The Milwaukee Bucks basketball players refused to play their fifth playoff game on Wednesday due to the incident in which police officers shot black man James Blake in the back.
“We are tired of murders and injustice,” said Bucks player George Hill’s decision not to play. The Orlando Magic players were now ready.
Following that incident, protests and disturbances have broken out in the city since Sunday, with two deaths in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday. After the boycott, the NBA decided to postpone all three games that would be played on Wednesday.
Star player LeBron James of the LA Lakers also expressed anger on Twitter, calling for change. “Fuck this man !!!! We want change. Tired of it ”, he wrote.
WNBA
Except in the NBA, there were also no games in the WNBA, the women’s basketball league. “We show solidarity with our brothers in the NBA,” the players said in a statement. In Major League Soccer, five of the six scheduled games were not played on Wednesday, because the footballers supported the boycott of the Bucks.
MLB
In the MLB, some baseball players refused to play in the games between the Cincinnati Reds and Milwaukee Brewers, the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the San Diego Padres against the Seattle Mariners. The matches have been postponed.
“Given the pain in the communities in Wisconsin and beyond after the shooting of James Blake, we respect the decision of some players not to play tonight,” the MLB leadership said in a response on Wednesday.
Naomi Osaka
The Cincinnati tennis tournament comes to a halt for a day, in protest against racial inequality and social injustice in the United States. The courses of Flushing Meadows in New York, where the Western & Southern Open is played, will remain empty on Thursday. The tournament will resume on Friday. The US Open will start in New York next week.
The protest was triggered by the shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin, who was shot in the back by a police officer last Sunday. It sparked a new wave of protests in the US against police brutality against black people. Earlier this year, this also happened after the death of George Floyd.
Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka declined to play in protest against police brutality. On Twitter she announced that she was withdrawing from the WTA Western & Southern Open in New York, where the two-time grand slam winner would face Belgian Elise Mertens in the semi-final on Thursday. “As a black woman, I feel that there are much more important issues now that require attention,” Osaka said in a statement on Twitter.
