The Golden State Warriors had very specific, detailed plans to boycott Game 5 of their playoff series with the Los Angeles Clippers if they didn’t feel like the punishment for Donald Sterling matched what they wanted.
According to Bay Area News Group’s Marcus Thompson, the Warriors were planning the kind of boycott that would have caught people by surprise … and been extremely powerful as a statement.
Here’s how Thompson describes it:
The Warriors were going to go through pre-game warm-ups and take part in the national anthem and starting line-up introductions. They were going to take the floor for the jump ball, dapping up the Clippers players as is customary before games.
Then once the ball was in the air, they were just going to walk off. All 15 of them.
The Warriors intended for the boycott to be bold and controversial to truly send a message, but their minds changed when Adam Silver handed down penalty for Sterling, which included a lifetime ban.
Thompson says Stephen Curry, David Lee and Andre Iguodala were behind the plan, which they developed during shootaround on Tuesday.
“It would have been our only chance to make a statement in front of the biggest audience that we weren’t going to accept anything but the maximum punishment,” Curry said. “We would deal with the consequences later but we were not going to play.”
The Warriors would have hoped the Clippers would have joined them for the boycott.
This is the exact kind of action I was hoping to see on Sunday. A bold movement like this that really made a statement. I was frankly disappointed that the teams played and, even though the Clippers made a statement in warmups, they missed an opportunity to do something historic. Instead, it was left up to Silver, who came through with a severe punishment.
