Hoops Happening: Around the WNBA on MLK Day

Today, the country is celebrating the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — a Civil Rights-era icon whose fight for justice and equality incorporated principles of peaceful coexistence and civil disobedience.

As the nation reflects upon King’s biggest ideals — the need for citizens to triumph over racism by choosing love over hate, and the reality that society collectively fails when we choose wrongly — it is important to consider that King’s dream that his children “will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but the content of their character” — is one deferred.

Dr. King was just getting started with his revolutionary work when, on April 4, 1968, the Civil Rights leader was assassinated — with the murderer hoping the revolution would die with the man.

In many ways, the movement King started did die, but his ideals lived on and his work for justice and equality continued, although in splintered, reshaped forms. The present state of affairs in the country — divisiveness, a resurgence of overt racism/discrimination and public policies that support the ideologies of subjugation that reigned supreme prior to the Civil Rights Movement — shows just how loosely the threads of our social fabric have been sewn.

Thus, there is much work to do to ensure no human has their inalienable rights denied. King’s “dream” for his children has come into fruition in some ways, but the family he left behind is aware that the country has come up short in fully embodying the principles for which their father fought and eventual died — and, in recent years, has taken backward steps.

His daughter, Bernice King, tweeted a concise reminder of her father’s values.

Read the entire “I have a dream ...” speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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The Atlanta Dream was founded on King’s “dream”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta and served from 1960 until his death in 1968 as a co-pastor to his father, Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr., at the now very well-known Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. King’s legacy lives on in many ways in the city of Atlanta, so it is fitting that a WNBA team would honor King’s most noted speech with the nickname Dream.

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Elsewhere around the WNBA on MLK Day

Rebecca Brunson and Sylvia Fowles of the Minnesota Lynx did public service

Candace Parker visited the National Civil Rights Museum

WNBA teams tweeted King-centered messages

Weekend roundup: Jr. NBA camps and parades

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More in the world of women’s hoops

The Atlanta Dream’s Brittney Sykes is putting in work following off-season surgery

Mystics star Elena Delle Donne joined Wizards players, scary mascot, to recreate iconic Beatles’ Abbey Road image

The humans in this snapshot should be commended for keeping straight faces while the blue thing trails behind them.

It’s Sanjana Ramesh time!

The 17-year-old is only the second India-born athlete to receive a Division I women’s basketball scholarship.

She’ll be attending Northern Arizona University.

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Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.