NBA players have followed stringent rules to the letter of the law in order to pass the first checkpoint of getting back on the floor. For them to maximize their goal of battling racism and social injustice, they’ll have to abandon rules they helped create.
The players have an amazing opportunity to press further in this moment of racial reckoning, and should one player — just one — step outside of the carefully drawn lines, the NBA will have a decision on its hands.
Quite frankly, the league’s in an impossible position — but it just made the impossible possible by getting this far, a matrimony in the most impossible of places, the petri dish of Florida.