The three NBA playoff games scheduled to take place on Thursday will be postponed, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (Twitter links). However, players have decided to resume the postseason and discussions are underway about when that will happen, Wojnarowski reports.
Games appear likely to resume as soon as Friday, per Shams Charania of The Athletic and Jeff Goodman of Stadium (Twitter links).
[UPDATE: NBA Hopes To Resume Postseason By Saturday]
According to Charania (Twitter link), NBA players who met today want to find “new and improved ways” to make social justice statements as they prepare to restart play.
Another meeting will take place today on the Orlando campus at 4:00 pm eastern time, with two players from each team participating, per Goodman and Tim MacMahon of ESPN (Twitter links). The goal of that meeting will be to formulate a specific action plan to address racial injustice issues and to work out the logistics of restarting play, a source tells MacMahon (Twitter link).
A meeting of NBA owners and players is also set up for later today, Wojnarowski and Marc Spears of ESPN report (via Twitter). It sounds like that will be a separate meeting, though it figures to focus on similar issues.
“The bubble is about more than just crowning a champion,” one veteran player told Spears (Twitter link). “More so now than ever. It felt like the message was fading. Hopeful this can create a new level of activism and commitment from our owners, (the) league, (and) teams towards real change.”
After the Bucks decided not to play Game 5 of their first-round series against the Magic on Wednesday to protest social and racial injustices, the Rockets, Thunder, Lakers, and Trail Blazers followed suit, and the NBA postponed those games.
Today’s contests between the Nuggets and Jazz, Celtics and Raptors, and Mavericks and Clippers will also need to be rescheduled. Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press (Twitter link) hears that one “common-sense” scenario being considered is to simply push each game back by two days, from Wednesday to Friday and Thursday to Saturday.
Following Wednesday’s boycott, players gathered last night to discuss next steps and that meeting reportedly got “emotional.” Players from the Lakers and Clippers voted in favor of ending the season, while other teams voted to continue playing and some players – including CJ McCollum – cautioned against giving up the platform afforded by the NBA’s bubble.
After further discussions both last night and this morning, LeBron James and other prominent players changed their positions, agreeing that it’s in players’ best interest to finish the season, tweets Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports.
Sources tell Charania that players today discussed the sacrifices they’ve made to reach this point of the 2019/20 season, as well as the sense of normalcy that will be gained when family members are allowed to enter the Orlando campus next week (Twitter link). Everyone was ultimately in agreement on restarting the season, one player told Goodman (Twitter link).
In US
Friday is weekend，Sunday is not weekend
Huh?
that makes no sense
He never makes sense. Best to ignore him
Technically he is correct, look at a calendar, however the weekend is traditionally Sat and Sun.
Different calenders can be had. IDK why the usual one is wrong. Probably some conspiracy to divide and conquer a nonworking weekend.
Sillivan is HoopsRumors’ QAnin. Look at the deeper meaning guys.
Its a Zen Koan I believe.
Well, they got some press, made a little bit of a stink now back to making millions of bucks playing basketball.
It’s the playoffs, no games were lost. They were simply rescheduled. They got some press but they are missing the mark. All this essentially did was give guys with bumps and bruises 2 extra days to heal.
… and spend more time in the bin.
And just like that, it’s about the money. I mean it always has been but it’s bad when the first report was “CJ McCollum asks how it effects players financially” and now it’s about how he’s talking about the platform they have. Right or wrong, they’ve changed little. The 1M a year for 10 years per owner isn’t going to move the needle. Neither is painting “Black Lives Matter” on the courts. Or putting social justice messages on jerseys.
What stops it is the clear stance that you’ll play when actual change has been effected. But I’m sure the players already know that what they’re doing is a nice gesture but isn’t going to move the needle at all.
End of the day, their pocketbooks are worth more than the cause and this showed it.
I completely agree, there has been zero sacrifice here. LeBron seems to want to be the new Kaep but it’s obvious he and the rest can’t sacrifice the money or a chance at a ring. All they did was cost the network and sponsors money.
Networks and sponsors are not affected THAT much, since things are just being reshuffled. No matter how much you reshuffle ‘fat checks’ they’re still ‘fat checks’.
Maybe TNT was banking on filling Friday night air time with Rampage, or ESPN with the Lance 30 for 30…but they’ll settle for live hoops. No muss, no fuss.
Nobody said the needle could be moved much regardless… Proponents never used optimistic language. The ability to claim victory is reduced. The nerves felt are about covid heebie-jeebies, not changing the world. Hardly anything is about changing the world.
It’s no more about money than any job is.
You’re not wrong. But it was disingenuous for them to say, we’re gonna do this for justice…and then play Saturday.
Pick a side. Pick justice or a paycheck. But let’s not do that thing where we cry about the injustice only to sneeze into our 100 dollar bills.
How brave of them to decide to go back to work. Only took 15 hours to realize how ridiculous their 1 day escapade was.
How would stopping the season advance their ‘cause”.
Glad to see that cooler heads prevailed. I understand and empathize with the anger at the situation, but this wasn’t the way to go about getting results.
I’m a diehard Celtics fan, but I would’ve rather them just cancel the postseason all together than have these “postponed” games to “send a message” that wasn’t received by the public. Feel free to voice your opinions on your twitter and other social media but don’t think you’re gonna move the needle by not playing for 24-48 hours. Keep politics out of pro sports period
Lmao. Worst. Boycott. Ever.
All this hype and talk of demands from owners and they quit after half a day.
Want change? Donate 90% of your salaries to causes you believe in. Run for political office after your playing days.
Hell, id settle for more athletes coming together, pooling their money, building more community after school centers or funding after school programs to get kids off the streets. Even ask the owners and league and sponsors to donate.
Or better yet. Fund career trainings for minorities. Plenty of jobs out there. Help people in tough times get jobs.
True that this act was spontaneous and thus after the initial action everyone looked at everyone else and said “Now what?”
The bigger issue that the players should be discussing is: What do we do when the police gun down another African-American (fe)male? And the next? And the next…?
Do they escalate their response? If they do nothing it really makes what they just did look childish and thoughtless. Now that they have taken a step into protestland they must be ready to follow it up! Interesting times we live in.
Ultimately, the biggest winners are the athletes receiving the chance to get some extra rest. Lowry, Davis, KP, Rondo, Barton, Harris, Beverley, and Westbrook are just some of the players benefiting from more recovery time
If lebron wants to start changes, he should quit his job, get into politics, go to washington, and then start advocating. Might be to hard for him to dedicate years of his life to actually do this like every other politicians does.