NBA players have decided to resume the playoffs, a source tells ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
Thursday’s three playoff games will be postponed. A resumption of the season could come as soon as Friday, but there is expected to be a return to the play by the weekend according to sources.
Players held a meeting at 11 a.m. ET. There will be another meeting Thursday with two players from each team talking to NBA owners, sources tell ESPN’s..
Thursday’s second meeting is to formulate action plans to address racial injustice issues as well as ironing out details of restarting the playoffs, according to a source.
Wednesday, the Milwaukee Bucks — the NBA’s team from Wisconsin, a state rocked in recent days by the shooting by police officers of Jacob Blake, a Black man — didn’t take the floor for their playoff game against the Orlando Magic. The teams were set to begin Game 5 of their series shortly after 4 p.m., with the Bucks needing a win to advance to the second round. That game, along with the Oklahoma City Thunder–Houston Rockets and Portland Trail Blazers–Los Angeles Lakers games were postponed.
Demanding societal change and ending racial injustice has been a major part of the NBA’s restart at Walt Disney World. The phrase “Black Lives Matter” is painted on the arena courts, players are wearing messages urging change on their jerseys and coaches are donning pins demanding racial justice as well.
Many players wrestled for weeks about whether it was even right to play, fearing that a return to games would take attention off the deaths of, among others, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in recent months.
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 in March. The warrant was in connection with a suspect who did not live there and no drugs were found. Then on May 25, Floyd died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee into the Black man’s neck for nearly eight minutes — all captured on a cell phone video.
Wednesday’s postponed NBA games came on the fourth anniversary of Colin Kaepernick’s very first protest of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before an NFL preseason game. Kaepernick sat through the anthem for his first protest, which he said was to protest racial inequality and police mistreatment of minorities. then famously kneeled during the anthem going forward.
ESPN’s Tim MacMahon and The Undefeated’s Marc J. Spears contributed to this story.
