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Does the sheriff’s deputy stop a white executive? Maybe. Does he shove him, hard? What about after that executive says, ‘I’m the president of the pc28����Raptors,’ does the sheriff’s deputy shove him again, violently? Does it nearly turn into a fight?

Maybe Strickland would have acted that way with anybody. Some cops are just bad cops, always.

But it was Ujiri. What followed was over a year of questions, potential criminal charges, a civil lawsuit. And finally, Tuesday night, the truth.

Full videos of the confrontation had never been released, until Tuesday night. A long-range view was obtained by KTVU’s Lisa Fernandez in San Francisco, and Ujiri’s California legal team released the body camera footage it obtained last week, as part of a countersuit. Finally, it’s truly clear.

Ujiri was watching a TV in the back when the Raptors won. He hugged longtime equipment manager Kevin DiPietro and headed out to the main arena bowl. Ujiri found his wife, Ramatu; after a few emotional moments together, Ujiri made his way toward the court alone. Strickland was one of the local police tasked with keeping the crowd from the celebration.

The video shows Ujiri is walking slowly. He does not have the special armband the NBA distributed for entry to the court, but is pulling his NBA credential out of his jacket. Strickland puts out both hands and shoves, hard enough to throw Ujiri back. He barks, “Back the f—- up, man!” Ujiri takes a step forward and says, “What did you push me for? You’re pushing the president of the Raptors.” Strickland shoves again, hard. Ujiri’s face is pure anger and bewilderment; he cannot seem to believe this is happening to him. He pushes back.

People run in to separate the two men. After a few tense moments Ujiri reaches the court, where Kyle Lowry waits: the point guard grabs the stunned Ujiri by the wrist and almost unknowingly pulls him to safety, into a fierce embrace.

So let’s add it up. There were witnesses everywhere. There were cameras everywhere. The NBA legal department was involved, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment lawyers were involved, and Ujiri is a rich man. The Alameda Sheriff’s Office had seen the same body camera footage you just saw. They knew what happened. What happened next?

In June, Alameda Sheriff Greg Ahern recommended that Ujiri face a charge of battery of a police officer, which can result in up to a year in prison. Sgt. Ray Kelly, a spokesperson for the department, backed up Strickland’s version of events. The department declined to make the body cam footage public, arguing it might compromise the investigation. You don’t say.

The sheriff’s office had seen the same body cam video you’ve seen, and Ahern, the former head of the California State Sheriffs’ Association, recommended the charge anyway. The DA dropped the charges in October.

In February of this year, Strickland sued Ujiri, MLSE and the NBA for $11 million (U.S.), saying the Raptors president hit him with both fists in the jaw and chest, and had acted with “evil motive amounting to malice.” Strickland went on temporary disability, from which he reportedly earns $224,000 per year, plus benefits.

“It’s an unprovoked significant hit to the jaw of the law enforcement officer,” said David Mastagni, a high-profile employment rights lawyer, told San Francisco’s KPIX-5. “He has a serious concussion; a templar mandibular joint injury, which is a serious jaw injury.” He added, “This is an issue of credentials or no credentials, not race.” Mastagani’s bio says the Martindale-Hubble service, which has provided background on lawyers since 1868, says “his peers rank him at the highest level of professional excellence.”

Strickland knew Ujiri didn’t have the body cam footage. His word against mine. A shakedown. Getting the footage changed everything.

So what could have happened if Ujiri was walking down the street? Pulled over in a traffic stop? In front of a grocery store? In his own home?

We know what could have happened. We know their names. George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Trayvon Martin. Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Eric Garner. Philando Castile. Ahmaud Arbery. The real list of names is so long it would fill books. Wayne Embry is Ujiri’s special adviser. He grew up in segregation-era Ohio, an NBA Hall of Famer, the first Black general manager in the NBA. When he was running the Cleveland Cavaliers, he once found a bullet on his chair in Richfield Coliseum.

Ujiri has filed a countersuit, because he can afford to. He refused to settle, because he could afford to. But in some eyes he was still a Black man whose word had to be weighed against a white policeman’s, until Tuesday night.

So what would have happened? You probably don’t know the name Dujuan Armstrong. In 2018, the 23-year-old Black father of two reported to the Santa Rita jail in Dublin, Calif., on a burglary sentence that allowed him to serve the sentence on weekends. He died there. According to The Appeal, which writes about the American legal system, when his mother came to claim the body she found her son’s face covered in bruises, his skull smashed open, held together by staples.

The Alameda Sheriff’s Department cited body cam footage in indemnifying its officers, which it declined to release for over a year. It noted Armstrong had drugs in his system, including cocaine. The footage eventually showed he was acting erratically, was surrounded by police officers, was kneed and kicked by two sheriff’s deputies, placed in a spit hood and a WRAP device — a complex harness — and placed on a gurney, where it was discovered he had stopped breathing.

Armstrong died of asphyxiation. The autopsy said his erratic behaviour should not have been fatal. The department was sued over the death, and no longer uses WRAP devices. According to The Appeal, 80 people had died in Ahern’s custody between 2007 and 2019. According to the East Bay Times, the Alameda Sheriff’s Department between 2015 and 2018 alone, on 41 cases, including 17 cases of excessive force. Both were the highest in the Bay Area.

So if you wanted to know why the Raptors rolled into the Orlando bubble with , this was all one more reason. If you wanted to know why there have been protests across America and the world, this was all one more reason. If you wanted to know why the NBA is attaching itself to social justice, to anti-racism, and actually digging money from the owners’ pockets to do so, this was all one more reason.

Masai Ujiri’s life had led to that moment. He has not spoken much about this, but said of Strickland, “he stole something from me.” And that’s true.

Now imagine what was stolen from every Black person who doesn’t have his ability to protect themselves with witnesses, and money, and reputation. Ujiri had just won the NBA title. He was, in that moment, a hero to millions. But not everyone.

And now the truth is out, and the truth about Masai Ujiri is a truth about America, and Canada, too. And maybe, in this age and the ones that came before it, that’s all you can ask.