Bucks forward and reigning Most Valuable Player Giannis Antetokounmpo and his family are donating $100K to Fiserv Forum staff members to help them weather the financial storm during the league’s suspension of play, according to his Twitter account.
Antetokounmpo is following the lead of the Cavaliers’ Kevin Love, who pledged a similar amount to arena employees in Cleveland. The Pistons’ Blake Griffin is making the same donation to workers at Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena, according to the Detroit News’ Rod Beard.
Pelicans rookie Zion Williamson is pledging to cover the salaries for all of their arena staff workers for the next 30 days, Shams Charania of The Athletic tweets.
Numerous teams have come forward to say that they’ll keep their employees on the payroll during the stoppage as well as compensate full-time and part-time staff who work their games. However, many other workers in these arenas, such as security guards and concession workers, are often employed by other companies. The players donations would presumably provide assistance to those workers.
The Pistons added their name to the list of teams that will compensate workers on Thursday, according to the Detroit Free Press. The Wizards did the same, Candace Bucker of the Washington Post tweets. The Kings have also stepped forward, according to James Ham of NBC Sports, The Trail Blazers are formulating a plan to pay their part-time arena employees for the team’s nine remaining home games and will reassess the program in 30 days, Jason Quick of The Athletic tweets.
Rockets CEO Tad Brown vowed to make sure their employees would “take care of our part-time employees as well as all of our employees,” Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle relays.
The Mavericks, Hawks, Cavaliers, and Nets have already stated their intentions to provide financial support to employees and arena workers.
Let the good PR begin.
Seriously, it is a good gesture by these guys. Although it is kind of weird that fellow employees, albeit very highly paid ones, are paying the salaries instead of the owners.
You understand the players are still getting paid but the owners are not. The owners are losing a lot of money right now.
Yes I do. Still seems weird.
The owners are worth orders of magnitude more money than the players are in most cases.
glad to see people stepping up. praying for all the gig workers as well.
Blazers just hoping that money doesn’t count against the cap cause they are we’re doing everything to avoid paying money tax money
Every owner is a billionaire, they should absolutely be paying their employees the miniscual wages, however this is extremely rad of these dudes, because they didn’t have to do this
Notice the crickets chirping with the Chicago Bulls ownership.
Don’t forget Ol’ Horse Teeth James Dolan.
Nicely done by all involved, great leadership by Mr Love and great humanity from the other elites who stepped forward.
A feel good story when we all needed one.
I think billionaires value their money, not whimsical and they know what their plans are for it. That being said, I don’t think it’s PR moves for those players to be donating to the staff. They’re not that smart.
So Zions paying for all the employees for a month. I would think that would exceed 100k. What a man. I think he genuinely feels for them. We’re not talking about the nut jobs of the NBA like C Paul, Lowry, Wall, or Harden.
Zion has proven to be one hell of a person unlike some of the other guys you mention
Everything Ive see from Zion so far has been amazing on and off the court- We are lucky
Knowing how cheap Reinsdorf is, he will most likely pay workers at The United Center for a 20/25 hour work week, with no benefits at minimum wage. That’s if he does anything for them at all.