Money or moral high ground? NBA’s China crisis shows it can’t have both – Adam Silver has to pick a side in a game he might not win

League has a reputation for being more socially aware than its peers and backing athletes such as LeBron James in speaking out
Ongoing fallout from Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey’s tweet is a watershed moment but stance may have come too late

Jonathan White

Published: 12:13pm, 9 Oct 2019

Why you can trust SCMP

Let the games begin. Now that NBA commissioner Adam Silver is on his way to Shanghai from Tokyo, the ongoing furore stemming from Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey’s tweet backing Hong Kong’s anti-government protesters is going to go into overdrive.

While the tweet was subsequently deleted and Morey backtracked, that has not proved enough for China. The NBA initially released a statement on Monday outlining their position.

The trouble was that the Chinese statement, posted on the league’s official Weibo account, did not match the language of the English. By the time the NBA released another statement on Tuesday – ahead of Silver’s press conference in Tokyo – stating that the English was the one that counted, it was too late.

Anyone who has done business in China will be aware that when it comes to bilingual contracts, it is the Chinese version that prevails. It appears, whether the NBA like it or not, that the Chinese statement has prevailed in this case.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver at a press conference in Tokyo on Tuesday before the NBA Japan Games 2019 featuring the Toronto Raptors and Houston Rockets. Photo: AFP

It is admirable that their latest statement tries to stand its ground in mounting pressure but they are finding out they cannot play it both ways.

A flashpoint like this was always likely for a league that has prided itself on its status as America’s most “woke”. It was Silver after all who took the 2017 NBA All-Star weekend from Charlotte, North Carolina, because of the state’s stance on transgender bathrooms.

It is he who let star players such as LeBron James warm up in “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts ahead of a Cleveland Cavaliers game in Brooklyn to protest the death of Eric Garner at the New York Police Department in 2014. Silver was deputy commissioner when James and his then Miami Heat teammates showed their support for murdered teen Trayvon Martin in 2012.

That capacity for social activism without punishment is among the reasons for the NBA’s popularity at home, where it skews to a younger audience than the other major sports leagues – ones where the athletes are not given the same freedom of expression.

Now, the NBA has to choose between that goodwill or getting back in the good graces of China. Arguably, that ship has sailed and it is nothing more than damage limitation at this point. The question might be more ‘how much damage can be undone’?

Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey’s tweet has put the NBA under pressure. Photo: AP

Nevermind that this was a tweet from an individual, not the Houston Rockets and certainly not the NBA as a whole. Nevermind that decades of laying the foundations of a relationship, where the NBA has become the foreign sports league most enmeshed in China, stand to be undone. It has been said that 30 years have gone in 30 seconds while a message shared on Chinese social media read, “US-China people-to-people exchanges started with ping pong, and ended with basketball”.

It was 40 years since the first NBA team travelled to China and 30 since David Stern convinced CCTV to screen the NBA. Now, this year’s NBA China Games have been pulled from CCTV, events surrounding them are being cancelled, and depending on how the next 24 hours go, the games stand a strong chance of being pulled altogether.

Financially, China holds all the cards but is it money or morality that matters most to the NBA? What does China even want the NBA to do at this point? And what is the backlash going to be in the US if they agree to that?

While the internet’s attention span is usually shorter than an NBA game, this is set to run. The news cycle and social media outrage might be short-term in the US, but that is not necessarily the case for China and certainly not when it comes to issues of nationalism.

Make no mistake, this has become a political issue. The Chinese foreign ministry has expressed its opinion, while the Chinese consulate in Houston was among the first. State broadcasters, sports bodies and companies have all chimed in, while many US politicians have taken up the issue, too.

The question comes with whether the league stands together, whatever the NBA decides. There is money to be made in being China’s favourite team and there is a gap to be filled now that the Rockets have lost that status. You have to wonder how the other 29 teams want to play this with the yuan signs lighting up their eyes.

It would be interesting to know the thoughts of the players. What is on the mind of LeBron James, who is set to line up for the Lakers against the Nets in Shanghai and Shenzhen? In a CNN interview, James criticised US President Donald Trump for “using sports to kind of divide us”. What is his take on this or anyone else with a stake in the NBA?

Silver has taken a stand to back free speech and to explain that it is not the NBA’s role to adjudicate on differences of opinion. They need to be judicious in what they do next.

If you want to play ball with China, the rules are not going to be drawn up in NBA head office. But can they afford for Beijing to call the shots?

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Money or moral high ground? NBA can’t have both

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