NHL matches postponed, NFL teams cancel training, Donald Trump brands NBA ‘a political organisation’
Players from two Major League Baseball teams walked off the field as protests against racial injustice in the United States continued on Thursday.
Three baseball games were postponed on Wednesday, followed by a further seven being called off on Thursday.
These included the New York Mets-Miami Marlins fixture in New York, in which players symbolically took the field in silence before filing off, leaving a Black Lives Matter T-shirt on home plate.
A series of major sporting events in the United States were called off on Wednesday after athletes spoke out in the aftermath of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin.
The NHL and the competition’s players’ association have announced that play-off fixtures scheduled for Thursday and Friday will be postponed and nine NFL teams cancelled training on Thursday, two weeks before the season begins on September 10.
Thursday’s basketball matches between the Utah Jazz and the Denver Nuggets, the Toronto Raptors and the Boston Celtics, and the LA Clippers and the Dallas Mavericks have since followed suit, while three WNBA fixtures have also been postponed.
The NBA hopes for action to resume on either Friday or Saturday as it held a video meeting late on Thursday, attended by representatives from the 13 teams remaining in the end-of-season play-offs being staged in Florida.
NBA executive vice-president Mike Bass said in a statement: “NBA play-off games for today will not be played as scheduled. We are hopeful to resume games either Friday or Saturday.”
US president Donald Trump said of the NBA: “They’ve become like a political organisation and that’s not a good thing. I don’t think that’s a good thing for sports or for the country.
Meanwhile, former world number one tennis player Naomi Osaka appears to have reversed her decision to withdraw from the Western & Southern Open in New York.
The 22-year-old initially dropped out of her semi-final against Elise Mertens, saying “before I am an athlete, I am a black woman”. But the WTA has confirmed the two-time grand slam champion will return to the tournament – which was paused on Thursday – and she has been included in Friday’s order of play.
The PGA Tour tournament in Chicago – less than 100 miles from Kenosha – began as scheduled. American golfer Cameron Champ – who has a black father and white mother – wore one black and one white shoe. On the white shoe he had written “Jacob Blake BLM”.
The NFL has issued a statement supporting the decision of several of their clubs to cancel practice as a protest against the shooting of Jacob Blake.
The statement said: “The NFL community is united more than ever to support one another in these challenging times. We share anger and frustration, most recently as a result of the shooting of Jacob Blake.
“While our passions continue to run high, we are proud that our players and clubs, League and Union, are taking time to have the difficult conversations about these issues that affect the Black community and other communities of colour in America. We are especially encouraged that these conversations are about how we can come together to make the necessary and long overdue changes in our country. We will continue to not only use our collective platform to call out racism and injustice whenever and wherever it occurs in our country, but also fight together to eradicate it.”
Major League Soccer will investigate allegations made in a report that Real Salt Lake owner Dell Loy Hansen used racist language. Hansen has come under fire after criticising players for refusing to take the field in protest against racial injustice following the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha.
“We are deeply concerned about the allegations made in a report published this evening concerning language used by, and the conduct of, Real Salt Lake owner Dell Loy Hansen,” MLS said in a statement. Major League Soccer has zero tolerance for this type of language or conduct and will immediately commence an investigation.”
In a radio interview, Hansen said: “It’s like someone stabbed you and then you’re trying to figure out a way to pull the knife out and move forward. The disrespect was profound to me personally.
“It’s taken a lot of wind out of my sails, what effort I want to put into recruiting players and building a great team.”
SkySports
