The NBA’s extremely lucrative relationship with China has grown problematic to the point of full-blown crisis for the league. The ongoing atrocities against the Uyghur Muslims in China are occurring with what amounts to the tacit approval of the NBA and many of its most vocal players, including LeBron James. The league’s unwillingness to confront the issue of reported concentration camps, mass sterilizations and forced abortions, and the enslavement of well over a million people at the hands of China’s communist regime have prompted accusations of greed and hypocrisy against the NBA. Below are some key facts about the NBA turning a blind eye to the actions of one of the most inhumane regimes in recent history.
Follow the money.
The NBA’s relationship with China began decades ago. The NBA opened its first office in Hong Kong in 1992. Since that initial move, China has now invested billions of dollars into the NBA. Tencent, a major Chinese holding company, invested $1.5 billion into the league in 2019.
“The NBA and Tencent…announced a five-year extension of a partnership through the 2024-25 season,” Reuters reports. “The deal is worth a reported $1.5 billion while Tencent has estimated that there are about 500 million fans in China consuming NBA content…”
USA Today reports that the $500 million the NBA takes in annually from the Chinese market also directly affects players’ salaries:
NBA revenue from China — and a conservative estimate puts that at $500 million annually based on deals that are publicly known — is part of basketball-related income which impacts the salary cap and how much money is available to players on an annual basis.
NBA players individually make a lot of money in China through various endorsement deals, as detailed by USA Today:
Separate from the NBA’s partnerships in China, players are invested in the country, too. Several of them, including stars LeBron James and Steph Curry, make annual visits to sell apparel products from Nike and Under Armour.
Chinese apparel companies have also signed NBA players to endorsement deals: Klay Thompson and Gordon Hayward with Anta, CJ McCollum with Li-Ning and Lou Williams with Peak. Thompson’s deal with Anta could reach $80 million over 10 years, according to ESPN. Williams has said he earns more from his endorsement deal than he does playing.
The NBA’s stance on social justice clashes with its partnership with China.
The NBA has made a grand display of trying to be the most “woke” major sports league for some years now. In the wake of massive Black Lives Matters protests and riots all across the nation, the league has now chosen to be a vocal advocate for the nebulous movement as well.
“Black Lives Matter” was painted with prominence on the hardwood for the NBA’s reopening games. Players are also encouraged to speak out on matters of social justice. ESPN reported a lengthy list of messages players can now wear on their jerseys for the restart of the 2020 season:
The list of the suggested social messages that were agreed upon by the NBPA and the NBA and then made available to players via email, per the source, are: Black Lives Matter; Say Their Names; Vote; I Can’t Breathe; Justice; Peace; Equality; Freedom; Enough; Power to the People; Justice Now; Say Her Name; Sí Se Puede (Yes We Can); Liberation; See Us; Hear Us; Respect Us; Love Us; Listen; Listen to Us; Stand Up; Ally; Anti-Racist; I Am A Man; Speak Up; How Many More; Group Economics; Education Reform; and Mentor.
The cognitive dissonance is staggering. These statements are rendered hopelessly trite and cynical when juxtaposed to the actual atrocities being committed by the very regime with which the NBA has formed its very lucrative business relationships.
The NBA had a training facility near the concentration camps in Xinjiang.
Only recently has the NBA finally decided to pull out of the city of Xinjiang, the epicenter of the atrocities against the Uyghur Muslims.
U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, helped highlight the problem. In a letter to the NBA pointing out the league’s confounding relationship with China’s authoritarian government, Senator Blackburn wrote:
America’s relationship with the Communist People’s Republic of China is at a pivotal moment. The squashing of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, continued human rights abuses against Muslims in Xinjiang and Tibetans, and a lack of transparency regarding the COVID-19 outbreak have become flashpoints. China’s foreign minister accused the U.S. of pushing China to the edge of a ‘new Cold War’ in May. Last month, “Attorney General Bill Barr stated that China is ‘stealing the future of the American people’ through espionage and theft.
Your league’s business interests are closely intertwined with Communist China’s estimated $4 billion NBA market. While the NBA has worked hard to raise awareness of social issues at home, there is concern that the league has turned a blind eye to human rights abuses committed abroad—even bowing down to pressure last year. The actions of the NBA and some players have created an appearance that your league prioritizes profit over principle. This accusation may be inaccurate; however, I urge you to give it careful thought.
The NBA reportedly continues to operate a training center Xinjiang, one of the world’s worst humanitarian zones. What steps is the NBA taking to shutter this location?
The NBA’s deputy commissioner responded to Senator Blackburn by stating that the facility in Xinjiang was closed last year. ESPN reported:
In response to Blackburn’s question about the academy in Xinjiang — where reportedly roughly a million Uyghurs, a Muslim minority, are being held in what have been described as concentration camps — Mark Tatum, the NBA’s deputy commissioner, wrote: “The NBA has had no involvement with the Xinjiang basketball academy for more than a year, and the relationship has been terminated.”
The league’s backlash against Daryl Morey in October.
Last October, Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted out a simple statement of solidarity with the Hong Kong protests against China’s increasingly authoritarian grip over the region. Unlike the ongoing protests-turned-riots in Portland and elsewhere, the people of Hong Kong are fighting against overt oppression at the hands of the Chinese government.
Rather than receiving praise for his courage from the NBA and its “social justice”-promoting players and coaches, Morey was roundly rebuked by the league. LeBron James, the league’s most recognizable star, took it upon himself to malign Morey with a rant. James accused Morey of causing actual harm with his since-deleted tweet.
“I don’t want to get into a word or sentence feud with Daryl Morey, but I believe he wasn’t educated on the situation at hand, and he spoke,” said James. “And so many people could have been harmed not only financially, physically, emotionally, spiritually.”
Steve Kerr, Golden State Warrior’s usually outspoken head coach, could only offer a tepid response. “It’s a really bizarre international story, and a lot of us don’t know what to make of it,” said Kerr.
In perhaps, the most egregious display of “bending the knee” to China, Houston Rockets’ star James Harden offered an obsequious mea culpa to the authoritarian regime: “We apologize…we love China.”
The Ringer revealed that Morey’s job was very much in jeopardy at the time because of his tweet:
After general manager Daryl Morey expressed support in a since-deleted tweet for pro-democracy efforts in Hong Kong, the Chinese government, the Chinese Basketball Association, and various Chinese businesses quickly denounced Morey and moved to sever ties with the Rockets. As a consequence, league sources told The Ringer that Rockets ownership has debated Morey’s employment status and whether to replace him.
Senator Hawley’s letter was met with open hostility.
Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, penned a powerful letter to the NBA critical of the league’s hypocrisy and total disregard for the atrocities occurring in China and Hong Kong. Much of the letter is worth quoting in full for its exacting and damning precision on the matter:
On July 3, the National Basketball Association (NBA) came to an agreement with the NBA players union allowing players to wear certain social and political messages on their jerseys, almost all aligned with the message of recent anti-police protests. Conspicuously missing from the list of approved phrases are any in support of the victims of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including the people of Hong Kong, whose remaining freedoms are being extinguished by the CCP’s newly-enacted national security law.
Given the NBA’s troubled history of excusing and apologizing for the brutal repression of the Chinese Communist regime, these omissions are striking. Last October, you no doubt recall, you chose to apologize to the CCP after Daryl Morey, General Manager of the Houston Rockets, spoke up on behalf of the Hong Kong protestors.
Following that shameful display, I encouraged you to reverse course. Instead, you have spent the intervening months deepening the NBA’s ties to the CCP. Just last week, you described the October incident as ‘a bump in the road’ in the NBA’s relationship with the Chinese government. You went on to say that you understand that the CCP has “a different view of…how things should be done,” and that you hope the NBA and the CCP will be able to “find mutual respect for each other.”
What offensive nonsense. No amount of profit can justify collaborating with a regime for which violent suppression and enslavement are routine tools of governance.
What kind of response did the NBA and its partner, ESPN, offer Senator Hawley? A derisive email that consisted of only two words from the league’s most prominent reporter, Adrian Wojnarowski: “f*** you.”
LeBron James may be the biggest hypocrite of them all.
The media continues to give sycophantic praise to Lebron James as some tireless activist and “more than an athlete.”
ESPN’s Dave McMenamin wrote: “James, 35, first used his voice to bring awareness to social issues affecting black Americans in March 2012, when he and then-teammate Dwyane Wade organized a photo of the entire Miami Heat team wearing hooded sweatshirts, the same style of hoodie that Trayvon Martin was wearing when he was shot and killed by George Zimmerman.”
Apparently, however, James’ activism doesn’t extend beyond black Americans. Worse, the atrocities occurring in China that James actively refuses to acknowledge never mind condemn are infinitely beyond the scope and scale of the perceived injustices he attempts to give voice to here in America.
James Durso puts it quite succinctly for The Hill:
If LeBron James were some Vice President of GM, no one would care what he said or did, but he’s a woke celebrity and an activist for labor rights and social justice who forgot when you attack others for their failings, real or imagined, you raise the bar for yourself.
Joshua Wong, a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist, recently called out James on his hypocrisy as well in a bristling tweet: “Defending democracy is vital, but @KingJames only talks loud in the US. On China, not only is he silent, he actively shuts others up. He called @dmorey ‘misinformed’ and “not really educated” for supporting #HongKong. All he cares about is money, not human rights. Hypocritical.”
A grim pall hangs over the restart of the 2020 NBA season. In their abject silence and refusal to condemn China’s inhumane regime out of greed and hypocrisy, the NBA and many of its players remain complicit in the ongoing atrocities committed against the Uyghur Muslims.