Basketball Australia joins with online safety platform to combat social media abuse

BRISBANE, Australia (AP) — Basketball Australia and its men's and women's professional leagues announced on Wednesday an online safety platform to help athletes and teams protect themselves from social media abuse.

The move couldn't come any sooner for Scott Roth, a former NBA player and assistant coach with several teams including the Toronto Raptors and Detroit Pistions.

The Cleveland, Ohio-born Roth has coached the Tasmania JackJumpers men's National Basketball League team since the club's inaugural season in 2021, leading the team to a league championship in 2024.

This season, Roth delivered an emotional post-game news conference where he talked about distressing abuse that had been directed at players and their families for weeks. Roth said the issue escalated when a person wished a miscarriage upon a player’s pregnant wife.

“This last 24 hours have been quite emotional for our group … very emotional, and we have a lot of distraught players and family members and wives and spouses and children,” Roth said. "We have been attacked brutally through social media, to the point where it’s ugly. The NBL must do something.”

Basketball Australia and the NBL and Women's National Basketball League heeded Roth's advice. It will now take advantage of a partnership with Social Protect, providing players, coaches and officials with access to tools and education designed to monitor, detect and delete online harassment and abuse across social media platforms.

Basketball Australia said Social Protect’s “real-time platform” automatically identifies and removes abusive comments across several sites including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok by tracking more than two million abusive words and phrases in more than 100 languages.

Other sports have enlisted help in an attempt to cut down on social media abuse, including the ATP on behalf of tennis players. And in August, soccer officials in Germany announced an investigation into two incidents in which players were allegedly subjected to racist abuse by people in the stadium.

Jennie Sager, chief executive of Australia's WNBL, said it was important to create an online environment where athletes, especially females, can express themselves knowing they have strong, proactive support.

“Female athletes are targeted with nearly 20% more online abuse than their male peers, and 85% say it impacts their well-being,” Sager said in the Basketball Australia statement. "That’s a reality we refuse to ignore. Our partnership with Social Protect is a decisive step in standing up for our players. It gives them the tools, protection and confidence they deserve, so they can own their voice online, and not be silenced by those hiding behind keyboards.”

Canadian-born Australian player Dejan “DJ” Vasiljevic played college basketball for the Miami Hurricanes before joining the Sydney Kings in 2020. He won two NBL championships with the Kings in 2022 and 2023.

He's experienced regular social media abuse and wants it to stop.

"The fact that some people think it's OK to jump on social media and to say to us directly . . . ‘go kill yourself’ shows that people live a very sad life," the 28-year-old Vasiljevic said.

Roth says the abuse is “beyond crossing the line.”

“We have now family members scared to go outside the house, kids reading what they’re reading," he says. "We deserve better.”

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FILE - Detroit Pistons assistant coach Scott Roth reacts on the sidelines during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Golden State Warriors, in Auburn Hills, Mich., Feb. 24, 2014. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)

TUKWILA, Wash. (AP) — Crews used sandbags to shore up an earthen levee south of Seattle on Monday after a small section of it failed following a week of heavy rains, prompting an evacuation order covering parts of three suburbs, an official said.

The evacuation order from King County in Washington state covered homes and businesses east of the Green River in parts of Kent, Renton and Tukwila. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning that initially covered nearly 47,000 people, but was reduced within a few hours to an area covering 7,000 people.

Authorities in two of those cities — Renton and Tukwila — said Monday afternoon the flooding was confined to small, industrial areas and that no residents were being evacuated.

The spokesperson for the city of Renton, Laura Pettitt, said the breach was minimal and was being addressed by sandbagging, including the use of large bags, about 3 feet (1 meter) tall and filled with about a ton of sand.

“What we understand is that the area is being managed and the breach has been controlled,” she said. “However, that’s not to say that there wouldn’t be future impact with any changing situation.”

In Tukwila, the flooding occurred in a “very small” industrial part of the city that does not have any residential areas, police spokesperson Victor Masters said.

The levee breach followed days of heavy rain and flooding that inundated communities, forced the evacuations of tens of thousands of people and prompted scores of rescues throughout western Washington state.

The failure occurred on the Briscoe Desimone levee adjacent to the Green River. A section of paved bike path along the top of the levee in Tukwila cratered and broke where the levee washed away underneath it.

The levee was badly damaged during flooding in 2020. Long-term repairs were not expected to be completed until 2031, according to a blog post from the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks.

Last Tuesday, crews began construction work to install what they called a seepage blanket — a permeable material that can remove water from a cut slope — in an effort to reduce the flood risk for more than 30,000 people in Tukwila, Kent, and Renton, according to the county Department of Natural Resources.

In August 2015, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began repairs to a 775-foot-long (235-meter) segment of the levee, as the result of flooding in March 2014, according to the federal agency. The damage significantly impacted the levee’s ability to protect an area of about 7.5 square miles (19 square kilometers).The work was to be completed by Dec. 30, 2015, though it wasn't immediately clear when the repairs were concluded.

This story has been corrected to show that the three cities affected were Tukwila, Kent and Renton, rather than Tukwila, Kent and Auburn.

Rush reported from Portland, Oregon. Associated Press writer Christopher L. Keller contributed from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Crews inspect a crack in a levee along the Green River in Tukwila, Wash., Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Manuel Valdes)