Lakers and Clippers Vote to Sit Out Rest of NBA Season

updated 47 Comments

Videos by OutKick

The Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers have voted to sit out the NBA season in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, according to Chris Haynes and Shams Charania:

This is an escalation of events that frankly is genuinely surprising to me. LeBron James in particular has a lot of legacy on the line with winning a championship, which the Lakers are squarely in contention for. The Clippers are also in major title contention.

Charania further reports that the rest of the teams in the bubble had voted in favor of playing, but there is uncertainty:

Could the rest of the NBA continue without them? Would the Lakers and Clippers defer to the rest of the teams’ votes? Is this a final ultimatum power play to the owners, who are meeting tomorrow morning? These questions may or may not come in a night, so let’s see what happens from here.

UPDATE: Woj says not quite so fast on the end of the season….

 

 

This is a developing story and will be updated if there are new components. 

LeBron JamesLos Angeles ClippersLos Angeles Lakers

Written by Ryan Glasspiegel

Ryan Glasspiegel grew up in Connecticut, graduated from University of Wisconsin-Madison, and lives in Chicago. Before OutKick, he wrote for Sports Illustrated and The Big Lead. He enjoys expensive bourbon and cheap beer.

47 Comments

Leave a Reply

  5. LeBron needs to just take his act to the streets and make a difference. He needs to show everyone by standing in unity that rioting and looting leads to violence. He can’t enjoy the playoffs anyway. Shut it down and stand united outside of the bubble. The only real action that will make a difference is burning the country down. Stop preaching and go to the streets LeBron. People want to see action not words my friend.

    • Matt, I agree. NBA owners are worth billions of dollars. NBA players have millions upon millions of dollars. They must be able to do something besides race baiting and promoting resisting arrest .They could co-sponsor an event with law enforcement in their city to relieve tensions between police and communities. Something. Anything besides all their gestures and stirring of hate.

  8. Amazing what finally pushes LeBron James over the edge of sanity: A police shooting of a felon (with an underage sexual assault warrant on him) who resists arrest. The martyr standards get lower by the NBA season. Do any NBA players have the balls to stand up to LeBron & Co and say “F*ck you…we’re playing”? Probably not.

    Not that most of America cares if they do play at this point. Although litigation from their contractually obligated broadcast partners WOULD be entertaining. Are TNT & ESPN going to weasel out too?

  11. I known there’s a lot of hate on athletes here. That said, I feel bad for them at this point. These guys are digging their own graves. Most of their remaining viewers already agree/sympathize with their situation. A PPD isn’t a boycott nor is it a sacrifice. It pushes a “potential” Game 7 back a couple days. Ending the season hurts their league, disappoints the fans who’ve stuck with them, threatens jobs that rely on that sport (e.g. NIKE), and possibly creates divide with players who wonder “Why did we go through all this just to quit?”

    The vast majority of these players have good intentions; they just don’t know what to do. They don’t understand the consequences of any of their actions. They need leadership and direction. The owners and executives aren’t providing that. They’re bending over backwards for them.

  14. Not sure what any of this accomplishes but I think it is great! Shame that they do not care about the black lives that die in the cities every night by other blacks. I would have to call this “professional” virtue signaling.

  17. They’re grandstanding! The majority are socially underdeveloped, undereducated pampered athletes in search of attention. As a black man, this whole BLM narrative is insulting, in particular coming from them. I’d love to know from this group how many black children have they sired and aren’t raising? If you have black children that you aren’t raising, you are disqualified from yelling BLM! In my estimation, they should be quiet.

    • Agreed. Couple your points with the fact that countless black people are killed on the daily by other black people but those black lives apparently have zero meaning or don’t matter one bit to BLM or these NBA players.

  19. Well at least now we can look forward to a daily, state of racism in America press conference with Lebron, maybe he can give some advice on how to properly saydue perpetrators and shed some light on all the police who wake up in the morning and say to themselves, “self, today is the day I shoot one of them blacks.”

    • I grew up literally in the middle of Duke/UNC/NC State, and I’m sorry to say I feel like the NBA has not only deteriorated, but the one and done, Lebron James mega star since middle school culture has trickled down to college basketball as well. There was nothing better than ACC basketball in the 1980s, those days are long gone.

  23. NBA viewership down 40% since 2011….wow, I am so shocked it isn’t more now.

    I look forward to seeing former NBA Players vs Harlem Globetrotters 🎉🎊

  24. Maybe they will move the NBA out of the USA and then they can see how racist the rest of world is… you think in China they can’t do/say whatever they want. What about police brutality in China? Take the movement to China.

  25. In July of 2015 Zachary Hammond was fatally shot by police while sitting in his car. The police were targeting the woman with him because of drugs. When Hammond reached for the parking brake, cops thought he was reaching for a gun and they shot and killed him. The cops weren’t there for Zachary, kind of like the cops weren’t there for Breonna Taylor. So why is it that I can say the name Zachary Hammond and no one knows who that is? Why were there no rioting, no NBA players with Zachary’s name on their back, no sports leagues cancelled? I guess it was because he was White.

  26. Reprint of prior comment with one edit:

    So lets piece this together using some data:

    It’s reported that ESPN’s current ratings for the NBA playoffs are down 40%.

    Since the last weekend in May through this past weekend, Chicago has had 127 murders occurring just during weekends. Many of these crimes involve African American victims and suspects. Some of the specific ages of victims include, a 1 year old boy, a 9 year old boy, a 10 year old girl and a toddler. (The source on the numbers is NBC Chicago and the Chicago Sun Times).

    Perhaps the players should should start in Chicago and then eventually work their way over to Kenosha before their remaining fanbase moves on completely.

  32. Who cares? The Celtics and Raptors are better than either of the LA teams because the players in those two clubs know how to play as a team. Sadly, they are just as likely to want to stop playing too.

    So what happens to the salary cap? To the WNBA? To ESPN’s finances? Imagine being a player hitting free agency only to find that there is no more money left to pay you because the salary cap just got crushed. Imagine being an employee of an arena where the games are being played? Or a sporting goods store that used to sell many jerseys?

    Better get off your ass Clay and Jason. More jobs need to be created to make up for the ones that LeBron just destroyed.

  33. Does bring up a good point about ESPN, their SJW programming is feeding the beast of Cancel/Outrage culture, and now they are the ones that will be burned financially with canceled games. Those sponsors who wrote 7 figure checks for advertising during the playoffs are going to be asking for their money back. It will be fascinating to see how ESPN responds.

  35. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It’s Super BLM Man, Defender LeBron, boycotting the rest of the BLM-NBA season. It is true he was seen soaring high above the nightskies to inner-city Chicago because he really does care about the black-on-black murders of the innocent. NOT a Chance because he is going to use his free time away from the NBA to promote himself, divisiveness and the Marxist BLM Movement. Black Lives Matter NOTHING to the KING! What a fraud!

    Hey did anyone read Brandon Tatum of the Tatum Report regarding the shooting of Blake? I did and it tells the real truth.

Leave a Reply