Boston Celtics star shooting guard Jaylen Brown has made it known he would rather have had more of a say in the pro- racial justice slogans the NBA has allowed players to wear on the nameplate area of their jerseys as part of their commitment to racial justice in the restarted 2019-20 season.
The Cal-Berkeley product is one of a number of such players who — while supportive of the concept in a more abstract sense — felt frustrated by the limits the list of approved slogans created.
Brown, who is also a Vice President within the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) that worked with the league to secure the commitment, related at Sunday’s team media availability that he was considering going with no name at all on his jersey to remember those who slip through the cracks when facing systemic racism.
Jaylen Brown delivers powerful message on racial justice, John Lewis https://t.co/KuHTRxjT3i
— The Celtics Wire (@TheCelticsWire) July 20, 2020
“What I thought was clever with that is it potential [is] to play for the people that we don’t get to see every single day, or we don’t hear [their] names,” said Brown.
“We hear Brionna Taylor, we hear Philando Castile, we hear Ahmad Arbaury, Trayvon Martin. We hear all those names that we hear in the media because somebody was lucky enough to have a cell phone. But what about the people who didn’t have cell phone available at the time and experienced police brutality, they experience social stratification in education or not getting help in healthcare?”
And while it might disappoint Brown to learn he will not be allowed to go nameless on his jersey per the Athletic’s Jared Weiss, he will have options to express some of the sentiments he might prefer.
Another player of a similar mind regarding the jersey statements, Houston Rockets guard Russell Westbrook, partnered with the NBPA per The Athletic’s Shams Charania to put out shirts with slogans that reflect a wider array of sentiments and messages than those on the pre-approved list of slogans.
Let me get that strange fruit !💯 https://t.co/8biBEy6RXX
— Jaylen Brown (@FCHWPO) July 20, 2020
Brown retweeted Russell’s announcement of the initiative in Twitter Monday, saying “Let me get that strange fruit [shirt]!”
No reference to durian or some other exotic tropical snack, it is instead a somber reference to the mass lynching of Black bodies suffered by people of color — especially blacks — in U.S. history right up to the present, famously immortalized by Billie Holiday.
“Southern trees bearing strange fruit/ Blood on the leaves and blood at the roots/ Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze/ Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees,” begins the saddest of songs written to remind us why these players have demanded racial justice as a key tenet of the restart.
Russell’s shirts, which feature messages such as “Am I next?”, “Systemic Racism”, “By Any Means”, “No Justice, No Peace” and “I Can’t Breathe” among several others, are by no means inflammatory or at all more contentious than those offered by the NBA and NBPA’s original list.
However, the expanded universe of ideas available to players ought to be at least a start to keeping those all-important conversations and actions in the front of people’s minds as the league begins play again at the end of the month of July.
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