As the nation reels from the tragic shooting of Daunte Wright, San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich called out politicians and NBA owners in a searing and powerful speech.
In his pregame session on Monday, Popovich said, “It just makes you sick to your stomach. How many times does that have to happen? As sick to our stomachs as we might feel, you know, that individual is dead … his family’s grieving, and his friends are grieving, and we just keep moving on as if nothing’s happened.”
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Popovich continued to detail systematic racism in America and even called out Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, saying, “We see what’s happening with policing and young black men, and some other people of color, and with the massacres of our children, it’s the same thing. It goes on and on, and everybody says, ‘Well, when is it going to be enough?’ Of course, I don’t have those answers, but the people who continually fight to maintain that status quo are not good people.”
“The other day when guns came up, (Abbott) actually made the statement, ‘They’re coming for your guns. That’s going to be the next step. They’re going to take away your guns,'” Popovich continued. “Nobody is taking away anybody’s guns, and he knows it, so he’s a liar who wants to keep his seat. He wants to continue to be in power, and he’ll say whatever he has to do to follow the lead of Donald Trump and the rest of the Republicans.”
Popovich even took it a step further, calling out NBA owners who may be linked to right-wing politicians.
“Do these people want a country or not?” he asked aloud. “These people have grandchildren; they want their grandchildren to go to work, to go to school and go through these drills and worry about being murdered? What does it take to care more about them then your freaking power and your position and your donors?”
“And with policing, it’s the same damn way,” Popovich continued. “How many young black kids have to be killed for no good reason? How many so that we can empower the police unions. We need to find out who funds these people. I want to know what owners of the NBA fund these people who perpetrate these lies. Maybe that’s a good place to start. So it’s all transparent.”
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Doc Rivers, the head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers, also spoke out, calling for us to “improve society.”
“You keep hearing this cancel culture stuff, but we’re canceling Black lives. To me, that’s a little more important, in my opinion, and it just keeps happening,” Rivers shared in his statement. “We keep making mistakes on killing Black people … To me, improving our culture as a society is really important. Not canceling it, but improving it.”
As The Washington Post reported, sports leagues have responded swiftly to the untimely passing of yet another unarmed Black man at police hands, this time 20-year-old Daunte Wright, shot in his car Sunday in Brooklyn Center, mere miles from where former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin is on trial now for the death of George Floyd. The NBA, MLB and and NHL all postponed their Minneapolis games on Monday.
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