A Momentous First Night Back for the N.B.A.

[Read: How the Jazz beat the Pelicans, and how the Lakers beat the Clippers]

For more than four minutes before the Jazz and the Pelicans tipped off, both teams’ players, coaches and staff members, along with the referees, congregated side by side, stretching from baseline to baseline. They gathered near the BLACK LIVES MATTER lettering affixed to the floor near the scorer’s table, then knelt in unison during a playing of the national anthem recorded by the musician Jon Batiste.

The Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Clippers, Staples Center co-tenants and rivals, came together to do the same before their game, during a recorded rendition of the anthem by the Compton Kidz Club from the Los Angeles area. Later, after LeBron James had helped the Lakers clinch a 103-101 victory with winning plays at both ends in the final 12.8 seconds, he told TNT in a postgame interview: “I hope our fans are proud of us.”

James wasn’t talking about the basketball. Nor was he referring to the league’s comeback after a lengthy coronavirus-imposed absence, or the hopeful start to the N.B.A.’s efforts to erect a so-called bubble on the Disney campus (at a cost of at least $180 million) with made-for-television arena settings and daily coronavirus testing. Like many players involved in Thursday’s doubleheader, James was moved most by the unity displayed in the anthem protests.

“I hope we made Kap proud,” James said, referring to the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who began kneeling during the anthem in the 2016 N.F.L. season to protest racial injustice. No team has signed him since.

“I hope we continue making Kap proud every single day,” James said.

Said the Pelicans’ JJ Redick: “The ‘stick to sports’ crowd, ‘keep politics out of sports,’ all those things, they’re meaningless now. You can’t. Politics and sports coexist now, and the league has recognized that.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/sports/basketball/nba-opening-night.html