Draymond Green: Telling Athletes to Stop Playing Sports Is 'Counterproductive'

The sports world was rocked on Wednesday as the Milwaukee Bucks opted not to take the court for a playoff game, risking potential forfeit, in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake about 45 minutes from Milwaukee in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The remaining games of the day were postponed, and then there were reports that the Lakers and Clippers voted to protest the rest of the season (these reports were later clarified not to necessarily mean game over).

Commenting on a House of Highlights Instagram post aggregating Shams Charania's report that the Lakers and Clippers voted not to play the rest of the season, Draymond Green wrote the following, in response to a comment that "sports can wait":

"But why can sports wait? Because it’s a sport? It to is a business, like the many other businesses in the world. Why is it that sports can wait but other businesses should not? If that is the case why shouldn’t the CEO of YouTube boycott Alphabet? Or the President of Apple boycott the company? But you say basketball can wait... Is it because sports(the platform) has afforded the athletes involved such huge platforms? Or maybe the athletes involved past and present actually afforded sports those platforms, that the many athletes currently have today(that’s neither here nor there). The notion that athletes should just stop working but no one else in the world should stop is baffling to me. Why stop doing the very thing that offers you the biggest platform to speak for those that look like me/a lot of us. To do that is to actually give up the platform to speak for them, because without us using our platforms which is afforded by the influence of the sport, it actually stops us from echoing what those in the back are saying. Those people then will never truly be heard. Athletes stand with the people, no secret there, but to actually tell athletes to stop doing what provides that platform to speak for the people is actually counterproductive. In my opinion."

To his point: If the NBA players had not returned to the bubble, it's very difficult to envision the Bucks doing anything that ultimately resonated the way their sitting out a playoff game did.

Today will be a landmark day in determining if the NBA players in the bubble are on Draymond Green's side of things or if they opt to ultimately cancel the season.