Doc Rivers was in his mid-20s and just years removed from playing high school basketball at Proviso East in Maywood when he first met John Lewis.
While playing for the Atlanta Hawks, Rivers befriended Andrew Young, the civil rights advocate who had served as that city's Mayor and launched a campaign to serve as Georgia's governor.
"I went on a campaign trip with John Lewis and Andy Young," Rivers said Saturday morning during his Zoom media availability from the NBA's restart on the Disney World campus in Florida. "Just think about that. I was, I don't know, 26, maybe 27, and we flew to Albany, Ga., of all places. And Andrew Young gave a speech at an all-white church, and he was fantastic. It was an absolutely amazing speech. The crowd was going crazy.
"We get on the plane and we're talking. And Andrew Young turns to me---he used to call me Young Doc---and said, 'Young Doc, what did you think about the speech?' And I jokingly said, 'Well, Mr. Young, I thought the speech was great, but I don't think you're getting one vote from that church. And everybody started laughing. John Lewis piped in and said, 'Well, we're not trying to get all of them. We're just trying to get one at a time and eventually it will be all of them. I thought that was just one powerful statement."
Click to download the MyTeams App for the latest Bulls news and analysis.
Lewis, the civil rights icon who served as a U.S. representative for the last 33 years, passed away Friday night at age 80. The Bulls were among several NBA teams to honor Lewis' life via social media.
Rivers raised a salient point in that much of what Lewis devoted his life's work to are causes that still plague the country. As one of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Big Six" civil rights activists, Lewis is perhaps most known for his role leading protestors in a march across Alabama's Edmund Pettus Bridge in what became known as the "Bloody Sunday" march in 1965. Lewis suffered a fractured skull at the hands of Alabama state troopers, footage of which created a national uproar.
"Really sad day for our country," Rivers said about Lewis' passing. "What's amazing is when you think about right now, some of the stuff that John Lewis was fighting for, we're still fighting for. Voter suppression right now is at an all-time high."
NBA
