Draymond Green is right: Canceling NBA games won't fix America, laws will

NBA representatives spoke out following yesterday’s riots, which Republicans enabled with their silence as 45 continued his baseless Twitter tirades. In particular, it was Draymond Green’s postgame media session, following Golden State’s loss to the Clippers, that resonated overnight on social media. Green not only discusses the coup in Washington D.C. but the faint-hearted yet predictable decision not to charge anyone over Jacob Blake’s shooting. (Blake is now paralyzed.)

“It’s just like a slap in the face and almost a fuck you to every Black person in America,” Green said bluntly. “It’s almost like they wanna show you that they have power and want to show you that I could say ‘fuck you’ and there’s nothing you could do about it.”

And Green made this critical point: It’s not on NBA players to fix racism. (Even if they had that level of command, it’s not like the power structure would allow that anyway.)

On canceling games, Green said: “That’s not the answer. There’s always this cry on, ‘Cancel the NBA game. Protest the game. Don’t play.’ But if we’re going to protest these games and not play, everyone in America has to be on the same wavelength. ‘Oh, the NBA canceled the game and didn’t play,’ but everyone else just goes to work? I mean, that’s not the answer, in my opinion.

“The NBA is doing what the NBA can,” he continued. “We speak up; we do all the things everyone has been doing. But at some point, we need lawmakers to change laws.”

And that’s what this comes back to. We often press the NBA because, relative to its peers, it is comparatively the most “outspoken” in its views. The whiter sports leagues are naturally more tolerant to overt racism. Many within the NFL and MLB even condone it. Green’s latter point — “At some point, we need lawmakers to change laws” — is the salient one. If games are canceled, sure, it makes a statement, but then what? It would not solve the issues that have plagued this country since its inception.

It’s not on NBA or WNBA players to reconstruct America. It’s not on the canceling of games to provide an awakening for the government, legislators, congress, and otherwise to mend centuries-long disproportionate injustices. On some level, everyone has to do more, but it starts from the very top of this broken country’s power structure, not the very top of our athletic league structure. They could do what they can, we could exhaust ourselves, and you could hold people accountable. It’s still on those of us who give a damn to do our part, and to continue creating the change we long to experience.

But if the very top of this country will continue to not just allow, but work in conjunction with the consequence evading white domestic terrorists afflicting this country in the name of D***** T****, then that’s it. It will only get worse.

And shout out to this dude just because.