Lakers, Spurs and Officials Link Arms at Center Court During National Anthem
The Los Angeles Lakers and San Antonio Spurs are the latest NBA teams to react to multiple days of tumult and chaos across the country.
Prior to Thursday's game, players, coaches and officials locked arms at center court during the national anthem:
The Denver Nuggets and Dallas Mavericks did the same before their game:
This comes after the Milwaukee Bucks and Detroit Pistons took a knee following the opening tip of Wednesday's game, while the Boston Celtics and Miami Heat released a joint statement before their matchup saying they would play "with a heavy heart."
On Tuesday, Kenosha (Wisconsin) County District Attorney Michael Graveley announced police officer Rusten Sheskey will not face any charges for shooting Jacob Blake in the back seven times. What's more, officers Vincent Arenas and Brittany Meronek, who were involved in the shooting, will not face charges either.
Blake is paralyzed from the waist down.
"We as a community tried to support the family and do everything we can to get justice for him," Lakers big man Anthony Davis told reporters. "For that to happen, it sucks for us. It feels like we let the family down."
He wasn't the only notable Los Angeles player to react, as LeBron James told reporters, "To hear what happened in Kenosha today was a blow to the gut and the heart."
That wasn't the only news that led to NBA teams reacting by kneeling or locking arms during the national anthem.
On Wednesday, a pro-Donald Trump mob stormed the steps of the Capitol in Washington D.C. and violently clashed with police until they made their way inside the building and the Senate chambers.
It was difficult not to see how the rioters were treated differently than many of those who marched across the country this past summer in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the statement by the Heat and Celtics highlighted some of those differences.
James wrote the following message on his Instagram page: "DO YOU 🤬🤬🤬🤬 UNDERSTAND NOW???!! I know the answer to that. You still don’t cause no matter what happens you still won’t be judge, looked at crazy, chained, beaten, hung, shot to death cause of the color of your skin!!!! 2 AMERIKKKAS we live in and it was at FULL CAPACITY LIVE IN DIRECT yesterday in our Nations CAPITAL AT THE CAPITOL!!"
