ offensive rebound.
But the Jazz weren’t finished, going on an 11-1 run, marked by Mitchell’s driving floater off the glass, to take a late three-point lead inside the final four minutes.