Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
The NBA will be resuming playoff action this weekend with a revised schedule following this week’s strike.
Basketball is resuming, even if the problems that caused it to halt remain unsolved.
Every single NBA team left in the Orlando bubble went on strike this week to protest police violence that continues to fracture communities across the country. The idea of striking was considered back in June when Kyrie Irving suggested that returning to basketball and distracting from the George Floyd protests didn’t seem particularly helpful.
While Irving was largely dismissed, including being called ‘disruptive’ by Adrian Wojnarowski in a piece that ran on ESPN, players arrived at where he was back in June earlier this week. Following the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, and hours after an armed vigilante used an automatic weapon to murder two protestors, the Milwaukee Bucks decided to sit out Game 5 of their first-round series against the Orlando Magic.
Every remaining team in the playoffs followed suit and basketball stopped.
After meeting and deciding that shutting down the season was not in the best interest of the movement, NBA players will end their strike and return to the court this weekend.
Ending the strike does not mean that the conversation about why it happened is over. In fact, the reason players are returning to action is to ensure that they have a platform to continue to demand justice.