Donovan Mitchell had hope. That’s what the Cleveland Cavaliers’ four-time NBA All-Star and his teammates held onto when they went into Game 5 of their best-of-seven first-round playoff series last night (Wednesday) in their home arena, the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, looking to avert playoff elimination. 

The Knicks, the Eastern Conference’s No. 5 postseason seed, had imposed their will and force on the No. 4 seed Cavaliers for a 3–1 lead and the prospect of reaching the conference semifinals for the first time since 2012-2013 season, when the loss to the Indiana Pacers 4–2. 

“If you need any more motivation than this, then I don’t think you’re playing the right sport or should be playing sports,” asserted Mitchell on Tuesday. “If this elimination game doesn’t fire you up to protect home court on your own floor, then I don’t know what else could get you going.”

The Westchester County, New York, native made the decisive comment after an uncharacteristically meager performance in Game 4 at Madison Square Garden this past Sunday. Mitchell’s shot was off-target as he missed 13 of 18 attempts, including going 0-4 on 3-pointers for 11 points as the Knicks continued to impose their force and will on the Cavaliers in a 102–93 victory.

“It’s a no-brainer for me to own that,” Mitchell said in acknowledging his well-below-standard showing. “It’s ot to be there at that moment, and I wasn’t…I’ve just got to find a way to be there in Game 5 and win the game.”

The glaring distinction between the Knicks and Cavaliers in the four games before last night was the former’s physical dominance and boundless intensity that the latter failed to match. It was no more telling than in the rebound disparity. The Knicks held a 179–158 advantage overall and 58–42 margin on the offensive glass with center Mitchell Robinson as the fulcrum. The 7-foot fourth-year pro had 18 total offensive boards leading into Game 5. 

“We just play hard, you know. They’ve got two seven-footers out there, so we just take what we can, put in more effort, and we got the job done,” said Robinson after Game 4. 

“The rebounding has been huge and I think that it’s been critical for us and one of our strengths all year long,” said Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau. “We have to continue to do that—it’s a big part of winning. Keeping our turnovers down—we need to do better with that. The defensive rebounding is huge.” 

“We keep talking about it, we keep talking about it, we keep talking about it,” repeated Cavaliers head coach Bernie Bickerstaff Jr. regarding his team’s rebounding troubles. “You learn when it will hurt the most. We’ve been talking about our success, going as quickly as we learn from our mistakes. In these three games, we haven’t learned quickly enough, and they made us pay.”

Defensively, the Knicks have been relentless in guarding the Cavaliers with an exceeding amount of force, with the exception of a 107–90 Game 2 defeat. They have been able to sustain pressure on the Cavs in halfcourt sets, in large part due to their bench superiority. Thibodeau has adeptly activated and employed his reserves, spearheaded by forward Josh Hart, while Cavaliers Bickertaff has limited resources and is essentially going to battle with a seven-man rotation, which has caused his starters to carry heavy workloads. 

As Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson had his way with the Cavaliers in Game 3, posting a 24.3 scoring average in Games 1 through 4, All-Star forward Julius Randle—the team’s regular season leader in points per game (25.1) and rebounding (10.0)—is noticeably still not fully recovered from an ankle sprain that happened on March 29 at the Garden in a game versus the Miami Heat. He sat out the Knicks’ final regular season contest and did not return until April 15, Game 1 of the playoffs. 

Randle’s numbers reflect his physical obstacles. He was putting up 14.8 points on 21–65 shooting (32.3%) and 8–31 (25.8%) from behind the 3-point line and only seven rebounds per outing over four games. 

After having little positive offensive impact in Games 1 and 2, shooting 6–25 and 1–8 on 3-pointers, forward RJ Barrett experienced a resurrection. He came back with 19 points on 8–12 attempts in Game 3 and 26 points in Game 4. 

“Super-aggressive, you know, going downhill, getting to the line,” said Thibodeau of Barrett’s work on Sunday. 

“I think a lot of the time, they were doubling Jalen, so I was able to get the ball and make some plays,” Barrett assessed. “ I was able to get into some sets, and it was a total team effort.” 

If necessary, Game 6 will be at the Garden tomorrow night and Game 7 in Cleveland.

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As dramatically as Los Angeles Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard reestablished himself as one of the best basketball players in the world with 38- and 31-point outputs in Games 1 and 2, respectively, in his team’s first round Western Conference playoff series against the Phoenix Suns, his future on the court was placed in doubt with another knee injury.

After the No. 5 seed Clippers took Game 1 by 115-110 and lost Game 2 123-10 against the No. 4 seed Suns, they headed back to Los Angeles for Game 3 last Thursday confident in their chances to earn a series win versus the favored Suns. But early in the day the

Clippers announced the 31-year-old Leonard, a two-time NBA Finals most valuable player, would be out with a sprained right knee—the same injury that had kept eight-time All-Star Paul George out of the lineup since March 21.

RELATED: Knicks return to Garden to resume playoff battle with Cavs

Without Leonard, the Suns went on to capture Games 3, 4 and 5, ending the series 4-1 on Tuesday night at home with a 136-130. Then, yesterday, after some in the media and on social media had, without evidence, questioned the severity of Leonard’s injury suggesting he should have attempted to play through the injury, it was reported his issues were much more serious as he has a torn meniscus.

Now the Suns are set to face the Western Conference’s No. 1 seed Denver Nuggets in a semifinal matchup starting this Sunday. Like the Suns, the Nuggets defeated the No. 8 seed Minnesota Timberwolves in a gentleman’s sweep, finishing them off 4-1 by winning a hard-fought Game 5 on Tuesday at home, 112-109. The other West semifinal pairing has yet to be decided.

The No. 2 seed Memphis Grizzlies were at home last night trying to fight off being ousted by the No. 7 seed Los Angeles Lakers, who led 3-1 following a 117-111 over Memphis in L.A. on Monday as LeBron James scored 22 points and grabbed 20 rebounds.  The No. 3 seed Sacramento Kings hosted the No. 6 seed Golden State Warriors last night (Wednesday) with the series even at 2-2.   

In the East, the Knicks were in Cleveland yesterday evening up 3-1 and vying for their first series win in the last 10 years. On Tuesday, Atlanta Hawks guard Trae Young’s remarkable effort, registering 38 points and 13 assists on the road, including a go-ahead 30-foot 3-pointer with 2.1 seconds left, lifted the No. 7 Hawks to a 119-110 victory over the No. 2 Boston Celtics and pushing the 3-2 series back to Atlanta for Game 6 tonight. The Philadelphia 76ers swept the Brooklyn Nets 4-0 and await the winner of Celtics-Hawks.
Undoubtedly the most shocking series is between the No. 1 seed Milwaukee Bucks and the No. 8 seed Miami Heat. The Bucks are on the edge of one of the biggest upsets in recent NBA history. Forward Giannis Antetokounmpo, plausibly the best player in the world, suffered a back contusion in Game 1 after falling to the court and only played 11 minutes in the Bucks 130-111 loss.

He sat out Games 2 and 3, and returned Monday in Milwaukee with the Bucks trailing 2-1 displaying his usual preeminence, scoring 26 points with 13 assists and 10 rebounds. But Heat forward Jimmy Butler had a game for the ages, scoring a franchise playoff record 56 and pulling his teammates along with him as the Heat overcame a 14-point fourth quarter deficit for a 119-114 victory. Game 5 in Miami is tomorrow night.    

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“Indecent dressing” is hereby banned for students and staff under a strict new code at the prestigious Godfrey Okoye University, Enugu State, Nigeria, among other schools.

The vice chancellor, Rev. Fr. Christian Anieke, announced the details to students returning from holiday breaks. Henceforth, all students are to be dressed in their faculty uniforms with appropriate ties and shoes. “No student is expected to wear slippers, shorts, rugged jeans, long fingernails, face caps, or artificial eye lashes,” he directed.

Only black and brown hair will be allowed on campus for either men or women. Staff and students were given one month to adjust to the new rules or else face disciplinary action.

The pronouncement follows similar restrictions at Rivers State University, which banned students from wearing miniskirts, ankle chains, and extended lashes.

Sagging trousers by either male or female students are prohibited at Rivers State, as is the wearing of earrings by male students and nose rings by female students. The school management also banned students from having tattoos and dressing in a certain way considered “indecent” on campus.

Anieke expressed regret that most students and staff were wearing t-shirts with unauthorized inscriptions, contrary to the dress code of the institution. For the future, he continued, men were to be in suits with University ties to match. Further, male students must comb their hair well or shave their heads.

Additionally, final-year students were warned against plagiarism, stressing that the University librarian had been directed to carry out plagiarism tests on all research works by the students and staff of the institutions.

The vice chancellor revealed that the management of the University had introduced qualitative assessments of all the teaching and non-teaching staff of the University. “Principal officers of the institutions will henceforth visit the lecture halls to assess the lectures by the academic staff while the non-teaching staff will submit their roll calls at the beginning and closing of each day’s activities.

“Students who fail to attend lectures will not be allowed to sit for examinations,” Anieke warned.

The clergyman made it clear that none of the female matriculants would be allowed to wear any shoe that was more than four centimeters high, and students must wear decent dresses.

Finally, in a related development, the Anambra State Government placed a ban on the wearing of mini-length uniforms in schools across the state in September, according to SaharaReporters. 

The state’s education commissioner, Professor Ngozi Chuma-Udeh, made this known during an interactive meeting with education secretaries of public and mission schools held in Awka.

The commissioner did not hide her displeasure at what she saw as “the growing trend of putting on mini-length uniforms [skirts and gowns] in schools.” According to her, “it goes against the acceptable dress code for schools in the state.”

Feedback from female students on social media included the following comments:

“Every adult should have the freedom of expression. Fashion expresses a person. It is not okay to take away that right,” wrote a user named Jessica.
“Then stay at home And [sic] express your right..No one care [sic],” replied another user named Jenny.
“There are many schools where students wear miniskirts and let’s also talk about sports uniforms! Why not focus more on the enrichment of education which all universities in Nigeria lack?” wrote a user named Tabytha.

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In the oppressive summer heat of August 1963, the New York Amsterdam News ran a short story on page 7 of its August 10th edition: “Plumber To Be First In Union.” 

Just a few hundred words long, the story highlighted “Edward Curry, the 25-year-old Negro plumber on the verge of entering the all-white Plumbers Union, Local 1 admittedly knows little of the reasons for the long well-publicized demonstrations at the Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn.”

For weeks, hundreds of clergy and activists had been arrested while blockading the site that our newspaper in other stories called “near lily white”, demanding that at least 25% of workers be “Negro or Puerto Rican.”

“It doesn’t mean too much to me,” Curry is quoted as saying of the demonstrations, but the timing of the announcement of his barrier breaking hiring was likely a direct result of the demonstrations that had, and would continue on and off for years, to convulse not just New York city, but cities around the country.

In the middle of the 20th century executive orders and laws were put into place, through the hard work of activists and organizers for civil rights, to ensure that the American workplace, including construction sites and union halls, became integrated. But the laws and regulations were meaningless without enforcement and it fell to many of those same activists, and to even more radical organizers, to ensure that the construction sites of America’s cities, both North and South, East and West, were desegregated.

A Dream Deferred

“All the way through the 1960s, not all trades in the construction trades were racially discriminatory, but the highest skill, highest wage ones were very racially discriminatory,” Dr. Trevor Griffey, a lecturer at the University of California, Irvine said in an interview with the Amsterdam News. 

While organized labor had grown in power during the first half of the 20th century, many of the unions that represented the skilled and highest paid trades like plumbers, electricians, pipe fitters and steel workers still marginalized Black Americans.

“A number of those unions were very militant, but also very racially exclusive. And then they fought against the inclusion of racial discrimination prohibitions in labor law,” Dr. Griffey added. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act, racial discrimination in hiring and employment was banned but construction sites continued to be bastions of de facto segregation.

“When an employer needs people, they often tell the people who are working there, ‘we need to hire some more people, go tell your friends, and tell your family’. And so if you have an all white workforce, that’s going to mean that the people who hear about those job openings are all going to be white,” said historian Dr. William Jones of the University of Minnesota, explaining why it was so difficult to diversify worksites despite the passage of Federal nondiscrimination laws.

While he believes that the building trades have made enormous improvements, Jeff Grabelsky, the Co-Director of the National Labor Leadership Institute at Cornell, told the AmNews in an interview that “there was a time in New York City when some major unions, in a city that was becoming majority minority… where there were local unions without a single Black member.”

During this era, construction unions largely mirrored private industry which also excluded workers of color from the most lucrative trades. 

“Direct action protests started targeting these construction sites in the sixties. It started in Philadelphia, quickly moved to New York and then was nationwide. People occupied the arch in St. Louis as it was being constructed,” Dr. Griffey noted. 

The threat of action during World War II led to the creation of an executive order which prohibited discrimination in the defense industry. Direct action also led to both the inclusion of Title Seven, in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and President Nixon implementing the “Philadelphia Plan” which began to force companies seeking Federal contracts to ensure that they employed Black Americans.

But these hard fights for laws and regulations had their limits Mr. Grabelsky noted. 

“Through legal action and community organizing, building trades unions were forced to bring in Black community members. And in some cases, six months later, they were all gone because nothing else changed in the union and they entered this hostile environment that made it exceedingly difficult for them to succeed.”

They say get back, we say fight back

There was an intense backlash to what would become known as “affirmative action” that pushed back on what little progress was being made at the time.

“There are counter protests against affirmative action in ’69, that look a little like hate marches,” said Dr. Griffey. In 1970 “A group of construction workers in New York, descend on a peace rally and beat the shit out of the protestors, then march to City Hall and protest affirmative action in the construction trades, [on the] same day,” he added.

Some organized labor officials also found ways to oppose the integration of their unions; and in one case, was rewarded with a cabinet position.

“These are long time Democrats. Many had never voted for a Republican in their lives. They’re campaigning for Republicans on a law and order platform. And when they help with the landslide election of Nixon, [Peter Brennan], the head of New York City building trades is rewarded by being made head of the Department of Labor where he guts what remains of affirmative action in the construction industry,” said Dr. Griffey.

But right wing construction workers and their leaders weren’t the only ones taking to the streets in the 1960’s and ‘70’s. As large, publicly funded construction projects went up in New York and other cities, activists and organizers of color began to demand their fair share.

“There’s these big public construction sites in Black communities, where Black workers aren’t being employed. And so these protests are around the construction sites to get people employed in those jobs and to open up those jobs,” said Dr. Jones. 

“The argument was: ‘Our tax dollars are paying for this construction. We should be able to get these jobs as well.’ And in that case, it was largely the construction, the skilled trades unions that shut Black workers out of these jobs,” he added.

Across the country in Los Angeles, Black workers have also been fighting for their share of the pie.

Janel Bailey, Co-executive Director of Organizing & Programs at the Los Angeles Black Worker Center, spoke to the AmNews about efforts her organization has undertaken to ensure that Black workers are represented on job sites. As L.A.’s mass transit system expanded into Crenshaw, the organization in partnership with other labor organizations negotiated an employment agreement with the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority which they say increased the number of Black workers on the project from zero to 20% in 2015.

“Folks at our organization came together, with allies of course, to really step to Metro and asked them: ‘how you have all this money coming through our neighborhood, but [its] not going to the workers and the families that are actually here? You need to hire more Black workers’.” Bailey said in an interview. 

During their negotiations she said they encountered “the usual things of like, ‘Oh, well, we can’t just say Black [workers] and we don’t know any Black workers’. Which to be perfectly honest, I believe them when they say, ‘I don’t know any Black workers.’ I believe them because the culture of exclusion that they’ve built set up their network such that it doesn’t include Black people.”

Bailey is also critical of labor unions and the apprenticeship system in Los Angeles.

“This culture of exclusion didn’t come up overnight and so I’m naming all these policies that broadly create a culture of exclusion,” she said. Apprenticeship programs are “wonderful for workers because it created a control of the market on labor, such that if you wanted to hire, to bring folks in to do that work, then you had to go through the union and you could set standards. Safety standards and wage standards for workers. Which is beautiful.”

But she went on to say that “the values of the folks who created and maintained that program were anti-Black. And so when they chose to create this wonderful pathway for workers, it was not inclusive of Black workers. And so what we’re seeing today is the fruits of that legacy. 

“That honestly, I think if you take it straight up on paper, the apprenticeship program actually is not problematic. I think it’s actually quite brilliant…. However, applied with the values of the people who had the power to build that, it was anti-Black and it was built in a way that for some was deliberately exclusive. And so we arrive at this moment now where we have this incredible program that only benefits some workers and we’re trying to figure out how to open it up, how to expand it so that it includes workers of color.”

“There is a history of exclusion,” said Grabelsky of the National Labor Leadership Institute at Cornell. “I don’t think race and racism explains everything in our society, but I personally think nothing of any significance can be fully explained without looking at it through that lens.”

Our third installment will examine how organizers in Harlem helped launch a movement to hold builders and unions accountable

This series was made possible by a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network. Brian Palmer contributed research and reporting to this article.

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