Protesting is as American as apple pie. Many progressive strides in our society started with people sitting in restaurants or joining campus walks.
The full NBA, plus individual players and teams in other sports, continued their protests against social injustice Wednesday night by refusing to play after a Black man, Jacob Blake, was shot seven times in the back by police in Wisconsin on Sunday.
NBA players then considered taking another step in their protest. They debated canceling the season. They threatened to walk out on their jobs.
You can understand the anger of Black players at this time and support the Black Lives Matter protest while wondering how stopping the season would have been the best option.
They agreed by Thursday, too. The season goes on and, with it, their message of social injustice, which has sometimes made conservatives complain athletes should just "shut up and dribble."
If this decision came down to how to protest most effectively, taking your ball and going home always looked the lesser option. When the initial furor of canceling the season died down _ say, in a week or two _ would people still be listening to the players?
Shutting up and not playing wasn't much of a strategy.
Their message can be delivered better and stronger nightly as games continue. The players have a rare platform. They have strong voices with strong thoughts. Every game is on television. Every athlete has an outlet right now that only few of the biggest stars would have if the season ends.
"Having two boys of my own and me being an African American in America and to see what continues to happen with police brutality toward my kind ... it's very troubling," LeBron James said.
"All you hear is Donald Trump, and all of them talk about fear _ we're the ones getting killed," Clippers coach Doc Rivers said. "We're the ones getting shot. It's amazing we keep loving this country, and this country doesn't love us back."
You can hear the pain and frustration in those voices. You can hear the deep demand for things to change. Canceling the season would have diminished those voices and that anger.
If you're not listening to them by now, you should be. And, by listening, that doesn't mean hearing the distorted echo of their message filtered through others. That's what happened to Colin Kaepernick. He protested against social injustice and his message was hijacked into a statement about kneeling during the national anthem.
Listen to the pain. Listen to the life stories. Listen and see if we can emerge out of this better.
I'd like to think the NBA players decided to keep playing in good part to have this stage to deliver their message. But it's probably more than that. There's hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, too, and future corporate considerations.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has been supportive of the players in way other sports haven't. Then again, the players drive this sport more than the commissioner. Silver has made his calls, too. The national anthem, for instance, wasn't shown on television with the accompanying kneeling after the opening games.
Some NFL teams canceled practices on Thursday in support of the protest against social injustice. Tennis star Naomi Osaka, who is in a different spot as an individual player, declined to play in a semifinal of the Western & Southern Open.
The question becomes this: Would it be more productive for Osaka to not play or play and deliver her message? That's an individual decision, and she made hers.
Everyone understands there are more important things happening than watching sports, as she said. Just as you don't need a destructive hurricane to put sports into perspective, you don't need another shooting of another Black man.
The best for athletes isn't a binary decision. It's not either A or B. It's not either play or not play. It's, if you do play, as the NBA players decided, how to better get a message across?
The NBA players made a statement, a smart one, in deciding to keep playing after a couple nights of canceling games. The issue how is how they add to their protest.
