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Report: The Lakers And Clippers Have Voted To Not Play The Rest Of The Season

The NBA’s players met on Wednesday night to discuss their plans moving forward after players from the Bucks began what became a leaguewide wildcat strike, refusing to play their Game 5s in protest of police shooting Jacob Blake in the back seven times, leaving him paralyzed, in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The meeting lasted several hours, with reports emerging of a number of different players and coaches stepping up to speak, eventually with coaches being asked to leave. About 2 and a half hours into the meeting, word emerged that the Lakers and Clippers had both voted against continuing the season and left.

Per Charania, they were the only two teams who voted against resuming the season, with LeBron James calling on owners and the league to do more.

As Udonis Haslem reportedly pointed out to the rest of the teams, there isn’t much of a path to the resumption of the season if the Lakers and Clippers, the two top seeds in the West, aren’t a part of it, and clearly there must be a full decision made.

We will await that official word from the players union, but for now it seems two of the league’s biggest teams that feature four of its biggest stars do not plan to continue playing. The question is if the Lakers and Clippers can be brought back into the fold when the NBA’s Board of Governors meet on Thursday morning at 11 a.m. ET, should ownership and league executives agree to do more, speak out, and wield their power, money, and influence more at the state and national levels.

If nothing else, the Lakers and Clippers taking this stance applies immense pressure on ownership to make serious plans and put actual, actionable things on the table in their meeting. Somewhat unsurprisingly, given it was always going to be very difficult to get every player and team on the same page with something like a strike, David Aldridge of The Athletic says the meeting ended “ugly” with players not fully certain how things will play out in the coming days.

It seems as though Steve Ballmer has, at least to a point, gotten the message sent by the Clippers players, issuing a statement through the team on Wednesday night, calling for police accountability and reform.