Daryl Morey tweeted support for the Hong Kong protestors. The owner of the Houston Rockets disapproved and said they are about basketball, not politics. They don't want to offend anyone. Especially not a big market like China. which has a "special relationship" with Houston since Yao Ming. Nice little NBA business you've got there. It would be a shame if anything happened to it.
It will be interesting if Houston fans have diminished interest in the Rockets going forward.
Update: The NBA has weighed in that they don't want to be political about such things. I recall, however, that it was perfectly okay for LeBron James to announce that no one would be going to the White House no matter who won the championship, and players and coaches have been saying anti-Trump things pretty regularly. They also let Enes Kanter be very political about Turkey (which he is courageous for doing, BTW). I guess there just aren't enough potential fans to buy shirts in Turkey.
5 comments:
Who/whom
It's unclear to me that the average Houston Rockets fan could even locate China on a globe, let alone Hong Kong. Tilman Fertitta understands this.
That is unlikely to be accurate, as Houston is the most diverse city in the country, surpassing even New York. It has many immigrants, from many countries. Also, Texas high schools score highest in the nation overall on standardised tests - when broken down by race, which the news articles never do.
I am aware of a prejudice that people have against Texas and other southern and western places which are not their own, assuming that people from there are ignorant, but I am not aware of data to support that. (The state school testing the news sources quote every year, that shows the New England states as best, much as I would like to believe them, has a fatal flaw which I can break down for you if you like.) Is there some other data you think supports your position?
Tilman Fertitta does not understand this, because Tilman Fertitta has been liking Instagram comments encouraging him to fire Daryl Morey, because he does not understand that such actions may be public. Tilman Fertitta is not a smart man.
This is one million percent about money, and the NBA is terrified of losing some of their stake in China. Already the NBA's China partner removed the Rockets as a possible team for whom you can watch games, and sent out notifications telling Chinese Rockets fans to pick a new team. This is not a government that plays around with this stuff. You play by their rules or not at all. That's why the NBA released an extremely wishy-washy statement stateside, and then a blatantly groveling statement in Chinese.
And all because Daryl Morey suggested support for a group of people who would very, very much like the Chinese government to stop committing human rights violations against them. How dare he.
On the plus side, multiple people on Twitter pointed out that this is the most unified they have seen the left and the right about a single topic in a long time. Pretty much everyone who is not being paid lots of money to look the other way thinks that this is horrible.
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