Her name and face have appeared on NBA players’ T-shirts and in league-sponsored social justice PSAs during game broadcasts. Players have refused to answer basketball-related questions on media Zoom calls in order to spend that time bringing attention to her case. Last month, Milwaukee Bucks players decided to strike after a Kenosha, Wisconsin, police officer shot Jacob Blake in the back multiple times.
Again and again in Orlando, Florida, this summer, they have said her name.
Breonna Taylor.
Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT whom police officers shot and killed while entering her home in Louisville, Kentucky, in March, became one of the faces—along with Blake, George Floyd and many others—of the nationwide uprising in protest against police brutality toward Black Americans.
The NBA certainly succeeded in bringing more awareness to an already politically explosive case, both directly and indirectly. When the players agreed to restart the season, they asked that the Black Lives Matter movement be the primary focus of the marketing efforts.
So when Wednesday’s grand-jury decision came down—that one of the police officers involved in Taylor’s killing would be charged with three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment for firing shots into another unit of her apartment complex, but that none of the three officers would face any charges related to her death—players felt the pain all over again.
“I wasn’t surprised,” Celtics forward Jaylen Brown said. “… It’s hard to gather the words, but I wasn’t surprised. I think that this society, the way it was built, the way intentions was to never protect and serve people of color initially.
“So when they were gearing up for what was about to happen, I knew that the wrong decision was probably being made. It doesn’t surprise me. It doesn’t surprise me at all. Until we dismantle, recreate or change this system that we have, it’s going to continue to have victims like Breonna Taylor and others that fall victim to oppression. It was tough getting emotionally ready for the game.”
The Miami Heat and Boston Celtics played Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals on Wednesday evening. Miami won to take a 3-1 lead in the series, but the game felt trivial.
LeBron James, whose voice rings loudest, fair or otherwise, made his opinion clear:
As difficult as it was to treat a basketball game like it was the most important thing in the world on this day, there was never a sense from those in the bubble that the players were thinking of striking again, as they did on Aug. 26 following the Blake video. That demonstration shook the sports world and resulted in more of the league’s 30 teams committing their arenas to be used as voting facilities in the upcoming election.
The Bucks, who spearheaded that effort in response to the police shooting of Blake in their home state, are long gone from Orlando. In the middle of the conference finals, with less than a month until the season’s finish line, sitting out again never seemed like a consideration.
So they played.
Heat rookie Tyler Herro had the biggest night of his career Wednesday, a 37-point scoring explosion that earned him the coveted walk-off interview with ESPN’s Rachel Nichols. But Taylor’s name was on his mind, too.
“Money doesn’t equal justice,” Herro said at his postgame press conference, referring to the $12 million settlement Taylor’s family received from the city of Louisville last week.
One of the league’s initiatives for spreading the social justice message in the bubble has been giving players a list of slogans they could place on their jerseys in addition to their names. Herro was one of a handful of white players who chose to wear “Black Lives Matter,” a number small enough to stand out on the court.
“I chose ‘Black Lives Matter’ because Black lives matter,” Herro said Wednesday night. “My teammates are predominantly Black. The league is predominantly Black. There’s obviously a problem going on in the world. I felt like this stage, this platform, putting that on my jersey, everybody sees my last name, but they also see ‘Black Lives Matter’ on the back. And I think that’s important. We have to keep trying to do better in society and push forward. Black lives do matter.”
Herro will never be able to fully relate to his Black teammates. He’ll never see one of these videos and think, “That could have been me.” But his outspokenness about the Taylor decision shows his understanding of a crucial point: It’s not Black people’s job to solve racism. They didn’t ask to be part of a system that regularly devalues their humanity in ways big and small.
“It’s always much bigger than a sport. It’s always bigger than basketball because that could be anybody,” said Jimmy Butler, who unsuccessfully lobbied at the beginning of the bubble for the league to let him wear a jersey with a completely blank nameplate to make the point that without the fame that comes with being an NBA star, he’s just another anonymous person of color whom law enforcement could target.
“That could be me. That could be any African American. So when you look at it like that, for me, it’s always on my heart because I just think it’s some bullcrap. Going into the game, you do gotta compete, but at the end of the day, we’re people first, not just athletes.”
