Boston Celtics, Miami Heat play ‘heavy-hearted’ game amid recent events

As much of the country tried to grapple with the scenes that emerged from Washington on Wednesday afternoon as angry supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol, much of the world sport was trying to figure out how to handle the events of the day.

For the Miami Heat and Boston Celtics, that meant leaving the field together shortly before their game in Miami, with the two teams issuing a joint statement just before the prediction.

“2021 is a new year, but some things have not changed,” the statement said. “We play tonight’s game with a heavy heart after yesterday’s decision in Kenosha, and knowing that protesters in our country’s capital are being treated differently by political leaders depending on which side of certain issues they are on. . The drastic difference between how the protesters were last spring and summer were treated and the encouragement given to protesters today who have acted illegally shows how much work we still have to do.

“We have decided to play tonight’s game to try to bring joy to people’s lives. But we must not forget the injustices in our society, and we will continue to use our voices and our platform. to bring these issues to light and do all we can to work. for a more equitable and just America. “

The statement ended with the hashtag “BLACKLIVESSTILLMATTER”.

Most players from both teams also took a knee during the national anthem.

After his team’s 107-105 victory, Celtics coach Brad Stevens said the game was very close to not being played and his players would have had “the full support of my team, of me. and our organization “if they had chosen not to take the floor.

“We ditched the warm-ups and sat in the locker room and talked,” Stevens explained. “To be honest at 30 minutes I didn’t think we were playing. Then the coaches left the room, the players finished talking and chose to play. I called my wife and said, ‘I don’t think we were playing. ‘Then 10 minutes later we decided to do it. “

Celtics guard Jaylen Brown, who drove 15 hours from Boston to Atlanta in May to lead a peaceful protest after George Floyd’s death on Memorial Day, opened up his post-game media availability by addressing what was happening in the society.

“It reminds me of what Dr. Martin Luther King said, that there are two separate Americas,” Brown said. “In an America, you are killed sleeping in your car, selling cigarettes or playing in your backyard. And then in another America, you get to storm the Capitol and no tear gas, no mass arrests, none of that. So I think it’s obvious, it’s 2021, I don’t think anything has changed. We always want to recognize it. We always want to push for the change we seek. But so far, we haven’t seen it. We want to continue to keep the conversations going and do our part. “

The 24 hours had been tumultuous, beginning with a decision by prosecutors on Tuesday not to press charges for the shooting of Jacob Blake, a black man, by a white police officer in Kenosha, Wis., On August 23, and culminating in the violent violation of the U.S. Capitol that required lawmakers to go to safety when they gathered to officially count the electoral votes that will make Joe Biden president on January 20.

Between the two, Democratic Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff were named winners of the second round of the US Senate in Georgia. Warnock’s opponent, Atlanta Dream co-owner Kelly Loeffler, said Wednesday night she would not oppose electoral votes for Biden after what happened on Capitol Hill. She had planned to oppose it. Former college football coach and current Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville was among the few Republican senators to oppose Arizona’s certification of electoral votes for the presidency. The challenge was dismissed.

Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr called the day’s events “a pretty clear reminder that truth matters.”

“A legitimate election is suddenly challenged by millions of people, including many who run our country in government, because we have decided – over the past few years – to allow lies to be told. who we are. You reap what you sow. “

The Warriors, many of whom wore Black Lives Matter shirts, knelt for the anthem with the LA Clippers before their game ended Wednesday night at the Chase Center.

With Washington under curfew from 6 p.m. ET Wednesday to 6 a.m. Thursday, George Washington’s men’s basketball game against UMass scheduled for Wednesday night has been postponed.

National Basketball Players Association executive director Michele Roberts told ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski that there had been no conversations with the NBA about the postponement of any of the 11 games scheduled for Wednesday night. The Washington Wizards played the 76ers in Philadelphia.

And NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said there had been no change in the status of this weekend’s wild card game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the football team. from Washington to Landover, Maryland.

Around the NBA, however, it was an emotional day, as the league struggled with the swirling emotions of the Blake decision, Senate victories and the capture of the Capitol.

For 76ers coach Doc Rivers, who has been involved in many discussions about how the league could use its platform in the Orlando, Fla. Bubble, when the NBA resumes, it was a moment to remember that these efforts were not in vain.

“But what isn’t … is an attack on democracy,” Rivers said, adding, “Democracy will prevail. It always does.”

Rivers drew a contrast between the way the Black Lives Matter protests over the summer in Washington were handled, with “the police, the National Guard and the military,” and the way the pro-Trump mob was dealt with Wednesday – “no police dogs have turned on people, no billy club is hitting people. People are being escorted peacefully out of the Capitol. So this shows that you can disperse a crowd peacefully.

“It basically proves a point about a privileged life in so many ways,” Rivers said. “I’ll say it, because I don’t think a lot of people want it: can you imagine today if it was all blacks who stormed the Capitol, and what would have happened? ? This is, for me, a picture worth a thousand words for all of us to see, and probably something we still have to reckon with. “

Few places, meanwhile, have felt the emotions of the past 24 hours more than Atlanta, where Warnock became the first black man elected to the Senate by the state of Georgia.

But for Lloyd Pierce, the Atlanta Hawks coach who has been at the forefront of the organization’s efforts to secure the vote in both the November general election and the just-held special election, what ‘he saw on Wednesday was not unexpected. .

“It’s tragic,” Pierce said. “I think it’s sad, honestly. I think it’s a sad reality … it’s a shame that this is what we are looking at in our country after the year that we have been through. But this no It’s not unexpected. One day for someone like me, an African-American man, to … see someone like Raphael Warnock become the first African-American man representing the state of Georgia to make it to the Senate, and you see the next day it’s the reaction, it’s the reality. “

Pierce echoed Rivers in noting the lag in the way Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol were treated by local officials, compared to the treatment of those who demonstrated mostly peacefully over the course of summer.

“There’s a reason there is no shootings, brutality, looting and things of that nature, and people are just walking around the Capitol building like it’s nothing. [Speaker of the House] Nancy Pelosi’s office like it was nothing, “he said.” We all understand it would have been guns and fires right now if it was black protesting. If it was black people protesting outside – we didn’t even mention people coming in and tearing up the [Capitol] building.

“But none of that will change until we recognize that there is a huge difference in how black people are treated when it comes to law enforcement, and it just hasn’t happened. product.”

And, in the midst of it all, players and coaches were trying to figure out how to stay focused on the task at hand while taking everything that was going on around them into account.

“There are so many layers to it,” said Houston Rockets coach Stephen Silas. “There’s what’s going on on Capitol Hill, and then there’s the why, and then there’s the why of it – the division and all these other things. There is a long history of division in our country when it comes to political parties, but it seems that right now there is more division in just, like, humanity. That’s what I’m grappling with and struggling with right now. “

Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson also spoke of the need to “come together as a nation”, adding “we need safety for our children and our people.”

Others have expressed their disbelief at the events of the day.

“I’m 59 and I’ve never seen anything like it,” Orlando Magic coach Steve Clifford said. “Our country, we are laughed at all over the world. From the way we have handled the pandemic to this … it’s a sad day for everyone.”

In Phoenix, where the Suns and Toronto Raptors stood in a circle and tied their arms for the American and Canadian anthems, Suns coach Monty Williams said that as a former athlete and now coach, he is aware of the platform given to him, along with other professional athletes, “to help when we can. We don’t necessarily have to solve problems, but we can be part of some of the solutions.” “

But, “when I look at what I see and what I saw earlier today, I have a hard time finding ways to help a situation like this. I don’t know how to be a part of it. this solution as it relates to what happened today. “

ESPN’s Tim MacMahon, Dave McMenamin, Royce Young and Ohm Youngmisuk contributed to this report.