Website<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\nLOS ANGELES \u2014 Even with a couple more days between them and last week\u2019s mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, the event remained heavy on the minds of the people about to put on a show Monday at Staples Center.<\/p>\n
Upon hearing from local authorities that blood donations were among the most pressing needs following the shooting, the Clippers teamed with Cedars-Sinai to stage a blood drive on the suite level of Staples from 6 p.m. through halftime of Monday\u2019s game against the Golden State Warriors. Fans who gave blood got a pair of tickets to see the Clippers take on either the Sacramento Kings, Charlotte Hornets or Phoenix Suns.<\/p>\n
Additionally, to raise money to support the families of those affected by the shooting, the Clippers on Sunday also started selling the \u201cENOUGH\u201d T-shirts that they and the Milwaukee Bucks \u2013 and then the Lakers and the Atlanta Hawks \u2013 wore before their games on Saturday and Sunday. The names of the 12 shooting victims appear on the back of the black shirts, which are on sale for $19.99 at the Clippers website, with the entirety of the net proceeds being directed to the Ventura County Community Foundation.<\/p>\n
Before the Clippers played Saturday, their public address announcer Eric Smith made a statement: \u201cThe Clippers are using their collective voice right now to tell the world that gun violence is never OK.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was probably as proud of this franchise as I\u2019ve been since I\u2019ve been here,\u201d Rivers said before Monday\u2019s game against the Warriors. \u201cBecause instead of doing a moment of silence and saying nothing, we said something. We wore something, and more importantly, we spoke about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Warriors coach Steve Kerr commended the Clippers \u2013 and the NBA \u2013 for supporting that stand.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to address this issue as a country,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cOur government has to address it, we can\u2019t just keep spewing out the same garbage about, \u2018Well, it\u2019s the Second Amendment; it\u2019s the price of freedom.\u2019 Give me a break. We don\u2019t have freedom if we can\u2019t walk into a bar, a movie theater, a concert without being worried of getting murdered. So I\u2019m glad that the NBA has backed up the players, I\u2019m glad that Adam Silver came out and supported the players for wearing the shirts and I support the players. We\u2019re all in this together, we just want people to be safe and so I\u2019m all in.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8390,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-coverage"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vccf.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}