Chicago Bulls star Derrick Rose kicked things off by taking a stand and wearing a “I Can’t Breathe” shirt during warmups of the Bulls game against the Golden State Warriors. Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James then commented that the shirt was “spectacular” and he wanted one. That’s all anyone needed to hear and of course there was a race to make sure the best and one of the most visible player’s in the NBA received a shirt. Sure enough during the Cavaliers next game, LeBron was wearing the shirt but he wasn’t the only one. Deron Williams, Kevin Garnett, Jarrett Jack and Alan Anderson of the Brooklyn Nets all donned the “I Can’t Breathe” shirt as well. All this happened during the Cavaliers game against the Nets at the Barclays Center with the Royal family, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in attendance. Also there was rap mogul Jay Z and his wife Beyonce. Jay Z took a picture with the Nets and some criticized him for not wearing the shirt as well but it turns out he helped make the whole thing happen
Here’s how it went down via the NY Times:
That same night, after the conference call, Rameen Aminzadeh, a member of Justice League NYC, drafted a simple design for the text of the T-shirt, which other members of the group approved sometime after 1 a.m. The plan was in motion.
Michael Skolnik, Russell Simmons’s political director., meanwhile, knew he needed to get Jay-Z on board, largely because Jay-Z and James are friends who travel in similar social circles. And because Jay-Z was expected to attend Monday’s game with his wife, Beyoncé, Skolnik wanted to apprise Jay-Z of the T-shirt plan. So one of Skolnik’s first phone calls was to Dream Hampton, a cultural critic and writer who had collaborated with Jay-Z on his autobiography, “Decoded.” On Monday afternoon, Hampton reached out to Jay-Z and asked if he would get in touch with James. Jay-Z and James soon spoke by phone, Skolnik said.
As those high-level conversations were playing out, Aminzadeh took care of a more prosaic — if equally important — item of business by rushing to NYC Customs, a printing shop in Long Island City owned by his friend Helen Mihalatos. Aminzadeh arrived at 12:30 p.m., he said, and delivered specific instructions: He needed 82 T-shirts, all of them in extra-large sizes, and he needed them as quickly as possible.
It was nearing dusk when Aminzadeh, Perez and their fellow organizer Cherrell Brown gathered outside Barclays Center. Skolnik was in Manhattan with Simmons, who was scheduled to appear on a CNN program later that evening. But in addition to strategizing with James, Jay-Z had passed along Skolnik’s cellphone number to Williams, the Nets’ point guard, who texted Skolnik around 5:30 p.m. His message was concise: He and his teammates wanted the T-shirts.
The final hurdle was navigating the T-shirts past arena security. The N.B.A.’s stance was clear: The league did not want its players wearing the T-shirts during warm-ups. So Williams recruited a security guard to take the large box from Aminzadeh, Perez and Brown on the Dean Street entrance of the arena, Skolnik said. He made the handoff to the security guard at 6:30 p.m.
