Tag: George Zimmerman

James was 27 at the time and had yet to win any of the four championships he went on to earn with the Heat, Cleveland Cavaliers and Los Angeles Lakers. James, who appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated with the headline “The Chosen One” at 17, was drafted with the No. 1 pick out of high school at 18 and had his signature Nike sneakers flying off the shelves by 19, was still figuring out life in the spotlight after his controversial “Decision” made-for-TV special followed by his first season in Miami ending with a disappointing NBA Finals loss to the Dallas Mavericks. “I grew,” James said. “I grew. And as I grew to know who I am, to know what I want do with my life, to know the family that I have, now I understand that my calling is to be able to inspire others and also be able to give voices to people that don’t have voices.”

“It’s never going to stop,” he said. “It’s never going to stop, but that don’t mean we stop. ‘Can’t stop, won’t stop’ is what Diddy says. At the end of the day, we know the turmoil and everything that’s going on. They’re going to look at Black people how they’ve always viewed us: Smile in our face and [act like] it’s fine. “But at the end of the day, we can’t stop. We can’t stop speaking up for things that are unjust. We can’t stop speaking up about things that we feel are wrong — or things that are right. And calling out people that literally are simply just bad people.”

Temple, who has been studying for the LSAT during the league’s hiatus, is the son of Collis Temple, the first Black athlete to play basketball at LSU. Collis Temple received threats while playing for the Tigers in the early 1970s, and the National Guard was called in to protect him. As he got older, Collis Temple shared his experiences with his children. Those stories had a profound effect on Garrett, who has been active in the Black Lives Matter movement for years. The 6-foot-5 guard was in Los Angeles in 2013 when George Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of Trayvon Martin and said he did not recall the acquittal eliciting a notable uproar there. But he said recently he’s seen a change in the movement after George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis. “It made me angry that it was so foreign to so many people, or people just didn’t even pay attention to it,” Temple said. “Fast forward, it seems like people are finally starting to care about unarmed Black men being brutalized by the police and just Black Americans in general being marginalized.”