Clippers coach Doc Rivers said he wasn’t sure his team would be returning to its normal “safe haven” in Los Angeles for Tuesday’s Game 5 against the Warriors.
Since TMZ Sports released audio purportedly of team owner Donald Sterling making racially-charged remarks, the team has been the center of attention for all the wrong reasons.
Before Sunday’s Game 4, Clippers players turned their warmups inside out and discarded their shooting shirts at half court. It was a protest of sorts and a message to everyone watching that their owner’s comments weighed heavily on them.
But was it enough? And is that even the right question?
“I think it was a statement more than a protest,” Chuck Creekmur said. “I think it was a press-worthy movement. In terms of it affecting the bottom line? Not so much.”
Not all protests are created equal, Creekmur concedes, but if you put what Clippers players did before Game 4 in historical context, he said it falls short of the Ali’s, Tommie Smith’s and John Carlos’s of the world.
“It’s a whole different time and a whole different era,” Creekmur said. “We’re completely out of the sphere of the Civil Rights Movement, and black people are in a completely different space. However, it does speak volumes when this level of racism still exists and we’re still kind of … asleep at the wheel.”
So what’s the alternative? Clippers players reportedly considered boycotting Game 4 completely before ultimately staging a “silent protest” during shoot-around.
“That would be remarkable,” Creekmur said of a complete boycott of Game 5. “And we would be talking about it for centuries.”
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