Daryl Morey’s apology was so excruciating, obsequious and outrageous that it provoked a rare moment of bipartisan accord in our otherwise politically fractured nation.
“I did not intend my tweet to cause any offense to Rockets fans and friends of mine in China,” Morey posted to Twitter on Sunday evening. “I was merely voicing one thought, based on one interpretation, of one complicated event.”
Morey, the general manager of the National Basketball Association’s Houston Rockets, was attempting to explain away an image he’d tweeted out Friday (and since deleted) that read, “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.”
“Hong Kong,” as in the pro-democracy protesters who for months have been taking to the streets of that semi-autonomous region of China. The protesters have been demanding direct elections and amnesty for those arrested for protesting a now-withdrawn proposal to allow accused criminals in Hong Kong to be tried in mainland courts.
“I have had a lot of opportunity since that tweet to hear and consider other perspectives,” Morey’s apology continued. “I have always appreciated the significant support our Chinese fans and sponsors have provided, and I would hope that those who are upset will know that offending or misunderstanding them was not my intention.”
The NBA has become a $4 billion-a-year business in China, according to NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum
Chinese state TV and the Chinese company that pays $300 million a year to stream the NBA announced they would not be showing Rockets games in protest over Morey’s tweet. The Chinese Basketball Association released a statement saying it was “strongly opposed” to Morey’s “improper remarks … and will suspend communication and cooperation” with the Rockets. The CBA canceled upcoming games scheduled against minor-league affiliates of the Rockets.
People’s Daily, the paper of the Chinese Communist Party wrote that, “Morey’s position is hurtful to Chinese basketball fans and is also an affront to the Chinese people.”
The proper response to these objections, of course, is not a wheedling apology but a suggestion to grow up, you authoritarian, brutal, human-rights trampling, speech-censoring, religion-persecuting, dissent-stifling thugs. If you can’t take a little criticism, then form your own basketball league and see if anyone wants to pay to watch it.
But no. The NBA bent its knee, wrung its hands and issued a statement
When this supplicating humbug served to further inflame U.S. critics, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver tried to mitigate the damage with a
“It is inevitable that people around the world — including from America and China — will have different viewpoints over different issues,” he wrote. “At a time when divides between nations grow deeper and wider, we believe sports can be a unifying force that focuses on what we have in common as human beings rather than our differences.”
But in characterizing the positions of the oppressors and the oppressed as merely “different viewpoints” that can be smoothed over on the hardwood, Silver simply made the NBA’s spinelessness appear naive as well.
The same league that ostentatiously and righteously
Conservative Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas was irate: “As a lifelong Houston Rockets fan, I was proud to see Daryl Morey call out the Chinese Communist Party’s repressive treatment of protestors in Hong Kong,” he
Liberal Democratic presidential hopeful and former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke
Others in Congress from both sides of the aisle have offered similar sentiments.
And from President Donald Trump?
Crickets.
Trump, who tweets voluminously and splenetically about seemingly every little thing that annoys or offends him, has been conspicuously conciliatory when it comes to China. In
When pro football players knelt during the national anthem to protest police brutality, Trump
Trump’s silence on Hong Kong has lent credence to reports in the
Trump would feel right at home in front offices of the NBA, where American values are for sale.
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