The NBA announced Wednesday that Steph Curry will receive the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Social Justice Champion Award. Curry will become the third player to receive the award for his work to promote voting participation in marginalized communities.

For winning the award, Curry will receive $100,000 to donate to the organization of his choice. He has reportedly selected the University of San Francisco Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice.

“Curry prioritizes uplifting communities by fostering equity and creating access to opportunity,” the league said in a statement. “As a co-chair of former First Lady Michelle Obama’s ‘When We All Vote’ initiative, Curry uses his platform to drive voter registration, education and turnout, most recently during the 2022 election season. His role encouraged millions of new voters to participate in the political process and make their voices heard through civic engagement.”

The award, named after NBA legend and civil rights activist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, was created in 2021 to honor players making strides in the pursuit of social justice. Carmelo Anthony was the inaugural winner in 2021 for his decades-long efforts to ensure equal representation for black communities. Veteran player Reggie Bullock won in 2022 for his support of the LGBTQ+ community through philanthropy and work with a number of local organizations.

Over the years, Curry has delivered several emphatic statements promoting increased voter participation in national and local elections, including an impassioned address to the Senate in 2021 to pass the Freedom to Vote Act. The bill aimed to limit voter suppression, gerrymandering and other partisan election practices but stalled on the Senate floor.

“Curry is also committed to raising awareness around issues of community safety, utilizing the Warriors’ 2023 White House visit to engage directly with President Biden and participate in a White House press briefing with head coach Steve Kerr to publicly address the matter.”

Curry was one of five players nominated for the 2023 award, along with Jaren Jackson Jr., Tre Jones, Grant Williams and Chris Paul. While the Warriors star receives $100,000, the other four nominees will receive $25,000 which they can donate to programs of their choice as well.

The World Boxing Association (WBA) announced it has suspended judge Gloria Martinez Rizzo after finding a controversial scorecard and racist tweets from her now-deleted Twitter account.

“As stated in Article 9.01 of our Code of Ethics: “To oppose and counteract discrimination on the grounds of race, nationality, religion, social status,” the WBA announced on Twitter. “For that reason, the WBA has suspended judge Gloria Martinez indefinitely.”

WNBA President Gilberto Mendoza will meet with Rizzo on Wednesday to discuss disciplinary action. The disciplinary actions can include permanent expulsion from WBA-sanctioned fights.

These actions were prompted by Rizzo’s highly controversial 117-110 scorecard in the Mykal Fox vs. Gabriel Maestre interim welterweight title fight on Saturday, and it sparked outrage in the boxing community. Many believed that Fox won the bout after he scored a second-round knockout, but Maestre was declared the winner. This led to confusion among the audience. Fox later called the fight a “robbery.”

Shortly after the fight, Rizzo was revealed to have made several racist tweets in  2020, which included negative remarks about LeBron James and former First Lady Michelle Obama.

“We saw her score was wrong despite the unanimous decision,” Mendoza told ESPN. “Those comments she made in the past — she might be expelled by the WBA.”

“I don’t support any kind of racism. I believe inequality,” Mendoza added. “Sports are the only thing that brings equality into the world sometimes.”

In her younger years, Michelle Obama often felt like she was in the shadow of her athletic older brother, Craig Robinson, who was a star basketball forward at Princeton in the early 1980s. When she followed him there, she became known as “Craig’s little sis.”

Craig Robinson And Sister Michelle Obama On Their Childhood Games

Now, as first lady, Michelle Obama has become the superstar. She and her brother, who coached the Oregon State Beavers men’s basketball team from 2008-2014 and now serves as an ESPN basketball analyst, reunited for a forum on youth sports at the Aspen Institute’s 2016 Project Play Summit at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. The summit was moderated by ESPN host Michael Wilbon.

“We used to play everything, and it started with playing catch in the house,” Robinson said at Tuesday’s forum.

“And it was a little house,” Mrs. Obama interjected, smiling at her brother, who worked as a bond trader in the 1990s prior to becoming a college basketball coach.

The two siblings then continued, discussing the many games and sports in particular that represented such a strong facet of their childhood.

“We used to play Nerf basketball in the living room with a Nerf basketball and a lampshade,” Robinson told the audience of advocates and organizers for youth sports. “My mom’s here. You remember we almost burned the house down because we left a ball in the lamp and somebody turned the lamp on and my mother was like, ‘What’s that I smell? Is something burning.’ We looked at each other like. . . it’s the Nerf ball.”

The first lady couldn’t help but laugh at the memory, as did her mother, Marian Robinson, who sat in the front row.

When “Miche,” as Robinson calls her, began dating Barack Obama, she asked her brother to play basketball with her beau and return to her with his opinion. “He’s very confident without being cocky,” Robinson told his sister, according to his 2010 memoir, Game of Character. “He had passed the test with a definitive thumbs up on his playing and his character.”

The first lady has become known for her near-daily exercise routine. Robinson also added that his daughter, Leslie, plays basketball at Princeton. Michelle Obama teased that her older brother had dropped down to at least third place in terms of the best athletes in the family — or possibly seventh, behind his four kids.

The two siblings also called for corporations to support activities and an infrastructure that would make it possible for more children to become physically active regardless of their economic circumstances.

Robinson’s older children, Leslie and Avery, have travelled abroad with their aunt, including a visit to South Africa where they met the late anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela. 

Although they both jumped from working class to a higher social strata, Robinson and Obama both seemed to look back nostalgically on their shared childhood. All of their children are involved in some type of organized sport.

“We would play all day long. I mean, you would be rushing down your breakfast to go out,” Obama recounted. “We played this game that the kids in the neighborhood just called ‘chase.’ I don’t even know if there was a point to it. You were just being chased — you know.”

“Oh yeah,” Robinson said. “I remember that.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRKC6CiOZA4

PHOTO: LOS ANGELES, CA – MARCH 02: Head coach Craig Robinson of the Oregon State Beavers reacts to play from his team during the first half against the UCLA Bruins at Pauley Pavilion on March 2, 2014 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)