About 10 miles from the latest incident of police brutality against a Black man, Nets coach Steve Nash spoke with despair in his voice.

“More senseless tragedy,” Nash said Tuesday, before the Nets faced the Timberwolves. “Heartbreaking for everyone, I think, I hope, to be in a civilization that behaves this way. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be African-American, to be an African-American parent. It’s unacceptable and it’s devastating to put yourself in their shoes. And it’s devastating just to be a part of it.”

Daunte Wright, 20, was shot by Brooklyn Center, Minn. police officer Kim Potter after he was pulled over for driving with expired license plates. A “gross misdemeanor warrant” for Wright’s arrest was discovered and a struggle ensued as Wright tried to re-enter his car, according to police. Surveillance footage appeared to show that Potter intended to pull out a taser but reached for a gun and fatally shot Wright as he drove away.

The Nets-Timberwolves game was postponed Monday night and rescheduled as a Tuesday matinee on about six hours of notice. Both teams warmed up and stood for the national anthem in black T-shirts that read “With liberty and justice FOR ALL’ in white block letters. A moment of silence was held during which a picture of Wright with his young child was shown on the Target Center video board.

“The sad reality is that we just keep moving forward,” Nash said. “All of us are programmed to keep moving forward. And it keeps happening. That’s worrisome in a sense. We all want to play. We all want to do our job. We all love what we do. But it is worrisome that life just keeps moving forward but nothing really changes. Just a lot of conflict, I think, internally for everybody.”

Yankees star Aaron Hicks – who played for the Twins – sat out Monday’s game because he wasn’t in the right emotional space to play. About 75 percent of NBA players are Black, according to studies.

“If we’re not playing for the right reasons, that’s 100 percent great,” Nash said. “But what does it change if we do play today or don’t play today? Meaningful change needs to come at some point, and we could debate whether or not playing today would bring about meaningful change. I think meaningful change is much, much deeper than a basketball game, so what can we do to support meaningful change? Those are conversations that I don’t think pivot on one game.”

Nash said he would be “all for not playing” if there was a “step-by-step, sort-of procedural reasoning” behind the cancellation.  

“It’s a much bigger issue than a basketball game, and that’s the tricky part of this,” Nash said. “Before you know it, we’ll be in Philly [to play Wednesday], then we’ll be back home, and then we’ll be in the next city – and this poor kid lost his life. A baby lost a father. It’s sickening.

Wright’s death comes simultaneous to the murder trial for former Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin, who pressed his knee on the neck of George Floyd for more than nine minutes during an arrest last May.

“What’s new?” Nash asked rhetorically. “The players, how many times in their careers have they faced a situation like this? This just happens to be we’re in Minnesota when another event happens on top of what happened last year. It’s a terrible, terrible situation.

“I think the players, many, in some respects, basketball is a little bit of solace where they have some control. We’re here for them, but there’s not a ton of conversation to be had in the sense that we’ve been talking about this for a few years now, at minimum, in the NBA.”