December 8, 2014, players from the Brooklyn Nets and Cleveland Cavaliers wore shirts with “I can’t breathe” on them during pregame warm ups. Even star players such as Kyrie Irving, LeBron James, and other significant players participated in this special event. These shirts were worn in honor of George Floyds horrific passing caused by a police officer who was kneeling on his neck and stated “I can’t breathe” multiple times before passing out. These shirts were worn to make a statement and make people understand what African Americans go through as a society, as well as making it a notion to Floyds family.
This event affected sports by making other players feel comfortable enough from different sports, and teams to speak out about what’s going on with police brutality within the black community. James had also spoken upon the deaths of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Tamir Rice in Cleveland a couple weeks before this event. Derrick Rose had started this movement a couple days before, which allowed other NBA players to follow in his footsteps of speaking out against these repetitive incidents of police brutality to African Americans. It affected society by showing people that they need to speak up against what was going on within the black community and the police brutality. This allowed people to see that these events are spoken upon bigger platforms to raise more awareness about it.
Outside media channels saw this event as an opportunity to raise awareness on its platform by creating blogs with multiple athletes’ outlook on the incident that happened with Goerge Floyd. They also mention on multiple platforms how the event occurred by an NBA player reaching out to James to send him a shirt to wear. The media’s narrative was positive towards this because it supported the cause in a positive way. People in the media appreciated this act and praised the players who participated for shining light on the incident.
