Posted on 06/04/2022 8:10:27 PM PDT by MarvinStinson
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced this week that his league lost “hundreds of millions” after Chinese TV outlets imposed a television blackout on all NBA games following Daryl Morey’s tweet in support of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong in 2019.
Morey, then the General Manager of the Houston Rockets, wrote in October of 2019, “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.” The tweet was posted at a time when demonstrators in Hong Kong were protesting China’s ever-tightening grip on free speech rights in the former British colony.
Those two simple sentences drew Beijing’s immediate and harsh reaction as the country immediately canceled all NBA programming on CCTV. The communist nation only recently rescinded the blackout restrictions in March, when they began showing NBA games again. Though, as Silver told reporters on Thursday, the 18-month blackout succeeded in costing the league “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Silver also trumpeted the league’s willingness to suffer financial loss while speaking out in favor of free speech.
“Others since then have spoken out about their views around China and other places in the world, and if the consequences are that we’re taken off the air or we lose money, we accept that,” Silver told reporters, according to Reuters.
However, it’s important to note that Silver’s “pay any cost” in the cause of freedom routine that he’s performing now stands in stark contrast to the league’s stance 18-months ago as the league was trying to repair relations with its Chinese business partners.
LeBron James himself, the face of the league, said in plain English that there were “negatives” to having free speech:
In January, Golden State Warriors Co-Owner Chamath Palihapitiya said that “nobody cares” about China’s enslavement of its Uyghur population.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
But then again, the NBA doesn’t make nearly as much money off Ukraine.
So, Silver’s after the fact grandstanding about suffering the financial cost for free speech is worth as much as any social justice messaging from his league, which is to say it is worth nothing.
GOOD!
As far as I’m concerned the NBA should go broke and disband...
Or just all move to China and be blackened out to the US, since they love each other so much.
“...blackened out...”
Heh, heh. He said “blackened out”.
What is the NBA going to do when Americans eventually get around to the fact that the Chinese are, not our friends? Even now, while they’re making money off the Chinese, the Chinese are exporting poison that’s killing millions of Americans, exporting cheap goods that are undermining American markets, and buying oil from Russia to support the war in the Ukraine, even while we are foolishly sending Ukraine weapons to fight Russia.We are playing all sides, eventually this will have to be resolved.
It was not a coincidence this was released on the anniversary of Tiananmen Square.
If the NBA went broke and out of business tomorrow, I’d never know unless someone posted it here.
LOL. I can definitely relate to that.
Silver can blame other factors like a guys “tweet”, but the NBA product sucks. It’s not exciting, no personality, very little appeal. The 70’s-90’s were fun, then it just stopped being fun and too political.
They’ve also quietly backpedaled from all the kneeling/Black Lives Matter/in your face leftist political stuff after they lost a lot of TV viewers.
I imposed an NBA blackout in my home years ago.
Thug ball.
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