Malika Andrews was a guest on Scott Van Pelt’s midnight edition of SportsCenter on Thursday morning. In addition to discussing the Miami Heat’s victory over the Boston Celtics, she was also asked about the mood of players inside the NBA Bubble after the state of Kentucky declined to file charges against two of the three officers in the shooting death of Breonna Taylor.
Taylor was asleep in her home when police entered. It was not the address on a no-knock warrant that three officers were attempting to serve. Taylor’s boyfriend fired his legally registered gun, believing it was a home invasion. Taylor was killed in her bed in the exchange of bullets.
Van Pelt noted that the incident was a major factor in NBA players’ demands that any restart in play after Covid-19 shutdown the regular season in March include messages of social justice.
Andrews answered that the players “were hurting.” She cited a conversation with the Celtics’ Jalen Brown in which the guard said “what do you expect about a system that is rigged against, that was founded on an unfairness against people that look like him and people that look like me.”
Scott Van Pelt was supportive of Andrews, who could not hide her emotions as she discussed the mood of the ESPN Wide World of Sports campus in Walt Disney World on Wednesday.
“We’ve talked before, Scott, about how my job here is to objectively cover the truth and to share what these players are going through. Today what they’re going through is that they’re hurting,” Andrews said with a quiver in her voice. “I have prided myself in being able to be objective and cover these sorts of issues. But when it is so clear that the system of objectivity in journalism is so whitewashed and doesn’t account for the fact that when I am walking up the hill my wonderful producer Melinda reminds me that Breonna Taylor was 26 and I am 25 and that could have been me, it is very hard to continue to go to work.”
Malika Andrews was not the only ESPN employee to comment on the events of the day in Louisville, Kentucky. Jalen Rose addressed his feelings and the feelings of his colleagues and players on the floor during the network’s pregame show.
He also shouted “It’d also be a great day to arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor,” as the network went to commercial during halftime of Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals.
Only one of the three officers that entered Taylor’s home on the night she was killed faced any charges at all. Those charges are for wanton endangerment and are not related to Taylor’s death at all.
