National Basketball Association players and coaches have hardly been shy about cataloging America’s sins or condemning U.S. President Donald Trump for his failings. When it comes China’s rampant human rights abuses, however, the woke NBA has suffered a collective case of laryngitis.
Back in February 2018, when LeBron James and Kevin Durant engaged in some trendy virtue signaling by bashing Trump, FNC host Laura Ingraham suggested that the pro basketball VIPs should shut up and dribble because they have no political acumen
Ingraham’s quip was a callback to her similar-themed book about the progressive-posturing entertainment industry titled Shut Up and Sing.
Most of the pandering sports media industry blasted Ingraham at the time for her comments.
The same industry is now serving as apologists for the the way the NBA is groveling to its Chinese government business partner following the controversy prompted by a pro Hong Kong democracy tweet by the Houston Rockets’ previously obscure general manager Daryl Morey.
Some Chinese companies (and business and government in China is the same thing) have cut ties with the Rockets, which has made the league very nervous.
FS1 host Jason Whitlock is a rare exception among knee-jerk liberal sports journalist cohort. He noted that when Beijing told the NBA to shut up about its repressive practices in Hong Kong (and elsewhere), “all parties complied.”
The NBA and the Nike sports apparel company need China, the Speak for Yourself host explained in a “Whitlogue.”
“The Los Angeles Lakers and the Brooklyn Nets held their long anticipated NBA exhibition in Shanghai without voicing a word of support for democracy-seeking protesters in Hong Kong or a word of dissent toward the communist government that stipulated that [NBA Commissioner] Silver and his players avoid interacting with the media. I’m sure Nike is working on an ad campaign to celebrate the NBA’s tour of China: ‘Just don’t do it.’ Don’t do a damn thing that interrupts the flow of this Chinese money. We are freedom fighters at home, business mercenaries abroad, and 24/7/365 useful idiots for communist propaganda. ‘Believe in something,’ even if it means choosing communism over freedom….clearly China is the NBA’s home away from home…the $8 million a year NBA answers to the $36 billion a year Nike, and Nike is dependent upon Asian labor and the Chinese market. In my view, China has the power, that’s why LeBron and company had no problems shutting up and dribbling…”
The tawdry NBA, China, and sneakers connection is crony capitalism, or corporate socialism, at its worst. It also is another reason why big business, the hedge fund guys, and other big money and globalist interests, are trying to prevent Trump and his team from trying to reform the ghastly one-sided trade relationship with China, including imposing tariffs on imports to try to level the playing field.
New York Post columnist Miranda Devine also called out the NBA and its virtue-signaling commissioner which she nicknamed “Long Woke Silver”:
“NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is so woke, he once outlawed the word ‘owner’ for being racially insensitive. He canceled an NBA All-Star Game in Charlotte, North Carolina, to protest that state’s anti-transgender-bathroom legislation.
“He has encouraged his coaches to rail against President Trump’s immigration policies and his players to promote Black Lives Matter.
“He has instituted a gender quota for referees, declared progressive code words ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ as ‘core principles’ and danced on a float at New York’s Gay Pride Parade…
“Silver is proud of using his position to push social-justice politics… But all Silver’s posturing looks empty now that he has raced over to Beijing to grovel behind closed doors…
“But in the face of China’s belligerent reaction to the tweet, the NBA cravenly capitulated. It damned Morey’s ‘regrettable’ sentiments that had ‘deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China’….But America’s most politically correct sport can’t suddenly pretend to be apolitical and morally neutral when it comes to standing up for actual human rights in Hong Kong…
“Silver made a political decision to play preseason games in China, in the middle of the crisis in Hong Kong. Greedy to cash in on a multibillion-dollar market, he turned a blind eye as China celebrated 70 years of Communist Party rule by shooting a teenager in the chest…Beijing recognizes cowardice and is determined to make an example of the NBA to ensure no one in the West dare side with Hong Kong’s brave democracy protesters…
“China increasingly is willing to use its market power to subvert freedom in the West and Western businesses are willing to capitulate.”
Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, a perpetual Trump critic, has either got to be the most self-unaware person in America.
Or maybe he realizes that he looks like a fool but is trying to muddle through and the story will go away. He has never shown any willingness, however, to give Trump the benefit of the doubt — after all, the world is complex, according to the opinionated Kerr — while trying to justify his silence on China’s repressive policies and global ambitions.
Apparently this arrogant hypocrite (among many) doesn’t know there is no First Amendment equivalent in China. As an aside, it would also be interesting to know how Kerr justifies his massive carbon footprint.
UPDATES:
In a follow-up Whitlogue, the FS1 analyst observed that “to ears and eyes of at least half of America, Kerr and…Popovich have been childish, smug, and snarky in their political commentary. They behave no different than the president they abhor.”
Whitlock added that Kerr is a “freedom fighter up until the very moment it cost you, the NBA, and Nike a dime. Either shut up and dribble or admit you’re a clown in a circus.”
In this clip, Whitlock attempts to educate Kerr apologist Ric Bucher and pointing that Trump opposed (and withdrew from) the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which made Nike and other multinationals unhappy.
FNC’s Tucker Carlson summed up moonlighting political pundit Steve Kerr’s worldview, among other elistists:
“China is a racist, ethno-state that sends religious minorities to concentration camps and executes political prisoners to steal their organs. But, in America, they sell guns at Walmart….there’s a moral equivalence there…Steve Kerr and the NBA, it turns out, were made for each other, tailor made. The NBA epitomizes modern ‘woke’ capital, ruthlessness under the guise of compassion, so of course they employ Kerr who epitomizes the modern, mindless, elite left. Kerr is happy to trash his own country whenever he gets the chance…but when real evil stares him in the face, he has nothing to say…[the NBA] had a golden opportunity [during the China tour] to speak real truth to real power, but the NBA stopped [the players]…
“So what does all of this prove? It proves what you’ve known for a long time. The ruling class is totally phony. They’re weak, and they’re pathetic. And that’s obvious now. They talk a big game about human rights, ‘we care about people,’ happy to lecture you about democracy and about their own moral vitality…but it was all a sham. They didn’t mean a word of it. The single biggest threat to your freedoms right now as Americans is not Russia, or Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or Donald Trump. The single greatest threat to your freedom right now, as we all know, is China…and anyone who says otherwise isn’t simply clueless, they’re an accomplice.”
