Dwight Howard believes basketball is a secondary thought during this time, as he said recently with an official statement.
The Los Angeles Lakers center claimed that the NBA should not return during this time amid protests that taking place all over the United States against racial injustice.
On the other hand, Howard’s agent Charlie Briscoe said his client was not talking about not playing at all to Dave McMenamin of ESPN.
“The statement was about social injustice and racism,” Briscoe said. “Yet everybody is still talking about whether basketball should be played. He isn’t saying that basketball shouldn’t be. He’s just saying that you should not be taking attention away from what’s going on in the country to talk about basketball. Basketball is just a sport, at the end of the day. But what’s going on with people dying in the streets, that’s something real. That statement, it had nothing to do with sports. It had everything to do with racism and social injustice,” Briscoe said, per NBC Sports.
While the meaning between what Howard said and what his agent claims, it seems far off opposite, it should really prove the difference in opinions even among players.
Among other things, Howard claimed that “Basketball, or entertainment period, isn’t needed at this moment, and will only be a distraction,” while he concluded his statement with the phrase “no basketball till we get things resolved”.
Although players have the right not to go in Orlando, if they don’t want to, many of them are taking into consideration the ‘financial fallout’ of not playing.
