The NBA and China

#3
This has been embarrassing. Especially Popovich stroking Adam Silver today for “standing up for Morey’s free speech” as if Morey didn’t delete his support for Hong Kong protesters and he didn’t issue what was no doubt a forced groveling apology, followed by an NBA statement that borderline justifies the regime. As if Adam Silver isn’t going to China to bend the knee. As if there hasnt been a full capitulation. What is there to stand up for? There is no affront to China that hasn’t been wiped out. How exactly did he stand for free speech? By not forcing him out of the league? Pop is likely headstrong enough not to realize how ridiculous he looked today.

Steve Kerr’s whole “I’m just a dumb basketball coach” act was cowardly and he knew it. Especially when this guy hasn’t seen a soapbox he wasn’t willing to leap on the last few years.

For the rest of the league starting with James Harden to Doc Rivers. It just seems like the league stance for this is “shut up and dribble”. Funny how that came around again.
 
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#6
PATHETIC and EMBARASSING.

The “woke” NBA puffed up their chest and proclaimed how progressive they were by pulling the all star game out of Charlotte because of the trans bathroom law but with China, who has concentration camps/ re-education camps for Muslims and kills protesters, the NBA knuckles under to their communist overlords because of the allmighty dollar/yuan. Hypocrites...........

I can’t support this business.
 
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#7
Virtue signaling is what the NBA does. Meaning they will stand upon the highest mountain for all to see and show you how they are all for equality and fairness for humankind. Yet when it comes to the gravy train coming to a stop, all the sudden their true colors show. The NBA is a business full of extremely rich men. You can't have extremely wealthy people without having extremely poor people that are taken advantage of.

They put on this facade of "NBA cares" and "we're moving the all star game because we support LGBTQ" because fighting for those rights is a business tactic that can make them more money. But to fight for peoples rights when it stops that gravy train out of China? Yeah....now we see their true colors and it should come as a surprise to nobody. The charity that the NBA does is all PR. Players like Cousins and many others do it because they actually care about people but the league itself is a dirty business like any other and every move it makes is about the bottom line.
 
#8
Listening to grant tell anyone in the NBA that they need to educate themselves before tweeting so as not to offend other countries. I just can’t post on here what I’m really thinking about listening to grant and how afraid he is of offending a communist regime.
 
#9
The NBA is both a sports competition and a business. From time to time, the fact that money speaks loudly rears its ugly head. I was appalled to see that they released a statement in English that sounded reasonable while simultaneously releasing one in Chinese that was all sucking up. To an authoritarian regime that wants to punish an American citizen for expressing his opinion. The NBA needs reminding that the American way is more than a set of platitudes. Sometimes you have to stand up for what is right.
 

hrdboild

Hall of Famer
#12
I wish we could get basketball minus politics, but I guess that's a pipe dream.
That's what the NBA wants right now. I think this csse goes beyond politics though. Which is why so many people are offended that they're refusing to make a statement beyond "we officially declare that we have no opinion". Whether they like it or not, the NBA as an organization has been called to the mat at this point and what they do next is going to show what their true values are. There's really no ducking out of it. The lack of a stance is a stance and it unfortunately highlights the void at the center of it all.

No doubt plenty of otherwise outspoken personalities are content to ride this out in the shadows because the consequences are obvious. I think we all need to be asking ourselves the same questions that Adam Silver is trying to sort through right now because this goes way beyond basketball. And where you stand on this issue is going to be very very important for the rest of this century at the very least. Sure you could just ignore it and let it remain someone else's problem for now but you might as well ask those questions now because everyone is going to have to ask them sooner or later. This is just the reality of our current point in history.
 
#13
Easy for the NBA to bully demoralized westerns with nonsense to push agenda's not so much with a hardened nationalistic/realistic people. the NBA just found out the hard way. China as a result of this inflexible belief and view will be dominant for the next century at least and they earned it. The NBA just ran into a prime LeBron/Jordan on the world stage and got trampled.
 
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#16
Co
The 2022 Winter Olympics is in Beijing. Will be an interesting 2 years leading up to it.
This will interesting because unlike the NBA where players are paid a huge amount of money by comparison, Olympic athletes are paid squat and someone will try to drum up fame through some shows of dissent against the Chinese Regime in hopes of cashing in down the road.
 
#20
It seems like the big fallout is going to happen if/when league revenue drops. That will impact the salary cap and will put a major obstacle in front of a lot of teams.
Hopefully this episode, plus the cap spike a few years back that allowed the Warriors to land Durant, convinces everyone that basing the cap off a single year’s projected basketball related income is a bad idea. It should be an average, or something along those lines, to smooth the impacts from sudden, unexpected events. Certainty is important, plus they could likely shorten the “moratorium” where the league calculates income before free agency can “start” (and we all know how effective that moratorium is).
 

Capt. Factorial

trifolium contra tempestatem subrigere certum est
Staff member
#22
Hopefully this episode, plus the cap spike a few years back that allowed the Warriors to land Durant, convinces everyone that basing the cap off a single year’s projected basketball related income is a bad idea. It should be an average, or something along those lines, to smooth the impacts from sudden, unexpected events. Certainty is important, plus they could likely shorten the “moratorium” where the league calculates income before free agency can “start” (and we all know how effective that moratorium is).
There's literally no reason they couldn't have salaries based on percentage of league BRI instead of literal dollars, and that would solve that problem. The salary cap system could work in a similar way as it does now, it's just that players would get an explicit share of league revenue rather than guaranteed dollar amounts. Protects the owners against revenue shortfalls, gives the players a chunk of revenue increases (and hey, they ought to get that as they're usually considered to be the ones responsible!), doesn't require "smoothing" of salary caps. Seems sensible for all sides to me.
 
#23
There's literally no reason they couldn't have salaries based on percentage of league BRI instead of literal dollars, and that would solve that problem. The salary cap system could work in a similar way as it does now, it's just that players would get an explicit share of league revenue rather than guaranteed dollar amounts. Protects the owners against revenue shortfalls, gives the players a chunk of revenue increases (and hey, they ought to get that as they're usually considered to be the ones responsible!), doesn't require "smoothing" of salary caps. Seems sensible for all sides to me.
I believe the super max contracts have a % of the cap built it. But it maybe like x amount or % whichever is higher.
 
#25
All I know is I never want to hear ____ from these outspoken NBA players/coaches again. Shovel that humble pie in and shut up and dribble is my official stance. They are jocks nothing more. Right about this time is when I upgrade my cable to get CSN as of now I have no intention too I'm disgusted. Really puts the greatness of true legends of the past like Ali for example into context. I support the people of Hong Kong in their fight for freedom because there is nothing more American than that.

You see this... this is free to him. easy to have an opinion on especially working in SF. But when you have skin in the game all of a sudden its a complicated issue. What a coward.
 
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Kingster

Hall of Famer
#30
What is difficult to understand about a communist dictatorship, a police state, a regime that imprisons and "re-educates" one million Uighurs because of their faith, who the people of HK are fighting against? Claiming that you have to be educated about the situation, that it is "strange" or "weird" as Kerr says, is absolute willful ignorance, which is tantamount to cowardice. This China situation shows him and his kind to be the frauds that they really are.