During the singing of the National Anthem on Tuesday night before their preseason game against the Philadelphia 76ers, the players of the Boston Celtics linked arms to show their unity as a squad.

The scene was captured by the Fox Sports: Hoops‘ official Twitter account:

Shortly after the demonstration, the C's shared a video message promoting unity in light of the social issues of racially-charged violence and brutality the country is facing.

Here's the transcript, per Chris Forsberg of ESPN:

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The current squad drew inspiration from the 1960-61 team that was also photographed locking hands during the civil rights movement as reported by CSNNE’s Abby Chin:

https://twitter.com/RedsArmy_Chuck/status/783444507127930880?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

The Celtics have talked about their desire to promote progress and togetherness, as head coach Brad Stevens told reporters via Celtics.com:

“We’ve had a lot of sit-down discussions about it, We’ve had a lot of individual discussions. We’ve had three or four meetings with the team after practices; sometimes just the players, sometimes just us, sometimes people that we’ve invited in from the outside to spend time with our guys. Our guys have been incredibly thoughtful.

“Like what I’ve seen across the NBA early on, I think our guys are really focused on promoting positive(ity), unity, togetherness, progress and all of those types of things. I think they’re very much into what I’ve seen from teams thus far, in talking about togetherness and continued progress.”

“I think when you get into deep, impactful stuff, those are special conversations, and sometimes those are uncomfortable and sometimes there can be tension around those, but I think that’s the beautiful part about our group is they all really, really appreciate one another, really support one another.”

It's the first time this preseason that a team has made this kind of demonstration followed by a video message promoting unity.