Name: Celtics Notebook: NBA players drive home the importance of voting
Brand: bostonherald.com
SKU: bostonherald-com-27
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

Celtics Notebook: NBA players drive home the importance of voting

preview

By | | Boston HeraldPart of the NBPA’s return-to-play agreement with owners is a promise that the latter group will open arenas as polling places in November for the 2020 general election.For many of these players, the importance of voting is also a relatively new crusade.“To be honest, I didn’t know. I just didn’t know,” Kemba Walker said Monday of how he viewed the right to vote as a young adult.“You don’t really know how important it is, especially at that age,” said the Bronx native. “Where I’m from, nobody talks about voting when I’m growing up. Nobody in school, they’re not telling us to go out and vote. So I can see why a lot of young kids haven’t ever voted in their lives, because that’s not something that you speak about or hear about.“So, I just commend my peers (who are urging people to vote). These guys are special, special people — CP3 (Chris Paul), (Andre) Iguodala, my brother Jaylen Brown, just to name a few. These guys are using their platform to a whole other level and trying to help everyone around the world to just get out there and vote. It’s a very important message, and as a league, we’re trying our best to pass that message along.”Though the importance of voting didn’t occur to the 30-year-old until later in life, his moment of epiphany was clear.“Obama. Obama, no question,” said Walker. “That’s it. I felt like he was the guy for the job. Obviously he’s an African American guy. I wanted to see him in office. That’s it. That’s what got me in there.”Feeling goodThough he briefly appeared to aggravate his balky left knee during a scramble with Toronto’s Pascal Siakam during the first half of the Celtics’ Game 1 win on Sunday, the point guard said he was fine following Monday’s practice.“Felt good, felt good actually,” he said. “Tweaked it a little bit, but it’s the nature of the game. It happens. For the moment, it bothered me a little bit, but my adrenaline was pumping, a little sore last night but I got some treatment. Doing everything I can to stay on top of it. I felt really good today actually. Hopefully I can continue to feel this way.”Fallen heroesWalker was impacted personally by the deaths of two major figures in the sport over the last four days — the late Georgetown coach John Thompson and Clifford Robinson, the former UConn star who went on to a long NBA career.“It’s been a really tough year. Two special people in the game of basketball,” said Walker. “Two guys that you have to appreciate. John Thompson, he’s a guy you have to appreciate, especially for me and other young, Black African American guys. He’s one of the guys who paved the way for so many of us.“Cliff, again for me, it’s a little personal, because we went to the same university,” he said of his fellow UConn alumnus. “I definitely appreciate him for paving the way for a guy like me to be able to go to UConn and play at a high level. He’s one of the guys who made that program for what it is. So rest in peace to those guys, man. It’s tough. It’s always tough to see guys go, especially when they’re so young. Special, special people.”Stevens stresses DBrad Stevens, despite the margin of Sunday’s Game 1 win over Toronto, lamented his team’s transition defense. And never mind that the official box score only listed the Raptors with seven fast break points.That’s not what Stevens saw when he reviewed the video Monday.“I’d say that’s a tough day for the person keeping the box score,” said the Celtics coach. “It was a lot more than seven. We had them down for almost 30 transition points, so we have to do a lot better than we did (Sunday).“(Toronto does) a great job of not only getting those runout points but then getting fouled in transition. The hesitation to drives, the head-down drives, a couple times where we lost shooters, a couple times where we didn’t match the big trailing the play. And you just go down through the list. So that’s how they do a great job scoring. I actually thought our effort off of our turnovers and some of our not great offensive possessions was really good. I thought we played really hard in that way, we had a real conscious effort to get back. But we still have to do that on every occasion against this team. They’re very difficult to play against in transition.”We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. We reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.Sign up for email newslettersFollow UsMost PopularClose

By | | Boston HeraldPart of the NBPA’s return-to-play agreement with owners is a promise that the latter group will open arenas as polling places in November for the 2020 general election.For many of these players, the importance of voting is also a relatively new crusade.“To be honest, I didn’t know. I just didn’t know,” Kemba Walker said Monday of how he viewed the right to vote as a young adult.“You don’t really know how important it is, especially at that age,” said the Bronx native. “Where I’m from, nobody talks about voting when I’m growing up. Nobody in school, they’re not telling us...

Celtics Notebook: NBA players drive home the importance of voting

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS