NBA on wrong side of moral argument

This is an excerpt of a New York Times editorial:

“Fight for freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.”

Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted that message on Oct. 4. It’s a sentiment that should command broad support in the United States, and throughout the free world.

But the reaction from China, which does not number free expression among its cherished values, was swift and painful for the NBA. The shoe company Li Ning and the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank ended sponsorship deals with the Rockets; Chinese broadcasters said they would not show Rockets games; the Chinese Basketball Association — led by the former Rockets star Yao Ming — suspended ties with the team.

“There is no doubt, the economic impact is already clear,” said Adam Silver, the league’s commissioner.

Silver went on to add that he supported Morey, but “what I am supporting is his freedom of political expression in this situation.”

The billionaires who control the lucrative basketball league, however, nearly tripped over themselves in their haste to abjure Morey’s remarks. The NBA, like many large American businesses, is besotted by the opportunity to make money in China’s expanding market.

The owner of the Rockets, Tilman Fertitta, raced for the traditional refuge of international capitalists — the insistence that business can be segregated from political considerations. “We’re here to play basketball and not to offend anybody,” Fertitta told ESPN.

But it should be perfectly clear that playing basketball in China is political.

Last year, the NBA staged a game in South Africa for the explicit purpose of celebrating the life of Nelson Mandela. When the NBA goes to China, that’s a statement too.

It means that the NBA has weighed China’s human rights abuses against China’s potential as a source of revenue.

The owner of the Brooklyn Nets, the Chinese billionaire Joe Tsai, took the opportunity to publish an open letter scolding Americans for talking about the affairs of other nations.

Tsai’s suggestion that people should avoid “third rail” issues may well be good manners when visiting a foreign country, but Morey posted his tweet while visiting Japan.

The face of the Rockets, the point guard James Harden, issued a public apology. For what, exactly, remained unclear. Do the NBA’S owners appreciate that their wealth is a product of the freedoms they enjoy in this country?

The NBA has an undoubted right to set rules for its work force, but it cannot simultaneously claim to champion free expression — the value of which consists entirely in the right to say what others don’t want to hear.

American executives and policymakers initially reconciled themselves to following China’s rules by arguing that China’s turn toward capitalism would gradually lead toward democracy and a greater respect for human rights. They argued, in effect, that silence was the most productive form of criticism.

It should now be clear that silence is merely complicity, no more or less.

It is the moral price the NBA and other businesses are paying for making money in China.