Who will wear social justice messages on jerseys?
Because a global pandemic isn’t enough to contend with, 2020 also shoved the truism of racial inequality and police brutality back in our field of vision with the murder of George Floyd. It is a great thing and hopefully, a return to sports doesn’t take the focus off of that.
The NBA has already painted Black Lives Matter on the gym floors and on top of that players will be allowed to replace the name on the back of their jerseys with a (league-approved) social justice message.
Mikal Bridges has already committed to using “Respect Us” on the back of his jersey, but we haven’t heard much from other players on if/how they plan on taking advantage of this opportunity.
Then again, I’m not sure teams will even wear their game-day uniforms for these scrimmages. There is a chance they just wear their practice jerseys like they do in Summer League, at which point we’ll be forced to wait another week to find out the answer to this question.
I’ll have so many other questions once the game starts, but for now, I’m just pumped for basketball.