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The Oklahoma City Thunder held their media day yesterday and as you might expect, Russell Westbrook was faced with questions about Kevin Durant more than anyone. While he didn’t seem to enthused answering questions about that topic, one thing you could see he was happy to talk about was the social issues plaguing our country. With the shooting deaths by police this week of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Ok and Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, NC, communities nationwide are on edge and that is something Russ wants to deal with head on.

@IamJoeSports

Speaking with Royce Young, who covers the Thunder for ESPN, Russell said he is ready to make a stand and as an African-American athlete, his voice is important.

“More importantly, I think a lot of people don’t realize the families of all these young men, their mothers, their brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, I think it’s very important that we understand how important the families feel about the situations,” he said. “And me being an African-American athlete and having a voice, I think it’s important that I make a stand and know that something has to change. I think I don’t have an answer. Obviously nobody has an answer — if that’s the case, it would have been solved — but I think it’s important that we figure out what we can do to help improve what’s going on.”

In regards to the way Colin Kaepernick has sparked more protest just by simply taking a knee, Russ understood why he did it but he also gets why some people wouldn’t understand if they were raised different.

“I think for me personally, me growing up in the inner city and being able to see different things on a night-in and day-in, day-out basis,” he said, “that hit home for me just being able to see different things that’s going on globally and getting an opportunity for other people across the world to be able to see it, and now I think it’s getting to a point where obviously there’s something that needs to be changed on that aspect and you know, I’m going to use my voice as much as possible being able to relay that message.”

If Russ attacks the social issues we are facing the same way he attacks the rim, then we will all win.