NBA players decide to resume the playoffs

ESPN

ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reports NBA players are ready to go back to work after striking Wednesday in protest of the police shooting of Jacob Blake. "Thursday's three playoff games will be postponed," reports Wojnarowski. "A resumption of the season could come as soon as Friday, but there is expected to be a return to the play by the weekend according to sources." He adds: "Players held a meeting at 11 a.m. ET. There will be another meeting Thursday with two players from each team talking to NBA owners...Thursday's second meeting is to formulate action plans to address racial injustice issues as well as ironing out details of restarting the playoffs, according to a source."

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• Inside Major League Baseball mixed response to the Jacob Blake shooting: The San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers considered standing up for justice in a meaningful way, reports ESPN's Jeff Passan. "Amid the discussions, sources familiar with the conversations told ESPN, they considered something a number of players thought would be particularly powerful: the teams walking onto the field, like they were about to stage a game, only to turn around and leave before the first pitch, together, unified," reports Passan. "In a sport that for so long has treated racial issues as a third rail, this would be an indelible image: a ball on the mound, players unwilling to use it because police shot a Black man in Wisconsin. Ultimately, it would not happen. Too many players, sources said, were uncomfortable with an on-the-fly protest of that level -- with attaching symbolism to action. On this day, when the basketball world shut down and offered no clear path to a restart, the postponement of the game between the Dodgers and Giants would have to be enough. Getting baseball even to that point took years of work."
• NBA TV had an extraordinary response to an unprecedented situation on Wednesday: The NBA-owned channel "chose to amplify the Black voices that help make up its coverage, and it was remarkable," says Liam McKeone. "First was Sam Mitchell, studio host for NBA TV. He spoke for a long time about his experiences as a Black man in America and what this means to the players protesting as a former player himself."
• Some NFL teams have scrapped their practices to protest the Jacob Blake shooting
• The NBA's wildcat playoff strike demonstrates there's more to politics than voting