NBA-China: Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey’s Hong Kong tweet one year on
- League’s relationship with China has been increasingly politicised in the US, while criticism for LeBron James has continued
- Games have been shown with NBA commissioner Adam Silver confident they will return to CCTV, while Morey has kept his job
Sunday’s NBA Finals game three coincided with the one-year anniversary of Daryl Morey’s tweet supporting Hong Kong’s anti-government protesters.
“Fight for Freedom, Stand with Hong Kong.” That was the image of the Houston Rockets GM’s tweet. It was swiftly deleted but the damage was already done.
Within an hour, Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta tweeted that the NBA franchise is “NOT a political organisation” and the league went on full damage control mode, but Morey’s tweet kicked off a chain of events that threatened to derail the NBA’s 40-year relationship with China, bringing criticism from China’s foreign ministry and threats in state media.
So, a year on, where do they stand?
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First off, Morey is still the Rockets GM. Despite reports in the immediate aftermath of his tweet that there was pressure for him to be sacked, he has not been.
In fact, Fertitta said last month that Morey’s job is safe and he will be the man to recruit the replacement for outgoing head coach Mike D’Antoni.
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US President Donald Trump said Morey “must be pretty good” to Fertitta during a meeting at the White House about the impact of the pandemic on the restaurant industry in May. The following month Fertitta said there was nothing wrong with Morey’s tweet.
Tencent did not broadcast any games featuring the Rockets – including the NBA Play-offs series with the Lakers, arguably the biggest for Chinese fans – although they did put their scores up. Sunday’s game three, which saw the Miami Heat pull the series back to 2-1 in favour of the Los Angeles Lakers, was streamed in China.
State broadcaster CCTV stood firm on its decision to stop broadcasting last October, reaffirming their stand before the NBA resumed in the Disney bubble following its coronavirus pause.
The Lakers were one of the teams in China at the time of Morey’s tweet. They were there to play the Brooklyn Nets in the NBA China Games in Shanghai and Shenzhen. Both games went ahead but the media and promotional aspects of the trip were cancelled and they were not shown on CCTV as originally planned.
Lakers star LeBron James has been criticised for his response to Morey’s tweet from the outset. The outspoken James commented on his return to the US. This led to his jerseys being burnt on the basketball courts of Hong Kong as his former fans turned their backs on him, while many branded him a hypocrite on social media.
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The scrutiny on James has only increased as he has led support for the Black Lives Matter movement and spoken out for various other social justice causes in the US through this prolonged season.
The targeting of him on social media and right-wing outlets has not stopped, while pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong was also critical of him in June for not speaking up on China or Hong Kong.
The financial impact of the fallout is unclear. In February, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said it could be up to US$400 million. Speaking at the All-Star Weekend in February he also downplayed concerns over the long-lasting impact.
“It’s substantial, I don’t want to run from that,” Silver said. “We were taken off the air in China for a period of time, and it caused our many business partners in China to feel it was, therefore, inappropriate to have ongoing relationships with us. But I don’t have any sense that there’s any permanent damage to our business there.”
There is also the financial impact of the coronavirus to take into account, while the pandemic has affected the league in several other ways, including no NBA games for several months and then restarting the season in the bubble.
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The NBA’s relationship with China has come under increasing scrutiny this year, with politicians writing to Silver and the league to explain their stance, fuelled by an ESPN report of abuse at an NBA training camp in Xinjiang.
In July, Silver said the league’s relationship with China had improved in recent months amid controversy, including questions of the NBA from Republican senator for Tennessee, Marsha Blackburn.
“We’ve continued a dialogue with the Chinese, with our business partners there. In certain cases, with certain government officials,” Silver told Time on July 1, the same day that Beijing introduced its new National Security Law for Hong Kong. He also called for mutual respect.
“As I’ve said before … we come to China with a certain set of core American values and principles. They have a different view of how things have been done, how things should be done. And hopefully, we can find mutual respect for each other.”
Last month, Silver said the decision for the NBA to exit China was one for the government to decide, in an interview with CNN’s Bob Costas.
“We could’ve decided because they took us off CCTV that therefore we should, in essence, take our ball and go home and stop operating there,” Silver said. “The fact is our games continue to be streamed on Tencent in China and we’ve continued in there.”
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Silver played up the support that their soft power relationship had been given by governments from both sides of the aisle over the past four decades.
“Until very recent history, at the encouragement of the State Departments of various administrations on both sides of the aisle, it was viewed as a really positive thing that we were exporting American values to China through the NBA,” he said.
Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr said he regretted his initial comments on Morey and China in a July interview, while Utah Jazz’s Rudy Gobert last week became the first active NBA player to comment on the treatment of Muslim Uygurs in Xinjiang.
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The Council of American Islamic Relations, which also wrote to Silver calling for the NBA to be “on the right side of history”, praised Gobert.
Two things are for sure. The pandemic has put paid to any NBA China Games in 2020 and the political climate in the US means that the scrutiny over the NBA’s relationship with the country is going nowhere. Silver was confident enough in February that NBA teams or Team USA would return to China in the future, just as the league would return to Chinese screens.
“Our games have not returned to CCTV, the government broadcaster,” Silver said at the All-Star Weekend. “My sense is they will at some point in the future. We are not pressing them. It’s a decision that is outside of certainly our control and I’m often not even sure where that decision lies.”
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“I know that, from the data we look at, there continues to be enormous interest for the NBA in China,” Silver said. “And my sense is that there will be a return to normalcy fairly soon, but I can’t say exactly when, when it comes to CCTV.”
