Rough game for Shake Milton on Saturday.

The Sixers’ newly-minted starting point guard finished with 0 points on 0-1 shooting in a performance that was low-lighted by a first-half argument with teammate Joel Embiid, later brushed off as no big deal from the center and head coach Brett Brown.

Shake didn’t speak after the game, as reporters operating remotely are being provided Brown and a couple of players via Zoom call on a daily basis. It’s a rotating setup where players take turns sitting down in front of a camera and receiving questions.

Milton was up on Sunday afternoon, and in a 1:40 availability that featured two whole questions, decided to keep the focus on social justice and did not talk about his performance at all:

“I didn’t really come here to talk about that today.”

Hmm, alright. All good. I think we’d all agree that social/racial justice and meaningful reform clearly trumps bubble basketball at this point in time, or any epoch past, present, and future.

There was some criticism, of course, which we’d source to a Philadelphia Inquirer story titled “Shake Milton wants focus on racial injustice — not his performance against the Pacers,” which may or may not be unfair. Keith Pompey wrote the story, but not the headline, which isn’t inaccurate but maybe could have been tweaked to be more delicate. I don’t know. Media members at large are walking on egg shells right now, because we don’t want to be insensitive to an important movement, but we also need to do our jobs and ask basketball questions at the same time.

“Why not both?”

That’s the somewhat-but-not-entirely rhetorical question here, isn’t it?

Considering the current climate, is it too much to ask for a professional athlete to speak on a poor performance and a teammate argument? Hypothetically, you can do that while using the rest of the allotted time period to talk about social justice and keep that movement at the forefront, so that it doesn’t become lost in the shuffle. The typical Philadelphia sports fan would probably appreciate that approach and respect the fact that a player would own up to a bad game.

Of course, nobody will give half a crap about the Indy game if Milton goes out and lights it up tonight against the Spurs. And there’s a larger question of whether players should have to speak to the media at all, since a growing number of fans think we’re useless and unnecessary in 2020, a bunch of nitwits and dopes, as Howard Eskin would say.

I would toss it to you, the reader, in asking if it’s possible to walk and chew bubble gum at the same time when it comes to basketball and the current wave of social justice sweeping across the country.