Taking the casual business as usual approach did not help with addressing the same owner before. Now maybe showing that you are willing to take a stance and sacrifice for something that directly/indirectly affects you will send a message to the NBA board members, commish, and beyond the NBA walls
Sterling's fate is not in the player's hands though. That's up to Silver and the other owners. Why let a racist fukk up everything you've sacrificed your entire life towards? I think at some point everyone will be loud and clear on how they feel about this if they haven't already.
Now, once the season ends, handle your business, but it's not as if the players not playing is gonna lead to this massive overthrow, of the Sterling regime, because if we wanna keep it 100, it shoulda happened a while ago.