Former NBA star Chris Webber offered some impassioned and emotional commentary Wednesday night on NBA players striking in protest after the shooting of Jacob Blake.

Webber appeared on Inside the NBA, after Kenny Smith walked off the set in solidarity with the players.

“I’m very proud of the players. I don’t know the next steps,” Webber said. “Ωon’t really care what the next steps are because the first steps are to garner attention, and they have everybody’s attention around the world right now. Then leadership and others will get together and decide the next steps. So we know it won’t end tomorrow. We know that there’s been a million marches and nothing’ll change tomorrow.”

He continued:

“I’m here to speak for those that are always marginalized. Those that live in these neighborhoods where we preach and tell them to vote and walk away. Charles Barkley came to my high school. Just seeing him in the locker room, seeing his hands and his body, that inspired me. You can’t see something… you can’t be something till you see it. And when I tell you the little kids that have called me, upset. I have a godson with autism and I just had to explain to him why we aren’t playing. I have young nephews that I’ve had to talk to about death before they’ve even seen it in a movie. If not now, when? If not during a pandemic and countless lives being lost — if not now, when? That’s all I want to hear from the rest of the night when everybody’s pontificating and thinking and soapboxing and all of that. We know nothing is going to change. We get it. If Martin Luther King got shot and risked his life, Medgar Evers, and we’ve seen this in all of our heroes constantly taken down, we understand it’s not going to end, but that does not mean, young men, that you don’t do anything. Don’t listen to these people telling you don’t do anything because it’s not going to end right away. You are starting something for the next generation and the next generation to take over. Do you have to be smart? Yes. Do you have to make sure that you have a plan? Yes. Do you have to be articulate about that plan? Yes. All of those things, but that’s what you’re going to do. They’re professionals. They know how to be the best of themselves. So I applaud it. I applaud it because it’s the young people, it’s the young people leading the way. And I applaud them.”

You can watch the full segment above, via TNT.