On a Zoom call, Timberwolves players and coach Ryan Saunders shared their perspectives on the situation in Minneapolis.
Across all those NBA trips he had taken as a young man with his father, Flip, all those years as a University of Minnesota player, a professional assistant and, now, coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves, Ryan Saunders never considered the stresses attached to a grown man leaving his hotel for a run through a different city.
After George Floyd died in police custody this week in Minneapolis, Saunders listened to one of his African American colleagues describe how he must consider the possibility that fastening a cellphone to his side could give someone justification to believe he’s reaching for a gun.
“Waist or armband?” Saunders told ESPN on Wednesday night. “I never knew that was a thing. I do now.”
Yes, this was the conversation Saunders wanted to start with his Timberwolves. This has long been his town, his team, and Saunders wanted his players and staff to understand that he needed to be more than another white Minnesotan — another white American — on Instagram simply sickened by the killing of a defenseless black man.
“I am a white male in a position of leadership, and I don’t take lightly the fact that I have not experienced some of these things that our individual guys have had to experience,” Saunders told ESPN. “So I wanted to make sure we were listeners, that we could become more educated as people completely inexperienced in never getting the benefit of the doubt. I grew up in Minnesota and this hasn’t been sitting well with me for the past two days. Sometimes the silence can be deafening too. When we’re given opportunity to speak on what’s right, I think it’s important to do that.”
Saunders had connected with president of basketball operations Gersson Rosas and assistant GM Joe Branch on Tuesday night, wanting to bring the team together on a Zoom call. The organization has had a speaker’s series every week in the pandemic — Bob Iger to Robin Roberts to J. Watt — but this was something far different.
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Before the Timberwolves could engage a community that is reeling in response to the videotaped death of Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police, Saunders stopped talking and started listening on a call with most of his players and his basketball operations and coaching staff.
