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On May 25, 2020, Floyd died in Minneapolis after police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Floyd was arrested after allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill to purchase cigarettes at a local store. A bystander’s video of Floyd’s arrest went viral, leading to worldwide outrage and protests against police brutality and systemic racism. “It was crazy. I saw a whole bunch of riots. Buildings burned. Stores broken into. I would hope it was because of what they felt,” Reid said.
The Timberwolves were on the road playing against the Miami Heat at the time. After Floyd’s murder, the Timberwolves organization reached out to his family, hosted events, and worked to promote diversity and inclusion within the organization. On Oct. 6, 2020, Timberwolves players, coaches and other staff members walked toward the Floyd memorial with a long list of names of those slain by police brutality. “The situation was messed up,” Reid said. “Obviously, I wanted to go out and support. I felt the anger the family felt. I felt depression. It was [important] for me to be out there trying to give my love and my condolences.”
“I’ve met the Floyd family maybe once or twice,” Reid said. “I would say at that time it wasn’t a good moment, but it was a good interaction. So, that was good. They got my love.”
A sports radio host who tweeted “All lives matter… every single one” shortly after the May 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis has lost a federal lawsuit against the company that fired him. Grant Napear, who handled TV play-by-play for the NBA’s Sacramento Kings and had his own daily radio show on sports talk KHTK Sacramento (1140), had sued Bonneville International, the station’s owner. But on Monday, the judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge Dale Drozd, granted summary judgment for the defendant, saying that Bonneville’s decision to fire Napear was protected by the First Amendment.
KTHK, known as the “Home of the Kings,” fired Napear because his comment, the judge determined, was likely to discredit the station’s reputation with the NBA team, in addition to the public. “The tweet, coming as it did less than a week after the death of George Floyd, predictably ignited a firestorm of negative comments and reactions from the public, as well as past and present NBA players,” Bonneville said in its motion to dismiss Napear's lawsuit. Napear resigned from his TV job with the Kings shortly before KTHK fired him.
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Stephen Jackson: When the protests started, Minnesota went crazy. They burned police stations. The city rolled. It felt like something out of a movie. During all this, I was getting death threats, people hacking my phone, my DMs full of hate. I lost 20 pounds. I wasn’t eating or sleeping. I was doing four or five interviews a day. But I stood tall. I had no blueprint, but I knew I had to stand up for George and for justice. This was the biggest civil rights movement in history—18 countries and 50 states protested at the same time. It had never been done before. Did we get change? Some. Is it enough? No. But I’m proud of what I did. I helped his family, his daughter, and I stood for something bigger than myself."
He was always involved in the community, whether it was working with LGBTQ people, working to restore voting rights to formerly incarcerated people, promoting his annual coat drive, or trying to help reform the criminal justice system in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. Towns’ use of his platform as an NBA All-Star and his involvement in charitable work wasn’t just for show. There was always a personal touch to it, and he devoted not just his financial resources but also his time and energy. Those are the reasons why the NBA chose to award him with the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Trophy as its Social Justice Champion for the 2023-24 season. It’s also why he left a legacy in Minnesota that goes well beyond what he did on the court. That night in Houston, I told him the Wolves had been in Portland once on Trail Blazers pride night when star guard Damian Lillard took the microphone before the game and welcomed the crowd. He said how happy he was that everyone was there that night and felt welcome at the game.
For Brown, who drove 15 hours from Boston to Atlanta to attend a protest after the murder of George Floyd, it’s another way to work toward a more just society. “The idea of America is that some people are going to win, some people are going to lose,” he says. “The people that are choreographed to lose are the ones who I'm betting on to win. These students are those types of kids who have the ambition and will to create and make the world a better place. We try to bridge them and get them all the opportunities that they possibly can.”
On July 16, U.S. District Judge Dale Drozd will hold a summary judgment hearing in a Sacramento, Calif., courtroom for Napear v. Bonneville International. If Drozd doesn’t grant summary judgment, the case, barring a settlement, will advance to a jury trial on Nov. 13. Six days after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, former Sacramento Kings play-by-play announcer Grant Napear tweeted “ALL LIVES MATTER…EVERY SINGLE ONE!!!” Napear’s tweet was in reply to former Kings center DeMarcus Cousins goading him to offer a “take” on Black Lives Matter.
KHTK-AM’s owner, Bonneville International, fired Napear with cause. The company felt Napear’s tweet was insensitive and offensive. Napear challenged the firing on several grounds. He stressed that, as a Christian and member of the Unitarian Church, “all lives matter” expresses his faith. Napear also invoked California Labor Code sections 1101 and 1102. This statute prohibits employers from interfering with an employee’s engagement in politics or political activities. It also makes it illegal for an employer to fire an employee based on a political motive. The case has been in litigation since 2021.
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Royce White announced that he will be running for U.S. Senate in 2024, according to a video posted to his Twitter account. This came within days of a debut of a new conspiracy theory: That “advanced weapons” were related to the horrific fires in Hawaii. In 2022, White, the former first-round NBA draft pick and George Floyd protest leader, ran for Congress as a protege of Steve Bannon in Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District. He finished with 37 percent of the vote in the Republican primary,
Metta Sandiford-Artest on Phil Jackson's comments: 'I think people don't really understand the trauma'
Sandiford-Artest believes that 2020 was traumatic and there was much confusion including for the NBA players who participated in the NBA bubble. “Keep in mind, I’m NOT a politician. I’m from Queensbridge but I think people don’t really understand the trauma,” he said while reflecting on all that transpired in 2020 during the height of the coronavirus pandemic and the NBA’s restart in the bubble. “This is locker room talk, barber shop talk, grocery store talk, especially with George Floyd with Black Lives Matter, right? And so from that perspective everybody’s so helpless. I did even though I’m not going to take my political stance but I did feel helpless. I felt helpless and confused. I definitely wanted to do something about it but I felt like our people didn’t have a voice. So people and the athletes do it and have their views but when people say things, people have to be a little more direct — is it the players or is it the executives? Who are you targeting because once again, the players are going to have to say something first. I’m a former player. I say that because there has to be balance.”
Mike Finger: Popovich cited Kent State, the photo of the napalmed Vietnamese girl, Emmett Till's coffin and the George Floyd video as ways America finally took notice after seeing horrors with their own eyes. "What will it take? Do we have to show it? Do we have to show that classroom?"
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