MIAMI — Dwyane Wade and LeBron James were only a few miles away from Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, participating in the NBA All-Star Game on the night the unarmed black teenager wearing a hooded sweat shirt was shot to death by a neighborhood crime-watch volunteer.
They never knew the teenager, but on Friday they decided it was time to speak out.
Wade posted a photo of himself from a previous photo shoot wearing a hooded sweat shirt, otherwise known as a hoodie, to his Twitter and Facebook pages on Friday morning.
A couple hours later, James posted another photo — this one of the Heat team, all wearing hoodies, their heads bowed, their hands stuffed into their pockets. Details of when and where the photo was taken were not immediately available.
Among the hashtags James linked to the photo: “WeWantJustice.”
“As a father, this hits home,” said Wade, who has 10- and 4-year-old sons.
Martin was killed in Sanford, Fla. as he was returning to a gated community, carrying candy and iced tea. A neighborhood crime-watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, said he acted in self-defense and has not been arrested, though state and federal authorities are still investigating.
Protests have popped up nationwide in recent days, with thousands of people — many of them wearing hoodies — calling for action.
James told confidants that when Wade’s girlfriend, Gabrielle Union, called Wade and James’ attention to the issue, the two NBA stars spent several days talking about the case, gathering information and deciding how to make a statement.
According to his confidants, James and Wade decided a team-wide message would make a stronger statement and organized the photo taken at the team’s hotel in Detroit, where the team is scheduled to play the Pistons. Mike Miller, the team’s only white player, was not in the photo because he was not with the team on its current road trip because of injury.
“This situation hit home for me because last Christmas, all my oldest son wanted as a gift was hoodies,” Wade told The Associated Press Friday from Auburn Hills, Mich., where the Heat were to play the Detroit Pistons. “So when I heard about this a week ago, I thought of my sons. I’m speaking up because I feel it’s necessary that we get past the stereotype of young, black men and especially with our youth.”
Wade and James decided Thursday to make their reactions about the Martin situation public, and James felt the best way to do that was the team photo with everyone wearing hoodies.
Wade has also been retweeting comments from CNN’s Roland Martin on the case.
“You don’t think your voice matter? 1,354,645 have signed the change.org petition demanding justice for Trayvon Martin,” said one of Roland Martin’s tweets, which Wade retweeted. “But the Trayvon Martin case is NOT over. Keep pushing. Keep prodding. Keep planning. Keep protesting. Justice is not an overnight thing!”
Miami-area high school students have held walkouts in protest, calling for justice for Trayvon Martin. Gov. Rick Scott appointed a special prosecutor in the case and established a statewide task force to study the law.
President Barack Obama spoke out on the case Friday, calling it a “tragedy.”
“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon. I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves and we’re going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened,” Obama said.
On Friday, Fox News Channel commentator Geraldo Rivera said on “Fox & Friends” the hoodie Martin wore when he was killed was as much responsible for his death as the man who shot him. Rivera later said his comment was “politically incorrect.”
Separately, a Florida state lawmaker, Rep. Alan Williams, a Democrat from Tallahassee, urged the Heat stars — along with New York Knicks forward Amare Stoudemire, a central Florida native — in an early Friday post on Twitter to wear hoodies during pregame warmups to call attention to the Martin story.
Such a move would not be permitted under the NBA’s uniform policy, although Heat players are planning to pay tribute to Martin in some manner when they face the Pistons on Friday night.
“When you see Trayvon, when you see that image, he could be anybody’s kid, black or white, Hispanic, Asian, what have you,” Williams said in a telephone interview. “Basketball is a sport that kind of transcends race and class and all those things that divide us. For me, as a state representative, we have to go beyond the traditional routes that some people would take.”