Heat statement: ‘We stand firmly with the NBA players.’ And an update on where things stand
As NBA players inside the Disney bubble continue to discuss how they’ll proceed and if they even want to complete the season, the Miami Heat issued a strong statement late Wednesday night.
“Enough,” a statement released by the Heat read. “We have all witnessed the disparity in how the police treat unarmed Black men and women vs. armed White men. This unequal treatment of Black people at the hands of the police has to stop. Now. We stand firmly with the NBA players and support their decision to protest.”
The police shooting of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man, on Sunday night in Kenosha, Wisconsin, led to an unprecedented boycott of one NBA playoff game and the cancellation of two others on Wednesday.
NBA players met Wednesday night to determine the next steps. The meeting concluded without any concrete resolution, but the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers voted to not finish the season, according to multiple reports.
“Miami’s Udonis Haslem spoke and essentially told everyone in room that — without Lakers and Clippers, how will season continue?” Shams Charania of The Athletic tweeted late Wednesday night, citing a source. “LeBron James walked out. Rest of Lakers and Clippers exited behind him.”
Veteran Heat forward Andre Iguodala, who is the National Basketball Players Association first vice president, also reportedly spoke during the meeting, which included coaches for a portion of the discussion.
The NBA’s Board of Governors scheduled a Thursday morning meeting to discuss the situation, according to reports, as uncertainty looms over the remainder of the season. In addition, the players scheduled another meeting for Thursday morning to continue their conversation, according to ESPN.
Both meetings will be held at 11 a.m. Thursday.
A historic day in the NBA began when the Milwaukee Bucks boycotted Game 5 of their playoff series against the Orlando Magic shortly after 4 p.m. on Wednesday. ESPN said the Bucks players were upset about the shooting of Blake and never left their locker room before their scheduled game on the Disney campus.
The other two playoff games scheduled for Wednesday — Game 5 of the Oklahoma City Thunder-Houston Rockets series and Game 5 of the Lakers-Portland Trail Blazers series — were subsequently postponed and all three games will be rescheduled, the NBA said.
The league said in a statement: “The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association today announced that in light of the Milwaukee Bucks’ decision to not take the floor today for Game 5 against the Orlando Magic, today’s three games – Bucks vs. Magic, Houston Rockets vs. Oklahoma City Thunder and Los Angeles Lakers vs. Portland Trail Blazers - have been postponed. Game 5 of each series will be rescheduled.”
The expectation is the three playoff games scheduled to be played Thursday — Game 6 of the Denver Nuggets-Utah Jazz series, Game 1 of the Boston Celtics-Toronto Raptors series and Game 6 of the Clippers-Dallas Mavericks series — will also be postponed.
If the season continues, the Heat will play the winner of the Bucks-Magic series in the next round, with Milwaukee holding a 3-1 lead in the series. It’s undetermined how the Bucks’ boycott could affect the timing of that next Heat series, which had been expected to begin as early as Sunday.
“When you talk about boycotting a game, everyone’s antenna goes up and now everyone wants to pay attention,” Iguodala said following Wednesday afternoon’s practice, a few hours before the Bucks made the decision to boycott their game. “It’s sad that you have to make threats like that — I shouldn’t say threats — but you have to be willing to sacrifice pay checks or sacrifice corporate money for people to realize that there’s a big problem going on out there and we need to pay more attention to it, we got to continue to address it.
“We can’t drown out the peaceful messages that we have been putting out there on the platform, as well. They don’t even show the anthem anymore. It’s like you’re going to take away something that’s peaceful and you want to know why people are going out and doing some of the things that they’re doing to show that this is something that’s terrible that continues to happen and no one is being held accountable.”
This story was originally published August 26, 2020 at 11:58 PM.
