Chinese Basketball Association announce that they will cut off all cooperation with the Houston Rockets

[CptCrunch]

Very interesting and difficult situation for the NBA.

If they are truly principled, shouldn't they pull out of China entirely and protect/defend their own (the Rockets franchise).

But no, they are a compilation of owners that care most about protecting the value of their franchises. And China represents a huge body of buyers that they value immensely long term. Which is why the Rocket's owner immediately condemned Morey's tweet. Because the Rockets are probably worth 20% less without China.

So the NBA will try to appease China most likely. But also try to avoid negative publicity somehow. Their PR teams are working overtime.

There are more people here that have been damaged than just the owners. BRI goes to the players in a split. He's hurting everybody. Morey is a clown for hurting his colleagues this badly for such a hollow, meaningless twitter gesture.

This,

Morey tweeting doesn't help the 'Freedom fighters' if you put it nicely, rioters if you look at the situation on the ground, but got the Rockets kicked out of China and is gonna lose the league potentially hundreds of millions. All the owners are gonna lose $ because of the tweet of one NBA employee.

Keep politics out of sports.

[clyde21]

may I remind everyone China is literally doing a holocaust in Xinjiang, if this was about 'human rights' the NBA would've pulled out of China a long time ago

but they'd rather flex nuts and pretend they're woke on fringe issues like allowing men to go into womens bathrooms in Charlotte, but when **** hits the fan and their pockets might get compromised they are radio silent.

[KrAzY3]

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Sent from my LM-Q710(FGN) using RealGM mobile app

Ah yeah good old Tencent. Basically an arm of the communist party and involved in social credit scores among other horrible things.

It's amazing there are people here defending a totalitarian state. Amazing and just atrocious.

You can't even find out about Tienanmen's Square in China. That's how messed up and backwards that place is, but yeah keep defending them because who wants basic human rights anyway?

[MP]

If MSM is your only source for information on foreign affairs then you probably are getting a distorted view of the situation.

Yea i was Pro-HK Protestors until i had some of my none HK native friends (American Born Chinese Taiwanese like myself mainly) working in HK lay down the reality on the ground. My HK born and raised friends otoh are 110% all-in for Free HK, the HK born in America group is 50/50 in regards to their support.

There are literal roving riot mobs going around looking for non HK natives to beat up. One of my mainland friends almost got his ass kicked cuz he doesnt really speak fluent Cantonese (speaks fluent Mandarin, decent but heavily accented English) and only got bailed out cuz he was with co-workers who were HK natives that were willing to step and possibly take a beating for him. Another ABC friend who works in HK and has a mainland wife who's pregnant basically faced straight up racism in the hospital the last time they went in for a check up. One nurse basically calling her a cockroach stealing medical services from Hong Kongers and that she needs to gtfo of the country. My friend damn near murdered the nurse cuz she was all up in his pregnant wife's face, and he was cussing up a storm in English (his Mandarin/Canto is trash tier) and that made the racist HKers back off. Hell there's a story going out how a Mainland reporter who works for a Western (Euro i think) news agency getting straight up harassed by protestors calling her a fake reporter and that she needs to get gtfo or theyll kill her for trying to make them look bad.

Mainland Chinese working/living in HK are basically under threat 24/7 and have to be careful with what they say or do, otherwise a radical Free HK lynch mob will form (via Social Media calling violent rioters over) to jump them. B

https://streamable.com/tgzwf

This is a pretty good example of the harassment and assault. This is some mainland office worker dude on his phone getting harassed by some HK press guy in the vest (however there's good odds he's a fake just wearing press gear in order to be able to travel freely during riots, since HK cops leave them be). The Chinese dude is obvious annoyed that the guy is all up in his grill, the crowd is chanting in Cantonese "Go **** your mother" and "Go back home", then the guy stops to confront the crowd yelling, "We are all Chinese", and then that white press dude **** closed the door on him to trap him, i dunno wtf is going on here, but this guy needs to be brought up on charges or fired for his part in this. You see the office lady in white trying to open the door and someone was holding it closed and then the office worker gets jumped from behind.

https://youtu.be/RFwGqF3QlVc

This guy is an ABC who decided to goto China to check things out, he basically went out and printed a fake press badge and bought a news vest, and basically just decided to see what being a fake reporter in HK is like. If some shlub like him can do that so easily, i honestly think at least 80% of the so called "reporters/press" over there are fake as well.

There's captions in the video on whats going down and clearly this **** is **** out of control. Ooh bonus kicker, i think the dude getting beat is a native HKer since he speaks fluent Cantonese, the crowd got on him cuz i think he said something pro-China or maybe tore down an anti China poster, who knows. The HK rioters are just looking for any reason to beat on people they think are opposing them.

Yea..... this is Free HK Protestors in a nutshell. For some reason the Western media (gee i wonder why) is covering these type of actions cuz it makes the HK prostestors look really really bad. Hell the only reason i see these vids is cuz of my overseas friends showing me obscure FB and twitter feeds showing the true crazy **** on the ground.

Unfortunately no one looks at these things. It's always USA-Good, China-Bad. Also I wouldn't even call them protestors. They are rioters and terrorists. If any of this **** happened in the US they would've already been shot.

If this happens in US with 1/4 population protesting, the government has already at least listened.

[G R E Y]

As far as the Rockets owner / GM situation is concerned, there are a dozen better ways of handling it than how the owner dealt with it. It only creates further fracture and is a way of instilling the wrong culture going forward.

The NBA has been establishing itself as socially / politically conscious, and of course sees players as partners, so when players (ie/LeBron) or coaches (ie/ Kerr and Pop) have made public political statements, none of the owners or the NBA said a thing (Spurs ownership have donated to Trump). Now, there are a great many differences between domestic statements and ones directed at other nations where the NBA wants to keep expending.

But if there is a precedent established by the NBA in how it handles matters, I don't see it completely capitulating to the Chinese league. The NBA pulled the AS game from Charlotte, and Silver booted Sterling out. It's more complicated than just altruism, but the point is that there is a trend towards social consciousness and while there are ties to the bottom line, to have it so bluntly confronted with this situation is a broader test.

I'd be shocked if Silver stepped in requiring Morey to apologize. Apparently all is good between HR owner and Morey and no further action will happen, but that was before the CBA's decision.

The point is that the NBA has been and should continue to look beyond China to expand its brand -- already there is the development of the league in Africa, expanding into India, and to whatever extent they're in Japan and South Korea they should expand that as well, in addition to closer ties to Europe. I just don't think that capitulating entirely to the bottom line is the way the NBA has gone or the way it should. If it stands by its values, then the NBA will stand by its league and the precedent it has itself set for speaking out, even in this new unprecedented territory.

[Brofessor24]

Too bad the CBA can't be tolerant regarding the opinion of one NBA general manager that pertains to a specific political movement.

Their decision seems like overkill IMO. It's possible for people to have disagreements regarding certain political topics and still have a professional relationship.

[dc]

Too bad the CBA can't be tolerant regarding the opinion of one NBA general manager that pertains to a specific political movement.

Their decision seems like overkill IMO. It's possible for people to have disagreements regarding certain political topics and still have a professional relationship.

It's a cultural thing, and this is the one hypersensitive topic (above all) for China.

There are hypersensitive topics in the US as well to some people. Abortion and guns for example. People in Europe/Asia probably wonder why the hell some Americans are so gung ho about guns. But to a lot of gun owners, being able to own firearms is one of the most basic tenants of freedom. To them, it's no different than owning a house. So everytime a gun control advocate brings up the topic about some kind of increased gun control, the claws literally come out of gun owners.

It's the same thing in regards to national territory/unity for China. Take all the hypersensitivity in the US about race/guns/abortion and combine it all. That's how sensitive China is about that subject. They are HYPERsensitive when it comes to people questioning their territory or about a certain faction of people wanting to disassociate themselves from China.
(Americans are not nearly as sensitive about this topic. We'll talk freely and openly about the Civil War/South seceding, driving out native Americans, the war with Mexico over Texas/California, etc..)

So talking about things like "Free Tibet" or even the mere mention of "Taiwanese Independence" literally brings out the claws among these people. When you bring up these topics, it's basically an affront to their very existence.

[clyde21]

Too bad the CBA can't be tolerant regarding the opinion of one NBA general manager that pertains to a specific political movement.

Their decision seems like overkill IMO. It's possible for people to have disagreements regarding certain political topics and still have a professional relationship.

you want to have a 'professional relationship' with a country that is committing mass genocide?

[dc]

Too bad the CBA can't be tolerant regarding the opinion of one NBA general manager that pertains to a specific political movement.

Their decision seems like overkill IMO. It's possible for people to have disagreements regarding certain political topics and still have a professional relationship.

you want to have a 'professional relationship' with a country that is committing mass genocide?

Literally thousands of corporations world wide do.

And really, the US-Saudi Arabia relationship is probably the biggest sell out in morals that there is. Everyone has a price.

[nedleeds]

Throwing your GM publicly under the bus, when you could've just told him privately to delete the tweet, means you suck as an owner.

That's a Dolan move

China got ahold of Morey's tweet almost immediately. Deleting it wouldn't have made a difference. The Houston Rockets are now enemy #1 for the entire country.

Enemy #1 for the communist authoritarian government. Not the working Chinese people. Most of them would rather have NBA basketball to unwind to in the evening.

[clyde21]

Too bad the CBA can't be tolerant regarding the opinion of one NBA general manager that pertains to a specific political movement.

Their decision seems like overkill IMO. It's possible for people to have disagreements regarding certain political topics and still have a professional relationship.

you want to have a 'professional relationship' with a country that is committing mass genocide?

Literally thousands of corporations world wide do.

And really, the US-Saudi Arabia relationship is probably the biggest sell out in morals that there is. Everyone has a price.

well, that's exactly my point. if this was about 'human rights', we could've ceased all corporate/professional relationships with China, Saudia and Israel a long long time ago...

but this was never about human rights, these corporations, NBA included, pretend they are woke on BS issues like men in women bathrooms but the people that are actually being genocided and killed and subhumanized on a massive scale go unnoticed...it's all BS for show wokeness until they start feeling it in their pockets.

[Duke4life831]

Its not like China is now just dipping their toe into morally corrupt things. They've been doing horrible stuff for a long time now and the NBA has been pressing hard to expand into China. I really dont think the NBA hasn't known about this stuff and all of a sudden they're going to grow a moral conscience. They know all about this, but dont care because China is a massive market for them.

I do give the NBA credit because they're great at the social media activism. If its an issue they think will be popular on social media and wont hurt their bottom line, they make sure it looks like they're fighting the hard fight. I mean as they were protesting Charolette bathroom law, they were trying to organize a game to be played in UAE where homosexuality is illegal. Its all just one big virtue signal by them and sadly lots of people buy it most of the time.

[The_Hater]

This sums up the dilemma pretty well...

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Option could be the league asks Morey to step down from his position and will ask another team to sign him. Morey is to connected in the league to really be blackballed so it just takes the right owner to pick him up. Would draw attention and controversy but Houston with a new GM can rebuild its connection to China if that’s what they really want to do.


It’s not like Harden or Westbrook can do anything they are locked in on lengthy contracts.

If the league steps in and asks Morey to step down as Rockets GM, which they should have no authority to do based on the circumstances, they would look like they’re taking sides and open themselves up to a whole bunch of backlash and negative press they neither want nor need.

[CelticsLV]

I like how conscious everyone is about oppressive chinese regime as long as it's not about their latest purchase manufactured by chinese slave labor.

Hipocrisy is a modern day plague.

[Duke4life831]

Silver and the league aren't going to do anything. They're going to stay quiet and let this go by, people will forget about it within a week. Then you bet your ass that Silver will talk with China and probably promise a few more games over there to smooth things over and probably will send a private memo to the teams saying this kind of talk is off limits. No way in hell will the NBA shut off China.

Add on: Also to be fair the NBA wont stand up to China, just like the vast majority of people who are crapping on the NBA for not standing up to China will continue to watch and support the NBA by watching it. We are all hypocrites to a certain extent.

[MrBigShot]

This was definitely a very interesting thread to read, enlightening to see the perspective of others as well speaking on the media bias.

When Donald Sterling got recorded making racist statements it was an easy decision to get rid of him because in addition to it being an issue that would affect their sponsorships/business it was the obvious thing to do morally/fits in with the kind of league Adam Silver is trying to create.

In this case those two things are not inter-twined in the same way. Does Silver protect the bottomline and condemn speaking out about an important issue? Or does he support it at the cost of losing an important market? Based on the way he has conducted himself since becoming commissioner, I can't see Silver stepping in to condemn what Morey said.

[dc]

Silver and the league aren't going to do anything. They're going to stay quiet and let this go by, people will forget about it within a week. Then you bet your ass that Silver will talk with China and probably promise a few more games over there to smooth things over and probably will send a private memo to the teams saying this kind of talk is off limits. No way in hell will the NBA shut off China.

Yeah, I suspect that's going to be what happens, on Silver's part. Silver won't say anything publicly about this. He'll talk to CBA officials but he'll keep it quiet.

But it wouldn't surprise me if the CBA demanded something from Silver, like making Morey formally apologize or some other public statement. That would make things trickier for Silver.

[clyde21]

Silver and the league aren't going to do anything. They're going to stay quiet and let this go by, people will forget about it within a week. Then you bet your ass that Silver will talk with China and probably promise a few more games over there to smooth things over and probably will send a private memo to the teams saying this kind of talk is off limits. No way in hell will the NBA shut off China.

Add on: Also to be fair the NBA wont stand up to China, just like the vast majority of people who are crapping on the NBA for not standing up to China will continue to watch and support the NBA by watching it. We are all hypocrites to a certain extent.

not to worry, NBA has already proven how woke it is with the Charlotte bathroom nonsense, they'll go play NBA games in China 20 miles from where they are committing mass genocide no problem.

[Duke4life831]

Silver and the league aren't going to do anything. They're going to stay quiet and let this go by, people will forget about it within a week. Then you bet your ass that Silver will talk with China and probably promise a few more games over there to smooth things over and probably will send a private memo to the teams saying this kind of talk is off limits. No way in hell will the NBA shut off China.

Yeah, I suspect that's going to be what happens, on Silver's part. Silver won't say anything publicly about this. He'll talk to CBA officials but he'll keep it quiet.

But it wouldn't surprise me if the CBA demanded something from Silver, like making Morey formally apologize or some other public statement. That would make things trickier for Silver.

That would make it tricky. But Im sure Silver will do whatever he can to not let it get to that. Offer more games, more NBA camps and other things like that, probably will quietly ban Morey from going to China for NBA trips and stuff like that. Im sure Silver is going to do all he can to settle this behind close doors.

[boomershadow]

If one thing is certain, it's this. The spice must flow.