Many years from now, maybe when we’re watching the LeBron James version of “The Last Dance,” this will all seem like one smooth unbroken narrative: Colin Kaepernick kneels to protest police brutality, and soon afterward the Milwaukee Bucks walk out on a playoff game.
But living in the moment, we know that’s not the case. We know there were four long years between Kaepernick’s statement and the Bucks’ decisive action, four years in which so little changed that Milwaukee players felt they had no choice but to leap beyond rhetoric and symbolic gestures.