San Antonio Spurs guard Patty Mills announced on Wednesday his plan to donate his remaining salary for the eight games in Orlando to Black Lives Matter organizations.
“I’ve made the decision to go to Orlando,” Mills said in a video posted on Twitter. “And I’m proud to say that I’m taking every cent earned from these eight games that we are playing, which for me will turn out to be $1,017,818.54, and donating that directly back to the Black Lives Matter Australia, Black Deaths in Custody and to a recent campaign, ‘We Got You’, dedicated to ending racism in sport in Australia.”
Mills, who is from Australia, has been a vocal supporter of social justice movements throughout his 11-year NBA career. He and several other players — along with the NBA and NBPA — have vowed to remain focused on social justice during the NBA season restart.
“I’m playing in Orlando because I don’t want to leave any money on the table that could be going directly to Black communities.”
Several thousand people rallied in Black Lives Matter protests across Australia over the weekend to call for racial equality and highlight deaths of Indigenous people while in police custody.
