It’s been a wild 48 hours around the NBA. It started with a stoppage of play on Wednesday just as teams were set to square off on a triple-header of Game 5s, when players staged an impromptu walk-off to protest the latest police shooting of an unarmed Black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Jacob Blake, 29, has been left paralyzed from the waist down, per his father, after police officers shot him seven times as he was trying to enter his vehicle, with his three children in the backseat looking on. The Milwaukee Bucks were the first team to announce they would not play on Wednesday, and the rest of the teams quickly followed, throwing the remainder of the NBA season into doubt.
What followed was a string of meetings between the players, the players’ association, and the NBA Board of Governors, with the players hoping that their walk-out would force the owners to use their money and considerable influence to take tangible, concrete actions that would prompt social reform.
According to the newest reports, the players haven’t all been on the same page over the past couple days about how to move forward. The NBA isn’t a monolithic group, and despite their united front, first on pausing play and then on deciding to resume this weekend, there’s been frustration among their ranks about the lack of planning and foresight needed to proceed.
Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports, who has been reporting on the situation from inside the bubble in Orlando, published a report on Thursday giving a glimpse inside those meetings. He paints a picture of how LeBron, in particular, was apparently angry at the Bucks for making a unilateral decision that forced everyone else’s hands. But there was reportedly another tense moment involving Patrick Beverley and outgoing NBPA director Michele Roberts that caught the attention of many.
“Michele Roberts, the executive director of the players’ union, asked to have the floor to speak about the financial ramifications of leaving Orlando.
While she was going over the numbers, Clippers guard Patrick Beverley abruptly interrupted her, saying he disagreed with her logic, sources said. Roberts kindly reiterated that these were potential losses the players would suffer, and Beverley interrupted again.
Roberts asked politely if she could continue with her point, and Beverley responded, “No, I pay your salary,” sources said.
This caused an uproar with Paul, Haslem and others, who intervened and told Beverley that disrespect would not be tolerated, sources said.”
Without the full context, it’s easy to paint Beverley as rude or disrespectful here, especially given his well-established reputation as an on-court nuisance to anyone he’s tasked with defending and his penchant for trash talk. But this is one of those cases where Beverley probably deserves some benefit of the doubt without knowing exactly how that interaction played out. Beverley’s teammate Ivica Zubac called into question the legitimacy of the report on Twitter, insisting Beverley did not say that.
I don’t know who leaks this stuff, but Pat never said anything like this…
https://t.co/HYyUuugekL
— Ivica Zubac (@ivicazubac) August 28, 2020
Clearly, the enormous financial implications of canceling the season played at least some part in the decision to resume play, and it is Roberts’ job to inform the players union of all of the potential ramifications of their actions so they have complete information to make a decision off of. Both Thursday and presumably Friday’s slate of playoff games will be rescheduled for some time in the near future as the league charts a path forward.
But since the Board of Governors meeting on Thursday, details about the owners’ action plan remains vague. In the wake of it all, the Rockets announced that they will retrofit the Toyota Center in Houston as a voting center for the 2020 presidential election, but there are still plenty of questions about what the long-terms fallout of this stoppage will be.