Emotional Doc Rivers on Blake shooting: ‘This country does not love us’
The former NBA player and current L.A. Clippers coach got teary-eyed as he ranted about this country's inequality and treatment of Blacks for over three minutes.
Doc Rivers, the Los Angeles Clippers coach, is really angry about Jacob Blake Jr.’s shooting.
Rivers vented out his frustrations after the Clippers’ victory over the Dallas Mavericks in Game Five in the NBA first-round playoffs. He expressed how he felt about Sunday’s shooting of Blake, a 29-year-old Black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin shot several times by a Kenosha police officer, ESPN reported.
Read More: NBA, NFL on the Jacob Blake shooting: ‘Why does this keep happening?’
“All you hear is Donald Trump and all of them talking about fear,” Rivers said, referring to the Republican National Convention. “We’re the ones getting killed. We’re the ones getting shot. We’re the ones that we’re denied to live in certain communities. We’ve been hung. We’ve been shot. And all you do is keep hearing about fear.”
Rivers grew noticeably emotional while talking during the news conference.
Despite his team beating the Mavericks 154 -115, Rivers was in no mood to be cheerful about sports.
He ranted about inequality for more than three minutes.
READ MORE: LeBron James says he can’t celebrate playoff win after Jacob Blake shooting
“It’s amazing why we keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back,” Rivers said. “It’s really so sad. Like, I should just be a coach. I’m so often reminded of my color. It’s just really sad. We got to do better. But we got to demand better.”
“It’s funny,” he maintained. “We protest. They send riot guards. They send people in riot outfits. They go up to Michigan with guns. They’re spitting on cops. Nothing happens.”
“The training has to change in the police force,” Rivers continued. “The unions have to be taken down in the police force. My dad was a cop. I believe in good cops. We’re not trying to defund the police and take all their money away. We’re trying to get them to protect us, just like they protect everybody else.”
Like Rivers, as theGrio previously reported, Lakers star LeBron James on Monday could not enjoy his team’s 135-115 victory over the Portland Trailblazers because of Blake’s shooting.
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