{"id":16426,"date":"2015-12-24T09:00:48","date_gmt":"2015-12-24T17:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/nba-stars-support-campaign-to-end-gun-violence-in-new-spot\/"},"modified":"2015-12-24T09:00:48","modified_gmt":"2015-12-24T17:00:48","slug":"nba-stars-support-campaign-to-end-gun-violence-in-new-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/nba-stars-support-campaign-to-end-gun-violence-in-new-spot\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA stars support campaign to end gun violence in new spot"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK<\/strong> \u2014 Stephen Curry heard about a shooting involving a 3-year-old girl over the summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy daughter Riley is that age,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That begins a public service announcement that debuts on Christmas and features four NBA stars lending their voices to the campaign to end gun violence.<\/p>\n

Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul and Joakim Noah also are featured in the spot in support of Everytown for Gun Safety, the nation\u2019s largest violence prevention organization in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe gun should never be an option,\u201d Anthony says in the spot that will air during the league\u2019s heavily viewed holiday schedule.<\/p>\n

Director and basketball fan Spike Lee is a member of the organization\u2019s creative council and worked to get the league and its players involved in what Jason Rzepka, Everytown\u2019s director of cultural engagement, calls a \u201cnew high-water mark for our work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think (Lee) sensed and saw that our guys were feeling that same passion that he had and he reached out to Adam (Silver) and said I want to do something about this and I think we should do it together, and we thought it was a good idea,\u201d said Kathy Behrens, the NBA\u2019s president of social responsibility and player programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe guys really wanted to kind of put their voices behind this, and so we like the way it\u2019s come together and I think the guys speak very passionately about the issue of trying to end gun violence, trying to make their communities stronger and safer for families.\u201d<\/p>\n

The players are joined during the 32-second spot by survivors of gun violence and others who are holding pictures of loved ones who were killed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could not be more thrilled about this as a platform to be able to reach new audiences, to continue to focus the country\u2019s attention on the fact that 88 Americans die as a result of gun violence each day,\u201d Rzepka said.<\/p>\n

The project came together within the last month, and Behrens said more players would have wanted to be involved if they had more time. Even so, Rzepka said the organization never had such involvement from professional athletes, calling it \u201cpretty remarkable to have survivors of gun violence standing shoulder to shoulder with some of the biggest stars.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOftentimes, the stories of the everyday Americans who deal with this issue in a profound way because they\u2019ve lost someone they love to gun violence, those stories often go untold,\u201d Rzepka said.<\/p>\n

The spot ends with the voice of Curry, whose daughter charmed fans during Golden State\u2019s playoff run, saying, \u201cWe can end gun violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bulls\u2019 Noah, in Chicago, and Anthony, in his hometown of Baltimore, have been particularly vocal about making their cities safer. Behrens said the league\u2019s involvement was a natural fit, in line with other community service initiatives such as the White House\u2019s My Brother\u2019s Keeper program.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to raise awareness and you need to do it in a way that makes people realize there is something that they can do, and that\u2019s really how the spot ends,\u201d she said. \u201cWe can do something about this and that\u2019s the point. If we can then we should.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

This story has been corrected to show NBA misstated name of Everytown representative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 Stephen Curry heard about a shooting involving a 3-year-old girl over the summer. \u201cMy daughter Riley is that age,\u201d he said. That begins a public service announcement that debuts on Christmas and features four NBA stars lending their voices to the campaign to end gun violence. Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul and Joakim […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-16426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16426"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=16426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}