NBA players have raised a number of questions about the league’s plan to restart the 2019-20 season in Orlando. One of the main questions has been how can players use a potential restart in order to spark social change amid nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism, with some arguing that the best approach may be to just not play at all and keep the focus on the current moment.
It’s an important conversation to have, and a number of players are doing what they can to get the league to have this conversation with them. As a result, Shams Charania of The Athletic reports that the league sent a memo to all 30 teams in which it made a commitment to making sure its restart is done in such away that the NBA can “drive action and create meaningful and generational change.”
NBA has informed all 30 teams of this entering 2019-20 resumption: "A central goal of our season restart will be to utilize the NBA's platform to bring attention and sustained action to issues of social injustice…" pic.twitter.com/qfrRms88Hi
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) June 16, 2020
Of course, there is a big difference between a statement in which a commitment is made and actually acting on it, and we’ll have to wait and see what the league would have in store to take on such a gigantic task. This will assuredly be something that gets ironed out over days, if not weeks, worth of conversations in the lead-up to Orlando, but at the very least, the NBA is making it clear that it hears players and will try to do right by them.
