David Fizdale became a star last year due to a memorable rant after a playoff loss. The Grizzlies head coach is back to his vocal self, but this time it’s about a much more important issue.
On Wednesday, Fizdale spoke out about the recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a white nationalist rally (that included symbols of Confederates, Nazis, and the Ku Klux Klan) led to the death of one counter-protestor while injuring many others.
Fizdale’s entire speech is definitely worth the time as he focuses a lot of it on calling on the city of Memphis to take down several Confederate statues, following events that took place in Durham and Baltimore earlier this week:
A few select parts transcribed by Geoff Calkins of the Commercial Appeal:
“Fifty years later (Martin Luther King Jr.) is speaking to us from the grave and telling us to stand up to this crap that we’re seeing, that’s festering in our country, that our president has seemed to deem OK and label as equal as people who are fighting for love and fighting hate and bigotry and all of those things. We’ve got to listen to Dr. King. There’s no way, with me being the head coach in the city of Memphis, that I will sit on the sidelines and disgrace his legacy, my grandfather’s legacy, and let somebody destroy something that we built in America that I think can be exemplary.”
“I can’t sit and watch this, not in a city where Dr. King was assassinated 50 years ago, where we have, even today in our city a statue of a known Klansman, right here in the beautiful city of Memphis with all these incredibly wonderful people. It’s unacceptable. It will no longer stand. I think you’re seeing it all over America people are not standing for it anymore. It’s a black eye on our history.”
[…]“It’s disgusting (to equate the Nazi marchers with Black Lives Matter protesters). What are you talking about here? How can you even say that? You watch those people march up the street with their little — they’re so ridiculous looking with their tiki torches; they’ve actually got tiki torches; that says enough — but you see them marching up the street and what’s coming out of their mouths, and you tell me that they’re just there quietly protesting? And you’re telling me that there were some good people in that crowd?
“You can’t say that. If you’re standing next to these people with a torch, and whether your mouth is closed or open, if they’re saying that, on the way to that march, and they’re saying that, you get out of that line. You get as far away from that line as possible. So the fact that they were in unison, marching, saying all of these things, you can’t tell me there’s a good person in there. And for (President Trump) to put those protesters that were there to stop them in the same boat as those awful, evil people that are there to just wreak havoc on that beautiful city, I’ve been to that city; Charlottesville is an awesome city.”
“If you put a Muslim in that car, what are you calling that person, right? You’re a terrorist. For this to happen and for our president to put that on the same level as people trying to fight hate and bigotry, peacefully, and standing up for their country and their city and saying this is not acceptable here, when our country went to war, and millions of people died from that war, and now you’re letting it happen on our streets? You can’t put that on the same level. For anyone who can sit there and defend his comments? You’re either stupid, honestly, you’re either just stupid or you’re sick. That’s how I’m looking at it. Sick, I mean you’re totally delusional in the mind. You’re totally like, there is something going on internally with you that’s not right. Because there’s no way you can listen to those comments, agree with what he said, and do it with a common sense logic. I’m sorry, there’s just no way I can see you saying that.”
This is not the first time Fizdale has publicly spoken about race issues and he is not the first person affiliated with the NBA to speak about Charlottesville.
Kudos to Coach Fizdale for not sticking to sports.
