Utah and Sacramento met in their NBA season opener. That same night, the worst mass shooting in the U.S. this year took place, prompting a powerful speech from head coach Mike Brown.
Lauri Markkanen and Utah Jazz’s opening game of the NBA season ended early on Thursday, Finland time, with a loss against the Sacramento Kings.
Markkanen scored 19 points and grabbed 10 rebounds in the game, which the Kings eventually won 130–114.
Read more: See how Lauri Markkanen dazzled in his NBA season opener – direct words from a Finn about his team’s performance: “It is not acceptable”
The match was played at Utah’s home arena in Salt Lake City. Sacramento, on the other hand, is the capital of the state of California.
On the same night that Utah and Sacramento opened their NBA season, there was a mass shooting on the east coast of the United States, in the city of Lewiston. Lewiston is a small town in the state of Maine.
Local authorities were alerted to the shooting on Wednesday at 20:00 local time. The man had shot in several places in the city of Lewiston, at least in a bar and a bowling alley. The local Sun Journal by a youth bowling evening was underway at the bowling alley.
by NBC News updated news basis, there are at least 18 dead, four critically injured and at least 60 injured.
At the time of writing this, massive operations to reach the perpetrator are still underway. The authorities have named a 40-year-old man as a suspect and published his picture. The man in the picture has a gun.
According to the police, the suspect is armed and dangerous, and you must not approach him, but the authorities must be informed of the observations.
Mike Brown couldn’t talk about basketball
When the coach of the Sacramento Kings Mike Brown53, stepped in front of the media after the Utah victory, he held back tears.
– First of all, I would like to say that I don’t know everything that is really happening. I’m not that smart. But I know that as a country we have to do something. I’m walking here and someone tells me there’s a mass shooting in a town in Maine that killed 22 people. If it doesn’t touch anyone, I don’t know. Words fail me.
At the press conference, Brown said that people would have died in the grocery store. This detail later turned out to be false. It was originally reported incorrectly that the Walmart store would have been one of the locations of the tragedy.
– This is so disgusting. Sad. And it’s sad that we sit here and watch this happen over and over again and nobody does anything about it,” Brown continued.
– A sad day for our country. Sad day in this world. Until we decide to do something, this will continue. And our kids can’t enjoy what America is all about because we don’t know how to fix this problem that’s right in front of us.
Brown praised the work that the NBA and some star players such as Chris Paul and LeBron James, have done when talking about the country’s problems. Brown added that it obviously hasn’t been of much use, because again something “absolutely sick” happened.
Brown refused to answer reporters’ questions about basketball.
– I don’t even want to talk about basketball. We played a game. Of course it was fun, we won. But if we can’t do anything to fix this, it’s all gone.
NBC News reports that Lewiston was the 565th mass shooting in the United States this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The organization defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people die (the perpetrator is not counted). What happened in Lewiston is the most serious case in terms of fatalities this year.
According to Everytown For Gun Safety, the state of Maine ranks 25th when measuring the strength of gun laws among different states in the United States.
The state does not have a red flag law. It enables a judge to deny a person weapons if the person is suspected of being violent. Nor does Maine require background checks when selling guns.
CNN reported earlier this year that guns are the leading cause of death for minors in the United States. In 2020, weapons overtook traffic accidents in the statistics.