The NBA relaunched its coronavirus-hit season on Thursday, with players taking a knee during the US national anthem in a show of support fo...
The NBA relaunched its coronavirus-hit season on Thursday, with players taking a knee during the US national anthem in a show of support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
Four months after the league shut down in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the NBA is restarting its season with 22 teams based inside a secure “bubble” at Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
The unprecedented NBA experiment began on Thursday with the Utah Jazz defeating the New Orleans Pelicans 106-104 in an empty arena at the resort’s ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex.
The first and last points of the game were scored by Utah’s Rudy Gobert – the Frenchman whose COVID-19 case triggered the NBA’s shutdown in March.
The Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers were due to play later Thursday in the second game of the day.
Ahead of the opening tip-off, players from the Jazz and Pelicans – wearing t-shirts emblazoned with “Black Lives Matter” – kneeled in unison as the “Star-Spangled Banner” played.
The demonstration followed weeks of soul-searching about racism and police brutality in the United States following the death of unarmed black man George Floyd during his arrest by police on May 25 in Minneapolis.
Many NBA players joined protests against the killing which swept across all...
