Now feels like a good time to remind people that protest is a part of the DNA of the NBA. They've never just shut up and dribbled. In 1958, Elgin Baylor became the first player to boycott a game because of segregation. https://twitter.com/MayaRupert/status/1298721444373782528

At the time, the Minneapolis Lakers (who wouldn't move to LA for another 2 years) were set to play an exhibition game in Charleston, which was the hometown of “Hot” Rod Hundley, Baylor’s white teammate and friend.

When the team arrived in Charleston, they were told that the black players would not be able to stay at the hotel because it was whites-only. After they were given the same response by other hotels in the area, the team was forced to stay in a run-down hotel across town.

When Baylor left the hotel to eat, he found that no restaurants in the town would serve him, and he and the other two black players were forced to eat at the concession stand at the Greyhound bus station.

When it came time for the game, Baylor refused to play, which was a huge blow considering that Baylor was the star player on the team. The promoters of the game approached Hundley to get him to convince his friend to play.

Hundley asked Baylor to play as a favor to him and Baylor told his friend that he simply couldn’t play in a town where he hadn’t been treated like a human being. Hundley recounted that as a turning point in his own understanding of race and racism

and the devastating toll that it took on the psyches of black people. “Elj,” he ultimately told him, “don’t play.” A few years later, Bill Russell led the Celtics in a boycott of a Kentucky exhibition game when a restaurant refused to serve him and his black teammates.

You can't celebrate black athleticism and brutalize black people.

With this protest, the Bucks aren't just joining their community, they are joining the legacy of many who came before them in their league using their power to call for racial justice. You absolutely love to see it.