NBC Sports’ Mike Tirico on NBA, MLB, and WNBA Strikes Over Jacob Blake Shooting: ‘Largest, Most Widespread Day of Sports Activism’ in US History

NBC Sports analyst Mike Tirico offered some perspective on the rolling protest strikes that had effectively shut down the NBA playoffs as well as all WNBA and several MLB games on Wednesday as “the largest, most widespread day of sports activism that our country has ever seen.”

Speaking with host Joy Reid on MSNBC’s pre-RNC convention coverage, Tirico marveled at the unprecedented speed and breadth of the pro sports strikes that began when the Milwaukee Bucks refused to come out of the locker room in solidarity with the protests of the Jacob Blake shooting by policy in nearby Kenosha, Wisconsin.

“What you are seeing in general is probably the largest, most widespread day of sports activism that our country has ever seen,” Tirico observed. “And those of us who sports know, we kind of live over in the corner there. It is not really essential at the end of the day to your life. So what’s going on in Louisiana, Covid-19, the Republican convention, all those things have far more significance than the results of a sporting event.”

“However, sports tends to cut across demographics: male, female, black, white, old, young, religious persuasion,” Tirico noted. “Sports seems to get all of these under the same umbrella. So this statement, however powerful it is we don’t know the full impact of it, is as significant as we’ve ever seen in sports domestically. There are parallels of course. Big sports protest, 1968, John Carlos and Tommie Smith at the Mexico City Olympics, raising their fists on the stand after winning medals. But something this widespread we have not seen the likes of American sports before.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.