Money does the talking here too
There were many of us — and we’ve been saying it for years — who considered NBA figures such as Steve Kerr, Gregg Popovich and LeBron James welcome voices of a new social conscience in sports.
Now they look like cogs of another corporation backtracking on ideals for the ATM machine of China. And that’s fine. It makes them no different than any other corporation in America.
It’s certainly nothing for staged anger from politicians such as former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
“Disgusting,’’ Rubio said of the NBA’s fragile handling of Houston general manager Daryl Morey’s simple tweet this week.
“Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong,’’ Morey tweeted.
Who knew seven words of common sense, quickly deleted, could spark an international incident?
It has been a loud, messy, confusing, complicated and utterly wonderful moment of a free, capitalist society intersecting with China’s totalitarian regime. It’s not a moment, actually.
It’s an era that began with American corporations pretending not to notice how dissidents were discarded and human rights were violated in their compromise to use the 2008 Beijing Olympics as an entry to China’s market.
Companies from Nike and Starbucks to Apple and Visa made the necessary concessions to gain entry into China’s economy. They continue to do so too — just this week, while the NBA was in the news, Apple removed an app allowing Hong Kong protesters to track police movement after the Chinese government protested.
That’s nothing new. Apple removed a Skype app previously when the Chinese government protested. It suspended sales of the Apple watch because the Beijing government couldn’t track it on citizens.
In this context, the NBA backpedaling from Morey’s thoughts is no different than what every other company has done to do business in China. That’s the point, really.
But the NBA always touted itself as better.
In recent years, its stars have taken up social causes in ways that hit at core principles but didn’t really