Last Updated on July 31, 2020
The NBA has re-opened its season with an audience full of fake crowds, and a big “Black Lives Matter” logo on the floor of the court.
The NBA shut down in March, along with rest of the sporting leagues, due to fears of the coronavirus spreading in the large crowds in the audiences.
It started up again on Thursday evening, although with a rather different flavour to its usual games. Instead of an audience in the stands, the background was filled with fans calling in over video, giving the game a rather odd atmosphere.
A big “Black Lives Matter” slogan was also painted on the court, in an effort to show the NBA’s solidarity with the BLM movement, despite their radical aims.
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The NBA is officially back! pic.twitter.com/4FYYSQB5Jm
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) July 30, 2020
The NBA’s plan to put the Black Lives Matter logo on the courts was revealed last month, and instantly faced criticism from Marcellus Wiley, co-host of Fox Sports 1’s Speak for Yourself, who said the plan was absolutely not a “good idea”:
There’s a problem with – when you start to go down this road of “freedom of expression,” “freedom of speech,” and how much social space is allowed for those who don’t support in that same place. And that’s where I wonder where this is going to go in terms of identity politics. We know what identity politics does; it divides and it polarized. No matter how you want to look at it, that’s just the effect of it, no matter how great the intentions are. And we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
“I understand. I respect your space. I respect what you’re protesting for,” Wiley said, after further criticising the Black Lives Matter movement as a whole. “But will you respect others who don’t support that same protest?”
.@MarcellusWiley breaks down why the NBA’s plan to paint ‘Black Lives Matter’ on courts is a bad idea. pic.twitter.com/EoCJNf7ho1
— Speak (@SpeakOnFS1) June 30, 2020
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