BOSTON — Before Sunday’s game against the Boston Celtics, Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers was asked about the comments he made in the wake of the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, and whether calling the shooting “straight-up murder” was meant in a legal or moral sense.
“Both. And I don’t change that at all,” Rivers said. “My dad was a cop. My best friend is a cop. And he’s probably more upset about it than me.”
Rivers has been critical of the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents since they were sent to Chicago in October. The coach’s first public statements denouncing ICE came before a Bucks preseason game against the Chicago Bulls on Oct. 14. He was once again critical of ICE on Sunday before the Bucks took the floor in the NBA’s Inaugural Pioneers Classic, an event that aims to celebrate the league’s first Black players.
“The training of ICE is horrible. We all know that,” Rivers said. “And being in Minnesota, where there’s 130,000, I think, undocumented people, why not Texas, where there’s 1.7 million undocumented?
“I look at our league. I look at the NBA. We’re celebrating Pioneer’s Day today, right? And I look at our league and think (Hakeem) Olajuwon could have been taken off the streets. But we would, right now, the way Brown people feel, only the Brown people would be taken off the streets, and it’s just not right. And it’s not morally right, so I stand by my words 100 percent.”
Asked if he really believed Brown people in the country should be worried, Rivers confirmed that was what he meant.
“We all should be, yeah,” Rivers said. “If you’re walking down the street and (White House border czar) Tom Homan, who is the head, just has said they’re targeting people by their color and if they can speak the language. If you’re Brown, you’re nervous.”
Homan has said that ICE agents can detain people “based on the location, the occupation, their physical appearance, their actions.”
“I don’t see anybody going in the Ukrainian villages and arresting anybody,” Rivers said. “All we can go by is what we see. That’s all I can go by. I’m not saying I’m 100% right about everything, I think we all, everybody in this room, I would say, want a safer America. I don’t know if what we’re doing right now is making us safer. I know those two people (Good and Alex Pretti) in Minnesota would definitely disagree with that.”
Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, and Pretti was fatally shot by federal agents on the south end of the city Jan. 24.
Videos show Good, 37, was shot on a residential street after agents approached her and ordered her to get out of her vehicle, which was partly blocking a lane of traffic. After an agent tried to open the driver’s side door, another agent stepped in front of the vehicle. An agent shot Good after she attempted to drive away.
President Donald Trump and administration officials said Good used her vehicle as a weapon and that the agent acted in self-defense. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and others called the shooting reckless.
Asked about the shooting before a game in Los Angeles on Jan. 9, Rivers called it “straight-up murder.”
“It’s awful. This lady was probably trying to go home, and she didn’t make it home, and that’s really sad,” Rivers said two days after the shooting.
Thousands marched through the streets of Minneapolis to protest the administration’s immigration enforcement activities in the region the day before Pretti’s shooting death.
The Department of Homeland Security said Pretti “approached” Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun, The New York Times reported. Officials did not specify whether Pretti brandished the gun. Pretti can be seen with a phone in one hand in multiple bystander videos of the shooting. None of the videos appear to show him holding a firearm. After a struggle with several agents, he was shot multiple times and died.
The shooting sparked additional protests throughout the U.S., with athletes and coaches across the country speaking out about the shooting.