Tuesday night, prior to his first-round playoff series game against the Portland Trail Blazers, Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James led some of his teammates in wearing mock “Make America Great Again” caps which had the “Great Again” crossed out and replaced by “Arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor.”
James also wore a t-shirt emblazoned with “By Any Means,” while writing on Instagram, “By Any Means‼ Lets Get It #JusticeForBreonnaTaylor.”
Some of the other members of the Lakers squad who donned the mock MAGA hats included Anthony Davis, Dwight Howard, Jared Dudley, Quinn Cook, Rajon Rondo, Danny Green, and JR Smith, as The Daily Mail reported.
After the game, James told reporters, “You know the situation that’s going on in Louisville, Kentucky. An innocent woman being killed, by the name of Breonna Taylor. A woman who had a bright future. Her life was taken away from her. There’s been no arrests, there’s been no justice, not only for her, but for her family … We want to continue to shed light on that situation because it’s just unjust. That’s what it’s about.”
“There has been no justice not only for her, but for her family.”@KingJames on his Game 1 attire for Breonna Taylor. pic.twitter.com/Togu3jQQRH
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) August 19, 2020
Last month, James told reporters at a press conference, “The same energy that we have on the floor is the same energy that we have towards having justice for Breonna Taylor and her family is the energy that we bring to the game. That’s just who we are. We want the cops arrested who committed that crime. As one of the leaders of this league, I want Taylor’s family to know and the state of Kentucky to know … we want justice. And that’s what it’s all about. What’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong. And this is a wrong situation that’s going on … It’s just heartbreaking. You guys don’t understand. Unless you’re a person of color, you guys don’t understand. I understand you might feel for us. But you will never truly understand what it is to be black in America.”
He continued, “A lot of people kind of use this analogy, talking about Black Lives Matter as a movement. It’s not a movement. When you’re black, it’s not a movement. It’s a lifestyle. We sit here and say it’s a movement, and, OK, how long is this movement going to last? ‘Don’t stop the movement.’ No, this is a walk of life. When you wake up and you’re Black, that is what it is. It shouldn’t be a movement. It should be a lifestyle. This is who we are. … I don’t like the word ‘movement’ because, unfortunately, in America and in society, there ain’t been no damn movement for us. There ain’t been no movement.”
“You know what’s going on now. Is that progress? I think we can all say that’s not progress,” he said. “The conversations being had right now and how many people are really listening or just having the conversations of trying to make things happen, that’s progress. We got a long way to go.”
In July 2018, James told CNN that President Trump is “dividing us and what I’ve noticed over the last few months. He’s kinda used sport to kinda divide us, and that’s something that I can’t relate to because I know that sport was the first time I ever was around someone white and I got the opportunity to see them and learn about them and they got an opportunity to learn about me and we became very good friends.”
“Sports has never been something that divides people it’s always been something that brings someone together,” he said. Asked whether he’d sit down with Trump, James answered, “I would never sit across from him. I’d sit across from Barack though.”