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| A worker in Shanghai removing a banner promoting preseason game between the Brooklyn Nets and Los Angeles Lakers. |
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/09/business/nba-china-partners/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/wizards/it-took-an-uncomfortably-long-time-but-adam-silver-got-it-right-on-nba-and-china/2019/10/09/5cfa4ae0-ea89-11e9-9306-47cb0324fd44_story.html
Starting last weekend, it would seem that the Rockets-China fiasco has exacerbated ties between the National Basketball Association (NBA) and China as a whole. The whole debacle began following a tweet by Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey which underlined his support for the pro democracy protests in Hong Kong. The post included an image stating “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.” This resulted in the Chinese Basketball Association announcing that they would be breaking ties with the Houston Rockets organization. Moreover, all of the NBA’s official Chinese partners have announced that they have suspended ties with the league as a whole.
Morey, having seen China’s response, has since deleted the Twitter post, and the NBA has issued their own statement saying that Morey’s tweet had “deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China” and that the NBA has “great respect for the history and culture of China”. Immediately after the statement was released the NBA came under attack by many US politicians who accused the NBA of hypocrisy, valuing financial interests over democratic ideals.
“ “I thought the NBA was proud to be the ‘wokest professional sports league’?” wrote Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Twitter. “I guess that only applies to speaking out on American politics and social issues … Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic presidential candidate from Texas, said, “The only thing the NBA should be apologizing for is their blatant prioritization of profits over human rights,” terming the league’s statement “an embarrassment.”” (Golliver 2019).
Questions:
What steps do you think either side could take to cool down the situation? Do you think this mess will ever be resolved?
What are the implications of the event on other global corporations, specifically those with ties within China?
Are the events conspiring an example of American’s freedom of speech being regulated by a foreign government?
****UPDATE****
NBA commissioner Adam Silver has clarified the league’s position & refused to back down. It would seem that amidst increased pressure from the Chinese govt. & businesses, the NBA have decided to stand by Morey’s statement, claiming that “It is not the role of the NBA to adjudicate those differences [regarding political beliefs]... the NBA will not put itself in a position of regulating what players, employees and team owners say or will not say on these issues.”
4 comments:
Thanks for including an update.
Between this, the controversy with Activision Blizzard games and the removal of Taiwan as a country on most airlines I think it is likely that we are entering a strange era in which companies are willing to make controversial political statements on US politics to speak out against perceived injustice, but refuse to comment on China's killing of the Uyghur Muslims and the oppression of Hong Kong. The only way to get their attention seems to be boycott, as a major boycott of Activision Blizzard led to some restitution.
While it does seem like a whole fiasco with the NBA getting involved in world politics with Daryl Morey tweeting out some controversial statements regarding China, it is sort of puzzling as to why there would be such a grand reaction to what someone said in a Twitter post of all things. The Houston Rockets are a large team in the NBA and do cater toward being culturally diverse by sometimes wearing special jerseys for say Chinese New Year, but they are still just a part of the NBA and are focused around entertainment. Their main goal is not to be strident political leaders, so the whole problem seems to be an overreaction by both sides. To cool down the situation, there is a sense that the NBA is caught in the middle of something because of the major reaction with the politicians being inflamed at the NBA for focusing on profit and China being upset for the support of Hong Kong protesters, but I feel like the situation will solve itself with time because the NBA is obviously not backing down. The coaches of these teams obviously have opinions as shown above and by Steve Kerr's reaction to China talks as well, but they do not want to start controversy or lose profit because they technically are centered around capitalism, so I would expect no other reaction from them.
Notice how the Houston Rockets manager Morey fully addresses the Hong Kong protestors in his initial tweet, but completely excludes both of the sides in his second tweet. This is a situation of siding with the humanistic values versus the cynical capitalist values. It's not that overt, but interpreting the sequence of tweets can make Morey support the Hong Kong protestors, but when he realized he was under fire, he quickly started to self censor himself. This was in order to align himself with the NBA's tweet shortly after, of which excluded the Hong Kong protestors; they only addressed the Chinese government. Excluding the protestors could've been intentional; the NBA doesn't recognize the protestors as a viable entity, thus only addressing the government as a whole. As Cameron stated, the NBA is simply an entertainment business; their main goal is to make money. Even if it means to offend a whole population of people.
I feel like this was a conflict that the NBA started and has to resolve as well. It may take a while for the entire problem to cool down, but once that happens the NBA should compromise with China so that they can solve the problem and maintain their strong relationship while both establishing their views on the Hong Kong situation. However, China seems very stubborn and may just want an immediate apology that the NBA might just have to give if they want to keep their relationship. I don't see this blowing up much more and that in the end China and the NBA will keep their ties with each other.
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