Prison reform went mainstream after President Trump signed the First Step Act into law in December 2018.
And it’s not just the White House that’s gotten involved in criminal justice reform — celebrities like Kim Kardashian West have gotten involved as well. And now, the NBA is taking on the issue.
The Milwaukee Bucks and the Sacramento Kings recently hosted their second annual Team Up for Change summit, aimed at addressing social injustice across the country. Executives from both teams spoke about why it’s become such an important issue, particularly to their communities.
“Look, I think you own a team, you have a responsibility and a commitment to the community,” said Milwaukee Bucks Co-Owner Marc Lasry. “And that community is everybody. For us, what we try to do is continue to foster that relationship, try to at least have everybody involved, and try to use the team and who we are to sponsor them. It’s hard but that’s the responsibility we all have.”
Alex Lasry, Marc Lasry, Paul E. Jacobs, and Chad Hewitte speak at the Team Up for Change panel. (Photo: Adriana Belmonte/Yahoo Finance)
‘This was the place where everybody came talking’
Paul E. Jacobs, co-owner and vice chairman of the Sacramento Kings, explained that criminal justice reform hit close to home for the Kings community.
“This issue came to the Kings in a certain way because after the incident in Sacramento, the people came to the front of the arena to protest,” he said.
Back in March 2018, 23-year-old Stephon Clark, an unarmed black man, was shot and killed by police in his grandmother’s backyard in Sacramento, Calif.
Police had been responding to a call about an individual breaking car windows, encountered Clark, and chased him to his grandmother’s property. It was believed that Clark was carrying a weapon but this, in fact, turned out to be a cell phone. Following the shooting, people took to the streets to protest the use of force involved, which led to a delay in the start of a Kings game because of where its arena is located.
“We didn’t realize that it was going to be the level that it went to, and that this was the place where everybody came talking,” Jacobs said. “A couple games were shut down in the sense that fans couldn’t come in the doors. And our main owner, Vivek [Ranadive], got up and really set the stage for the Kings engagement with this issue, and gave a great speech about how we’re going to be engaged, how we wanted to do our part to make things better, and bring the community together.”
Demonstrators protesting the shooting death of Stephon Clark by Sacramento Police officers on Tuesday, March 27, 2018, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP: Rich Pedroncelli)
In the Milwaukee community, Bucks shooting guard Sterling Brown had a confrontation with police that later led to a civil rights complaint. In January 2018, Brown alleged that he was racially profiled in a Walgreens parking lot after officers used a stun gun on him “because he didn’t immediately remove his hands from his pockets, as ordered, while waiting for a parking citation,” according to ESPN.
Body camera footage later showed an officer stepping on his ankle and others mocking him. A federal civil rights lawsuit over the incident is heading to trial. Throughout the process, the Milwaukee Bucks organization has remained supportive of Brown.
Between Clark’s shooting and Brown’s encounter with police, this gave the Kings and the Bucks the inspiration to team up to host the first Team Up for Change summit in February 2019.
“Part of it came about because the community came together,” Jacobs said. “Another part is my son, Sam, really took this to heart. He’s 24 now. He had read the book The New Jim Crow when he was in high school and if you haven’t read the book yet, you should. It’s a book about mass incarceration and how a lot of folks seen today have resonance from what happened, and some very dark times in the United States post-Civil War era.”
He continued: “He realized as he was reading that, ‘I don’t know anybody who’s been impacted by going through the system.’ Now, he grew up in [La Jolla, California], which you can understand is a pretty homogeneous sort of place, but he wanted to do something about it… When he heard about Stephon Clark in the car, he was in his grandmother’s backyard when he got shot. And he said, ‘that’s just unjust.’”
Milwaukee Bucks' Sterling Brown warms up before the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Orlando Magic, in Milwaukee. (Photo: AP Photo/Aaron Gash, File)
‘An opportunity to humanize people who are often forgotten in society’
The Bucks and the Kings hosted a series of basketball games inside prisons in their respective states back in December 2019 as a way to draw attention to the U.S. prison system.
According to the Sentencing Project, Blacks make up 38% of the prison population, while 21% are Hispanic and 35% are White. And “in twelve states, more than half of the prison population is African American.” Overall, the U.S. has the highest number of incarcerated individuals, with over 1.3 million people imprisoned across the country.
“That was super important for us, but it’s also just important to bring up this point that there is mass incarceration,” Jacobs said. “It’s very dominantly affecting black and brown people, and that’s just not right. And having that pointed out over and over again with a very broad spotlight, that’s important and that’s one of the ways this issue’s going to get resolved, just by people understanding.”
The game is one part of a larger campaign that the NBA is involved in, along with film screenings and “facilitated conversation[s] with incarcerated people” and those who were formerly incarcerated.
“It’s really an opportunity to shine a bright spotlight on what’s happening,” Jacobs said. “And it’s also an opportunity to humanize people who are often forgotten in society, who are put away, and we don’t think about how they’ve been treated, and how they stay connected to society. For sure, the fact that NBA players are such icons, people look up to them as role models, the fact they’re there show that they care means a tremendous amount for people who have been put away for a long time.”
In this Thursday, Dec. 12, 2019 photo, Sacramento Kings coach Luke Walton plays basketball with a team of inmates as the Kings and the Represent Justice Campaign host a game at Folsom State Prison in Folsom, Calif. (Paul Kitagaki Jr./The Sacramento Bee via AP, Pool)
Lasry agreed that this sheds a spotlight, and by doing so, “you’re making people more aware of things and you’re changing things around.”
“Everyone wants change to happen overnight,” he told Yahoo Finance. “I don’t know if that’ll occur, but it’ll definitely happen. It’s just how quickly can we bring that about.”
Part of the Team Up for Change summit features a full-day event with the city’s youth. This year, in Milwaukee, high school students were able to talk about the challenges facing them when it comes to systemic racism, criminal justice reform, and their relationship with local police.
“There’s no scarcity of redemption and hope,” Jacobs said. “We could give out as much of that as we want to. [There’s] no price tag on trying to show another person, even folks who have done things that may not be good for themselves, folks that we care about. Many of these folks, the vast majority of them are men, black and brown, who will be coming in. And we want them to come back better than they did, being productive, do things that will help move the community forward, and to feel like they will not wear a scarlet letter based on some action they’ve taken for the rest of their lives.”
‘A real issue in society’
Another motivation behind these events is to prevent recidivism — the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, 49.3% of offenders released from federal prison or placed on probation in 2005 were arrested within eight years. By having community outreach and allowing prisoners to interact with players, the NBA is hoping to change public opinion towards convicted felons.
Students play basketball surrounded by barbed wire at the Fischer School in Orange County Juvenile Hall in Orange, CA on August 8, 2013. (Photo: Paul Bersebach/Digital First Media/Orange County Register via Getty Images)
“It’s the best league because we have the best fanbase,” Jacobs said. “The players — they are icons in their communities and worldwide, so they have this incredible power to change public opinion. All of these things come together to make the NBA a really strong force for good.”
Although the Bucks and the Kings have received praise for their work on this issue, Jacobs said he “would rather it not be about us” and more about the message they’re trying to convey.
“If we can get people to understand this is a real issue in society — that mass incarceration does exist — and that we should not forget about people who are in jail, some of whom who are in there for the wrong reason, and if we can get that point across, we can also [then] create economic opportunity that avoids people going to jail and gives them the opportunity to get a great job and build on whatever their vision for the future is,” he said.
Adriana is an associate editor for Yahoo Finance. She can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @adrianambells.
