Noble or not. Tacit cowing down to people who don't respect your values is not something people can live with for long. Just like black athletes entertaining white audience. You know, the whole Sterling affair comes to mind. Where is Sterling now? Not in NBA. It's not like the league and the NBPA can talk about this ahead of time and openly decide that self-censure is put in place. That's unrealistic - there are people who will quit over something like that and it will get out to public. The league is too big and too much of a cultural representative. This difference was bound to come out in the open sooner or later. If it's anyone's mistake, it is Silver's
I agree with this 100%. Let me also add that freedom of speech is one of the most overused expressions to defend people and it is used incorrectly. Your Constitutional right to free speech protects from government reprisal for speech, it does NOT allow you to say whatever you want without professional repercussion. My basic take: 1) I agree with Morey's opinion on the Hong Kong situation 2) I agree he has a legal right to express that opinion 3) The team shouldn't fire him 4) The team would be within their right to fire him 5) He shouldn't have put the league and his team in this position
They already hated him before. They will definitely hate him now. I don't want Morey to resign, man. All you guys that wanted Morey to be humbled.. well here you go. I suspect Morey won't be on any social media anytime soon.
Why there wasn't a memo to all teams/executives/athletes to stay away from this situation, I will never know. It's amazing something like this hasn't happened before.
Regarding #5 , it may be a bit too naive of me, but I prefer to believe in a world where that tweet would not have put the league/team in any kind of position at all, and would automatically be understood as just one man expressing his opinion. On a side note Blizzard banned a Hong Kong Hearthstone tournament winner for 1 year for stating his beliefs: https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/8/...-blitzchung-hong-kong-protesters-ban-blizzard Makes me lose most of the previous goodwill I had for Blizzard due to their long run of awesome games (Warcraft2/Diablo/Starcraft). Evidently the interviewers were also banned. I'm a lot more ok with the interviewers being banned since from the video clip, it does feel like they were treating this topic as a joke, and egging the player on. Peoples lives/freedoms/etc. are at stake and it should not be a laughing matter.
There probably was a memo send out for 29 other teams. It's kind of obvious we don't have a PR person.
Yep. When your actions start costing people jobs whom you had relationships with, I don't see how he cant feel guilty. He obviously didn't think this out before the retweet. I actually feel sorry for Morey. This is heavy burden to carry.
'Voluntarily' - you mean, 'resign wink wink or stay-and-be-fired' or ' when a 'ship or you're fired for lack of results' which really means fired bc of china shiiit storm. It's unfortunate this happened and illustrates the bad side of the social media era we all live in. I feel bad for Yao. I bet they "strongly suggest" he cut ties with the NBA I guess we won't have the annual Sharks-Rox 140-72 preseason game!!!!
I mean yes, that's naive. The rest of the world is not America. If you could speak out against authoritarian regimes without repercussion then there would be no Hong Kong issue to begin with.
Thanks for sharing this story. Blizzard's relationship runs deep with the China enterprises there. WOW is huge there for years and probably still running strong. Indeed the China market is extremely important for Blizzard and I am not surprised at all that they are bending their knees like this. In fact, they worked with Legendary Film (another Hollywood company brought by the Chinese businessman) and made the movie "Warcraft" a few years back, that's been rated one of the worse game to movie productions ever, so was its US box office. But they almost gain most of their investments back from the China box office to avoid a complete disaster.
Why are you taking this stand while the commish is defending Morey and self-expression values? The league made the decision to become global. The league reaped benefits. Now it is reaping the costs. Morey could easily be a player from HongKong speaking up. We already have the same situation with Turkey. There will be blowback on rockets and yes Morey will probably be shunned but I'm sure we'll find a way to operate while also saving our pride. I think eventually, if Chinese are unreasonable, the whole league will support us.
Actually it's not that amazing as you think. There are some famous singer like Madonna, Jane Birkin had been banned several years ago, cause both of them supported 14th Dalai Lama who is the current Tibet religion leader and the government criticized them for supporting the independence of the Tibet. Looks familiar, right?
Btw Silver doubled down on it not Morey. Morey essentially deleted his tweet right away and came out with a half apology. It's NBAs decision to stand behind him. It's out of Morey's hands at this point. NBA is making a point that they aren't going to get bullied by a foreign government because of one tweet. Which is great imo. Even though Morey shouldn't have made the tweet, China's overreaction is absolutely out of line. NBA cant set a precedent that they will punish franchises because one employee didn't tip toe around a foreign government
You seemed annoyed at him. I guess I get it. Rockets are now out of Chinese market for sure, even if NBA can somehow salvage the overall relationship. That means Morey is going to be gone eventually. Maybe that was part of his intention.
Its midnight in Shanghai and workers are starting to take down the stuffs related to the NBA China game between the Lakers and the Nets. Its pretty much a conclusion that both games will be cancelled and King James should be back to the airport soon.
Depending on how long this goes.. maybe Morey resigns ?? Note I don't advocate for it but just speculating. It's pretty silly for China to be so thin skin but I know what they're doing.. ie "killing the chicken to scare the monkey; to punish an individual as an example to others"
