Sixers eyeing bigger message than jersey phrases
As the NBA prepares to restart its season, a few Sixers will be using their jerseys as a way to elevate messages surrounding the fight against social injustice and racial inequality.
The league is allowing players to replace the name on the back of their jerseys with an approved phrase. The NBA and NBPA collaborated on a list of 29 phrases to choose from.
The Sixers have just six players participating:
Alec Burks – Enough
Furkan Korkmaz – Equality
Raul Neto – Equality
Kyle O’Quinn – Hear Us
Josh Richardson – Say Their Names
Matisse Thybulle – Vote
The lack of Sixers partaking shouldn’t come as much of a surprise given how vocal a couple of their players were on the subject.
“They gave us some names and phrases to put on the back of jerseys,” Mike Scott said before the team departed for Disney World. “That was terrible. It was a bad list, bad choice. They didn’t give players a chance to voice their opinion on it. They just gave us a list to pick from. That was bad. That’s terrible. Just voice your opinion, how you feel.”
Scott and Tobias Harris have used their time with the media to call out Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron to arrest officers Myles Cosgrove, Brett Hankison and Jon Mattingly in the wake of the death of Breonna Taylor.
The Sixers have hinted at a bigger form of team demonstration ahead of their first seeding game against the Pacers Saturday night.
“We’re kind of leaning on Tobias right now,” Glenn Robinson III said last week. “We’re going to come together as a team, kind of figure out where to go forward and what we’re going to do for the city of Philadelphia to come together with everything that’s going on right now.
“We want to decide as a team – why are we here, what are we playing for besides a championship? We’re also playing for our community and the things that are happening in the world. I think it’ll be pretty impactful, a pretty big statement.”
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