Thursday Sports in Brief

Updated Aug. 28, 2020 2:26 a.m. ET

Associated Press

NBA

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) — An unprecedented NBA walkout over racial injustice postponed a second day of the playoffs Thursday, although players pledged to finish the postseason even as they wrestled with their emotions about wanting to bring change in their communities.

For now, the basketball courts in the NBA’s virus-free bubble at Disney World remained empty.

The NBA decided to postpone three more games Thursday to join the three that weren’t played a day earlier.

NBA spokesman Mike Bass said the league hoped to resume Friday or Saturday.

MLB

NEW YORK (AP) — Major League Baseball has been pulled into America’s discussion about racial injustice.

Some teams are playing. Some aren’t. Two teams walked off the field after the national anthem.

But across the sport, one theme became clear: Baseball shouldn’t avoid potentially difficult conversations and decisions regarding social issues. Though the process may be imperfect, there was agreement that coaches, players and teams should speak their mind.

Oakland’s game at Texas was among seven that were postponed by Thursday evening, along with Philadelphia at Washington, Baltimore at Tampa Bay, Minnesota at Detroit, Colorado at Arizona and Boston at the Blue Jays in Buffalo, New York. Some games were played as scheduled.

The New York Mets and Miami Marlins jointly walked off the field after a moment of silence, draping a Black Lives Matter T-shirt across home plate as they chose not to start their scheduled game Thursday night.

NFL

Nine NFL teams canceled practice in response to the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, in Wisconsin.

The Arizona Cardinals, Chicago Bears, Denver Broncos, Green Bay Packers, Indianapolis Colts, Los Angeles Chargers, New York Jets, Tennessee Titans and Washington Football Team all decided to not take the field Thursday.

Blake was shot by police, apparently in the back, on Sunday as he leaned into his SUV, three of his children seated inside.

The Detroit Lions canceled their practice Tuesday, protesting the incident involving Blake, and racial injustice.

NHL

The NHL postponed two days of playoff games Thursday after withering criticism from Black players who said the league was slow to acknowledge the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin.

The joint decision to put off Thursday and Friday’s games was reached by the league and the NHL Players’ Association. It was made after members of the Hockey Diversity Alliance asked the NHL to postpone the playing of games,

WNBA

BRADENTON, Fla. (AP) — For the second consecutive day, the WNBA postponed three games following the weekend shooting of Jacob Blake.

In Bradenton, Florida, in the WNBA bubble, Chicago was to face Indiana, New York was to meet Dallas and Las Vegas was set to play Seattle on Thursday night.

So far six games have been postponed over the past two nights. The league had just passed its halfway mark of the 22-game season. With teams playing pretty much every other day in the bubble, the postponed games will most likely have to be made up after the regular season ends Sept. 12.

SOCCER

Real Salt Lake and Utah Royals owner Dell Loy Hansen has come under criticism for comments he made on a local radio show after RSL players protested racial injustice by not taking the field for a match.

“It’s like someone stabbed you and then you’re trying to figure out a way to pull the knife out and move forward. That’s what it feels like. The disrespect was profound to me, personally,” Hansen said Thursday morning on X96, a Salt Lake City radio station he owns.

Hansen also suggested the matter might discourage his investment in the teams.

The comments came after Real Salt Lake, Hansen’s Major League Soccer club, and LAFC decided not to play their match at Rio Tinto Stadium on Wednesday. It was one of five MLS matches called off as athletes reacted to the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Hansen’s comments drew swift rebukes.

Hansen addressed his own comments later in the day on another radio station he owns, saying he had since looked more closely at the issue and apologized if fans thought his statement meant he did not care about the movement to end social injustice.

HORSE RACING

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The California Horse Racing Board has voted to proceed with a complaint seeking the disqualification of Justify from his victory in the 2018 Santa Anita Derby based on laboratory findings that show his post-race sample tested positive for scopolamine.

The racing board won’t file a complaint against Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert because of what it called “substantial evidence” that the scopolamine resulted from environmental contamination from jimson weed. Baffert had denied giving the horse scopolamine, and blamed the contamination on jimson weed, which grows wild in California.

The board met in closed session last week and announced its decision Thursday.

OBITUARY

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Lute Olson, the Hall of Fame coach who turned Arizona into a college basketball powerhouse, has died. He was 85.

Olson’s family said he died Thursday evening. The cause of death wasn’t given.

Olson spent 24 seasons at Arizona, revitalizing a fan base in the desert while transforming a program that had been to the NCAA Tournament just three times in 79 years before he was hired in 1983.

Olson first took the Wildcats to the NCAA Tournament during his second season in Tucson to start a string of 25 straight appearances. The streak would have been the third-longest in NCAA history, but the 1999 and 2008 appearances were later vacated by the NCAA for impermissible benefits to players and recruiting violations.

The Wildcats won a national championship under Olson in 1997 with a team led by Mike Bibby, Jason Terry and Miles Simon. Olson’s Arizona teams reached the Final Four four times and lost the 2001 national title game to Duke.

Olson won a school-record 589 games at Arizona, 11 Pac-10 titles and was named the conference coach of the year seven times. He led Arizona to 20 straight 20-win seasons and is one of five coaches in NCAA history with 29 seasons of at least 20 wins.

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