Sixers coach Brett Brown’s T-shirt reminds that Black Lives Matter is global

KISSIMMEE, Fla. – The fight against racial injustice is global.

The T-shirt 76ers coach Brett Brown wore during his pregame news conference Wednesday was a reminder of that. The black shirt depicted a Black person walking arm in arm with a white person. It was designed by the San Antonio Spurs’ Patty Mills, an Aboriginal Australian.

Mills is donating his salary here at the NBA restart to Black Lives Matter organizations in his home country.

“This is apart of the whole racial-injustice effort that the coaching staff and players are trying to make here in Orlando,” Brown said of the T-shirt.

The seventh-year coach has a long-standing relationship with Mills. He was a longtime assistant in San Antonio before being hired by the Sixers. Brown has also lived in Australia and is on his second stint as the Australian national team coach.

“The same attention to Black Lives Matter is global, as we’ve seen,” Brown said.

Mills is no stranger to using his platform and resources to fight racism and police brutality, especially in Australia. This year, he gave around $1 million to Black Lives Matter Australia and Black Deaths in Custody. The 32-year-old also helped launch the “We Got You” campaign to show support for athletes fighting racism in Australia.

“Those of you that have known Patty or have studied Patty, his Aboriginal history,” Brown said,”his mother came from what they call the stolen generation where there was a cleansing of their version of Black children being brought into white suburban Adelaide.”

Mills’ father is from the Torres Strait Islands and he comes from a family of pearl divers, Brown said.

“So this American thing that we are going through with George Floyd and the flash points that we’ve all experienced in the United States, it’s not unique to this nation,” Brown said.

The NBA bubble continues to be a success.

None of the 342 players who were tested for COVID-19 on the Walt Disney World campus since results were last announced on Aug. 5 have returned confirmed positives, the league and National Basketball Players Association announced Wednesday. There were also no positive tests when the results were announced on July 29 and July 20.

The news came after the league and players association announced July 13 that two of the initial 322 players who had arrived since July 7 tested positive while in quarantine. Unable to clear quarantine, the two left the campus to isolate.

The NBA playoffs will begin Monday.