LeBron’s stance on China uproar weakens his voice on other issues
Because LeBron James has not clarified his clarification or taken his talents to a pro-democracy PR agency, we are left with his criticism of a fellow American’s laudable support of the protests in Hong Kong as his final answer in the NBA’s ongoing China nightmare.
Because James’s horrible words and ridiculous tweets still stand, uncorrected and untouched, nearly 48 hours after he first uttered them, we now know something very important about him:
He is not the man we thought he was.
What this means, exactly, is still entirely unclear. We can check back in a year or so and see, but, outwardly, it’s possible little is likely to change. James will continue to play basketball and build out his brand and make lots of money. He will speak out anytime he wants while the protesters he ignores cannot without fear of retribution. Irony eludes him.
But in other nuanced ways, everything has changed for him. We thought James was a different kind of athlete, more Ali than Jordan, more Billie Jean than Tiger. We thought he did in fact care about Hong Kong, that he did care about Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey’s right to speak out, that he did care about how the NBA might even begin to force change on China’s repressive regime.
We come to expect more of LeBron. He is obviously an intelligent person, a compassionate person and a socially conscious person
Why did we think that? Because of the way James has spent a career constructing an authentic and authoritative presence not just in sports, but in our culture. He was smart about his role in our lives and the wider world of American politics. In these fraught times, he was consistently positioned right where we thought he would be. His tweet calling Donald Trump “u bum” was an instant classic. He wasn’t ever going to shut up and dribble no matter who told him to, and that made sense.
So we knew this guy. Knew him well. We could count on LeBron to be a voice for sanity and honesty and fairness.
But then, in an instant, we couldn’t. As shock rippled across social media Monday night, and as James and the NBA failed to step up and meet the moment all day Tuesday, a new reality settled in:
LeBron James is now a weakened messenger for whatever it is that he is going to be selling, be it products or politics. His significant voice has been diminished. This is that big of a development.
It took James a week to gather his thoughts and finally speak out about the controversy that has engulfed his league and already cost it untold dollars in basketball-crazed China.
Knowing LeBron as we do, or, did, he might have started out by saying he hoped the NBA could show the way by opening a dialogue on the important issues of freedom of speech and democracy in China. Instead, he blew it. He said Morey “wasn’t educated on the situation at hand,” which is just an awful, and incorrect, comment.
Then he dropped a line that will live with him in infamy: “Yes, we do have freedom of speech, but there can be a lot of negative that comes with that, too.”
Understandably, social media erupted, so James inexplicably came back for more, tweeting out that he wanted to “clear up the confusion,” but then only created more when he said his team and the NBA had been through “a difficult week,” adding Morey “could have waited a week” to send his pro-democracy tweet.
Oh my.
Things only got worse Tuesday afternoon when James replied to the controversy by telling a gaggle of reporters in Los Angeles that he hasn’t “been paying attention to it much.”
It’s rare that any athlete can become a quintessential 21st century cultural figure, equal parts sports superstar and esteemed voice of a generation.
Who throws that away in a few sentences? LeBron James, that’s who.
(USA Today/TNS)