ASU could face the same pitfall over China as NBA
LeBron James has gotten tangled up in the NBA-China mess.
I hope Arizona State University President Michael Crow is paying attention.
I hope ASU Athletic Director Ray Anderson is tracking every detail.
I want Mark Kennedy and Rick George, their counterparts at the University of Colorado, locked in.
And most of all, I want Larry Scott, who guides them all as commissioner of the Pac-12 Conference, to understand every snarling tendril of this controversy.
What started on Twitter a week ago has gone on to test the limits of free speech and raise the question of how much we in the U.S. should be aware of — responsible for — the actions of our international business partners.
And this debate could be coming to college basketball in two weeks when the men’s basketball teams at Arizona State and Colorado meet in China as part of a goodwill tour.
The leaders of each university and their athletic conference need to get in front of this.
If they don’t, they could expose their players and coaches to the same embarrassment and scrutiny that’s been tripping up professional players and coaches ever since Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted, then deleted an image that read: “Fight for freedom; Stand with Hong Kong.”
LeBron James, perhaps the world’s most popular athlete, is known for speaking his mind on humanitarian and social justice issues.
He said Monday that Morey was “misinformed,” and James is being blasted as a pawn sacrificing himself for his bosses, Nike and the NBA, which have billions of dollars tied in with China.
“I believe he was either misinformed or not really educated on the situation,” James said.
James then released a tweet of his own: “I do not believe there was any consideration for the consequences and ramifications of the tweet. I’m not discussing the substance. Others can talk about that.”
Left unsaid was that the authoritarian Chinese government has been accused of human rights violations that include making political opponents disappear and shipping off minority Muslims into concentration camps.
It’s come to a head recently with massive, ongoing protest rallies in Hong Kong, involving hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in increasingly violent confrontations with riot police. Morey tweeted.
China got angry.
And that was just the start. China stopped showing NBA games on TV, and sponsors pulled back.
A pair of fans said they were kicked out of a game in Philadelphia for supporting democracy protesters in China (which feels horrifyingly close to Chinese censorship on U.S. soil).
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver tried to walk a line by defending Morey while calling the tweet inappropriate. He was condemned as a hypocrite.
Houston’s star player, James Harden, said he didn’t want anything to do with it. He was called out as willing to ignore human suffering for profit.
The NBA’s best coach, Steve Kerr, said he wasn’t any more used to answering questions about human rights in China than he was about “people owning AR-15s and mowing each other down in a mall.” He was criticized as drawing a false moral equivalency.
And now James is raising the specter of things getting worse, telling reporters “when you say things or do things, if you are doing it and you know the people that can be affected by it and the families and individuals and everyone that can be affected by it, sometimes things can be changed as well. And, also, social media is not always the proper way to go about things.”
It all serves to make me wonder how much is too much? How much are we willing to overlook?
At what point do U.S. entities —– basketball companies, shoe companies or universities — decide that it’s wrong to do business with a nation accused of these atrocities?
And I’d like to hear Scott, Crow, Anderson, Kennedy and George help explain why it’s OK to continue with a goodwill tour in this climate.
It could be that they see cultural exchanges as vital for promoting peace and unity.
Or that they believe China could benefit from exposure to U.S. attitudes and ideals.
But without that, they’re going to expose players to all of the scrutiny and criticism that’s hitting the NBA. (A particularly acute problem since studentathletes aren’t being paid.)
And again, how far does the benefit of a cultural exchange stretch? When does the harm outweigh the reward? It feels like we’re at a tipping point. I want the people who set these deals up, and profit from them, to help the rest of us understand.
If basketball players, coaches and general managers are brave enough to speak to these issues, they should be, too.