In the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Bucks became the first team to boycott a game in protest of police brutality and racial injustice on Wednesday, sparking a greater movement across the sports world. Several NBA, WNBA, MLB and MLS teams also boycotted in response, and athletes are publicly calling for change as their seasons have become a secondary concern.
NBA legend and analyst Robert Horry shared his reaction to Blake’s shooting on Spectrum SportsNet, and opened up on the difficult conversations he’s been forced to have with his children as a Black father.
Many fathers feel just like Robert Horry today 😔
— HOT 97 (@HOT97) August 27, 2020
“I was sitting there and I started crying. And my wife walks in and she’s like ‘are you crying because you’re turning 50 today?’ And I started laughing, like, no. I said ‘did you see the video of this guy getting shot?’
And at first, I saw it and I’m looking at it, I thought ‘well maybe they’re going to tase him, right?’ Because that’s what they do with white people. They tase them. And so I didn’t have the volume up, and [Horry’s son] Christian walks in the room and says ‘no, dad, they shot him.’ I play it again, I’m like ‘wow.’ They shoot this guy seven times in the back.
And then I have this conversation with Christian, and he was like ‘that’s wrong, that’s wrong.’ I said ‘yo, that’s beyond wrong. It’s just flat-out evil.’ And I’m telling him…. and it’s hard to tell your 14-year-old son that I worry about him when he walks out that door. I have a 21-year-old son, I worry about him. Because Black men are an endangered species pretty much. These cops are just killing because they feel like if they don’t have their body cams on, they have a right.’
And I tell my kids all the time, I say ‘dude, I don’t care what’s going on, because at the end of the day, I want you coming home to me. If you have to lay down on the ground and they can kick you, beat you – at least you’re going to go to the hospital, you’re going to come home to me. Whatever they say to you, don’t take it upon yourself to let that rage you have against that cop come out. Because he has the gun. He can end you. And I don’t want him to end you, because if he ends you, that means I’m going to end him.’ And I know that’s wrong for me to say, but I’m so much ‘A Time To Kill’ guy like Samuel L. Jackson, you know, and [feeling like] this is going to happen with me. And I said I don’t want that to happen. I already lost one child. I don’t need to lose another.
And I don’t think people understand, especially white people, how hard it is for Black people to watch that.”
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