Kawhi Leonard named Finals MVP
Ben Golliver: Toronto Raptors forward Kawhi Leonard named 2019 NBA Finals MVP. He joins Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and LeBron James as the only players to win the award with multiple franchises.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Rumors
Rick Bonnell: Interesting point by Mark Jackson on the Kevin Durant injured talk: That Magic Johnson once closing out an NBA Finals at center didn’t diminish an injured Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s historic greatness, yet Durant’s value is questioned now.
That meant that LeBron James did not get a first team All-NBA selection for the first time in 11 years, since he was named to the second team in 2007. James did, however, extend his streak of consecutive All-NBA selections to 15 — tying him with Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the most in NBA history — by earning a third-team nod in his first year with the Los Angeles Lakers. The second team consisted of Damian Lillard and Kyrie Irving at guard, Kevin Durant and Kawhi Leonard at forward and Joel Embiid at center. Beyond James, the third team consisted of Russell Westbrook and Kemba Walker at guard, Blake Griffin at forward and Rudy Gobert at center.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: The time-traveling DeLorean is speeding toward 1950, and when it hits 88 mph, it’s going to suck the whole country back with it. Back to a time when pretty much everyone who wasn’t a straight, white Christian male was considered a second-class citizen whose rights and future depended on the patriarchs’ whims and largesse. It’s hardly surprising that this entitled group would like to return to their rapidly eroding privileged status, which they hope to accomplish through sustained attacks on women, people of color, immigrants, Muslims and the LBGTQ community. By emboldening the right wing through vitriolic rhetoric, the Donald Trump administration has become the UV light in sleazy motel rooms that illuminates these hidden stains on our democracy. Right now the stains include Georgia, Alabama, Missouri and other states passing restrictive abortion legislation that reduces women to baby incubators.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: The time has come for Americans to defend the principles of the Constitution by stomping on the brakes of that DeLorean. For now, one of the best ways to do that is through boycotting the offending states. Boycotts cause hardships to the innocent as well as the guilty. That’s the whole point. Hardships motivate the self-righteous leaders to face the consequences of their political greed. A boycott’s success depends on the commitment of those seeking change to endure suffering. Rosa Parks’ arrest in 1955 kicked off the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama that lasted a year and led to great hardships for whites and blacks. One of the boycott’s leaders, 26-year-old Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., had his home firebombed. The bus company suffered financial setbacks that affected its employees and other businesses. The black boycotters, who were 70 percent of the buses’ ridership, also suffered. For a year, they walked or carpooled until they were triumphant.
