The Milwaukee Bucks basketball team decided not to take the court Wednesday due to the police shooting of Jacob Blake. As a result, the National Basketball Association (NBA) cancelled the remaining games of the day.
The NBA announced around 5 pm Wednesday that Wednesday’s remaining games between the Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder and the Los Angeles Lakers game against the Portland Trail Blazers would be rescheduled.
“We’re tired of the killings and the injustice,” Bucks guard George Hill told ESPN‘s Marc Spears, in explaining his team’s decision.
Milwaukee is about 40 miles north of Kenosha, where Blake was walking away from Kenosha, Wisconsin police officers and heading toward his vehicle while police trailed him with their guns drawn. As he attempted to get in his vehicle, police opened fire hitting Blake eight times.
The officers who shot Blake were not wearing body cameras but a neighbor recorded video of the incident which sparked outrage and two days of protests. Last night, 17-year old Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people, to fatally with an assault rifle.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, video recorded in the hours be
fore the shooting shows Rittenhouse hanging out with older armed men who say they’re protecting a car lot. Rittenhouse now faces at least one charge of first-degree intentional homicide charge among other charges.While some Bucks players worked out before today’s game. However, when it came time for the team to take the floor around 15 minutes before tipoff, as is customary for an NBA game, Bucks player were still not in the court.
Eventually the players on the Magic went back to their locker room leaving only the four game referees on the court. Eventually, Monty McCutchen, the NBA’s vice president of refereeing and training, told them to leave the floor, as well.
“Today we stand united with the NBA Office, the National Basketball Players Association, the Milwaukee Bucks and the rest of the league condemning bigotry, racial injustice and the unwarranted use of violence by police against people of color,” the Magic and the DeVos family, which owns the franchise, said in a statement.
After the Bucks made their decision, other NBA players around the league showed support on social media. Lakers Forward LeBron James, Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell and Nuggets guard Jamal Murray tweeted their support for the Bucks decision.
It is not know if Thursday’s scheduled games will take place or if the players left in the NBA bubble will stay.