Kyrie Irving asks players to boycott the return of the NBA season

Following the NBA's decision to end the season ended in March at Disneyworld, Kyrie Irving conducted a conference call with over 80 colleagues from the NBA and WNBA expressing her opposition to the restart of the 2019-20 regular season in Orlando.

The main motivation on which Irving's position is based is that the resumption of the matches would divert attention from the series of protests "Black Lives Matter" which are still ongoing in various cities of America and in which they recently participated also prominent players like Russell Westbrook and DeMar DeRozan.

"I do not support the idea of ​​going to play in Orlando. I am firmly against systematic racism and this thing [of the recovery right now] smells a little. Whether we admit it or not, we are targeted as black men every day that we wake up'' said the Nets guard, concluding with "I am willing to give up everything so that this social reform will lead to something".

According to The Atheltic, Carmelo Anthony, Joel Embiid, Chris Paul, Kevin Durant, Avery Bradley, Donovan Mitchell and Dwight Howard, among those present at the conference call on Zoom, shared a long statement in support of Irving, underlining that basketball or any form of entertainment "is not needed right now and will only be a distraction. We have resources at hand that most of our community does not have and the slightest distraction can lead to a cascading effect that may never stop, especially with the weather now. Obviously I would like to win my first NBA championship, but seeing a united people would be an even bigger victory, too good to miss. What better time than now to focus on our families? basketball until we fix things".

Despite the powerful statement, Howard's agent Charles Briscoe also raised the dose on ESPN, declaring that the player has not made a definitive decision as to whether or not to go to Orlando: "The statement concerned social injustice and racism Yet everyone is still talking about whether to play basketball. He's not saying basketball shouldn't be there, he's just saying you shouldn't take your attention away from what's going on to talk about basketball. Basketball is just a sport, but what happens with people who die on the street is something real''.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Clippers playmaker Patrick Beverley also intervened in the discussion, who basically closed the matter by declaring that if LeBron James decides to want to return to play, then everyone will have to do it.