The NBA will play two preseason games in China, five years after an effective ban was placed on them by communist leaders of that oppressed state. Chinese government officials yanked the games after Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey expressed support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters.
The Brooklyn Nets and Phoenix Suns are scheduled to play two preseason games in Red China after communist officials relented and reinstated the NBA’s lucrative, multimillion-dollar broadcast deal.
The U.S. basketball league was yanked off the air in China in 2019 when Rocket’s executive Morey took to his Twitter account and posted a message on October 4th of that year reading, “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.”
Communist government officials in China demanded that the NBA fire Morey for daring to support the pro-democracy movement in its Hong Kong territory. Still, NBA commissioner Adam Silver demurred from taking that extreme action.
Silver instead harshly and very publicly criticized Morey, forcing him to withdraw his support of the pro-democracy protesters, apologize to China, and delete his tweet.
Morey quickly acquiesced and pushed out a groveling apology to China as the controversy heated up:
I did not intend my tweet to cause any offense to Rockets fans and friends of mine in China. I was merely voicing one thought, based on one interpretation, of one complicated event. I have had a lot of opportunity since that tweet to hear and consider other perspectives.
I have always appreciated the significant support our Chinese fans and sponsors have provided. And I would hope that those who are upset will know that offending or misunderstanding them was not my intention. My tweets are my own and in no way represent the Rockets or the NBA.
Regardless, upon Silver’s refusal to fire Morey and despite the millions of dollars invested in the NBA, Chinese leaders suspended the league’s broadcast in China.
Silver later said that suspending broadcast rights in China cost the league “hundreds of millions” of dollars.
Others in the NBA also “raged” about Morey’s support of oppressed people. NBA star LeBron James — who often pretends to be a woke liberal spokesman –was reportedly furious that his personal multi-million-dollar deals in China were put at risk because Morey wanted to speak up in support of the oppressed people in Hong Kong, who Chinese officials were beating, imprisoning, and murdering just because they wanted to keep Hong Kong operating as a democratic system instead of as a Chinese communist state.
James has had no qualms about making millions in China despite its horrendous human rights abuse record. And this was par for the course for the Lakers’ superstar forward, who was establishing himself as an apologist for China’s communist regime.
As author and researcher Peter Schweizer details in his book about James, entitled Red-Handed, the NBA star had his sights set early in his career on becoming a global brand. In 2006, James explained, “I say all the time, and I tell my friends and teammates, that you have to go global — in basketball and business.”
For James, that meant embracing China. And, as Schweizer notes, that meant “avoiding criticisms of Beijing.”
As Schweizer explains, the young phenom from Akron was so determined to embrace China’s business potential that he even contemplated learning Mandarin before making a trip to the communist country. However, LeBron’s embrace of communist China came at the expense of betraying his own professed beliefs in social justice causes.
Schweizer’s book highlights one of the most egregious examples of LeBron’s convenient silence about oppression to appease his Chinese communist business interests.
As Schweizer writes in Red-Handed:
In 2007, black Sudanese Christians were being slaughtered in Darfur by a regime backed by the Chinese government. In all, an estimated200,000 to 400,000 were killed. Beijing provided the regime with political support and was the Sudanese government’s chief trading partner. The unfolding atrocities gave rise to a movement calling on Beijing to stop supporting Sudan. A letter to the Chinese government was written by one of James’s teammates on the Cleveland Cavaliers. Every player on the team signed the letter, save two. One, a backup guard, had a shoe contract with a Chinese company. The other was superstar LeBron James. After howls of protest, James eventually did come out with a muted statement about human rights.
This pandering to China has been quite beneficial to LeBron, as Schweizer explains:
James has a sizable contract with the sports apparel company Nike. While based in the United States, it does huge business in China and views itself as a Chinese company. (Nike’s then CEO Mark Parker startled investors on a 2019 earnings call when he declared that Nike “is a brand of China, for China.”) Beyond selling his jersey in China, James also has an exclusive arrangement that caters to the Chinese elite. The superstar releases some of his coveted shoes in China first, before fans in the United States can get access to them. At the same time, he has a line of Chinese-themed shoes that are available only in China, called “China” editions. They are “inspirations from deep within Chinese history and culture ingrained into the design of the shoe.”
James also has an enormous presence in the country, courtesy of Chinese media companies. James starred in a movie called More than a Game, which was coproduced by a Chinese company called Xinhua Sports and Entertainment, and was distributed by the state-owned China Film Group Corporation. How much they paid James for the movie is not clear. Similarly, he works as a spokesman for a variety of companies selling their products in China. During the off-season, James travels the Chinese mainland playing games. He even dedicated a basketball court in the People’s Republic.
Red-Handed, published by Harper-Collins, landed at number one on the New York Times bestseller list for five weeks since its release last January. Schweizer is the president of the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute (GAI) and a senior contributor to Breitbart News.
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