The Story of A General Manager, Basketball Superstar, Mega-Corporation, and an Oppressive Regime
Matthew Logan |
There is perhaps is no greater controversial and complex relationship than that of professional sports and international politics. This notion had certainly been proven to us during the NBA’s preseason exhibition tour in China in October of 2019. Our infamous and ongoing bout between the NBA and China began on October 4, 2019, where an MIT grad and long-time Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted a since-deleted image displaying the words, “Fight For Freedom, Stand With Hong Kong”. Morey had made this post as NBA teams were finishing up preseason competition in Hong Kong, an area which has been embroiled in a years-long cultural and political battle with Xi Jingping’s Chinese regime.
This battle has been filled with innumerable violent protests and demonstrations, with citizens of Hong Kong fighting for greater freedom from the “Chinese Dragon” since the departure of Great Britain in July of 1997. The Chinese government quickly responded to the Houston Rockets’ general manager with anger and a thirst for vengeance, stating, “We are deeply shocked by the erroneous comments on Hong Kong made by Mr. Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets,” and even reached out to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to discipline and/or fire Morey in order to mend relations between the business and its government. After refusal to discipline Morey, the Chinese government essentially “shunned” the NBA in the worst sense possible; in terms of dollars. Soon after Morey’s tweet, China refused to televise the last NBA preseason exhibition game, and Silver prohibited players from speaking at press conferences for the remainder of their stay in China during its tour in October.
To make matters worse, Los Angeles Lakers Forward and NBA superstar LeBron James chimed in on the issue, tweeting that Morey was “misinformed” and “not educated” in his remarks about Hong Kong, which proved to not only be shocking and unexpected comments from the league’s top superstar, but perhaps LeBron’s greatest blunder of his carefully managed career (except of course for his infamous “LeFlops”). James, the face of today’s NBA, is also considered one of the most popular basketball figures in China. In all corners of the country, any Chinese NBA fan could be seen adorning LeBron’s popular Lakers jersey, amongst his many others.
His comments, however, tarnished much of his immensely adored reputation and popularity in the people’s republic, furthering the divide between China and NBA basketball. At this point, NBA-China tensions were no longer about the comments of a single general manager for a basketball organization or its most prized superstar athlete, but had become what the Chinese saw as a culturally systemic negative view shared by the league as a whole.
It is with these turn of events that it appears Stern’s decades-long work of expanding the league’s prominence over international waters is disintegrating over a few tweets. As we all know, tweets can burn like a California wildfire. To fully understand this issue, we must first understand how important Chinese business is to the NBA and what their recent tensions means for the future of NBA business.
Since taking the reigns as NBA commissioner in 1984, David Stern splashed onto the scene with a plethora of visions and ambitions to achieve hopeful accomplishments for the then struggling basketball league. Next to generating massive television deals and witnessing the growth of NBA celebrities and rivalries, the most important of his visions was increasing the brand’s popularity through global integration and expansion, which included building an immense foundation in China.
After fostering a successful, decades-long relationship with China through the establishment of TV deals, clothing sales, and the emergence of Chinese superstars in the NBA such as the Houston Rockets’ Yao Ming in the early/mid-2000s, it seemed that “basketball diplomacy” had become one of Stern’s most celebrated successes in his tenure as NBA commissioner. From operating numerous basketball camps and events, to overseeing more than $4 billion of revenue operations in the country, “successful” was an understatement. Since Stern’s departure from the league in 2014, global NBA expansion has continued, but seen significantly slower growth and success. Of course, since October, this growth and progress has practically ceased to exist.
During the 2020 NBA All-Star Weekend, NBA Commissioner, Adam Silver, announced to the press that the NBA will lose up to $400 million due to severed ties with Chinese business partners.
This will force the NBA to adjust its financial projections for the 2020-2021 season, severely weakening the league’s budget and revenue. These setbacks will likely lower the NBA’s cap, weakening the league’s financial structure and impacting players’ salaries as their contracts are tied to cap percentages. These tremendous financial impacts do not even take into account the colossal detriments brought upon by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Let’s get something straight here; I support the protestors and demonstrators in Hong Kong, and side with their political and social cause to achieve freedom from the oppressive and corrupt Chinese government. I believe in democracies and freedom, and I’m not afraid to admit it. Hell, I’d probably tweet the same thing because I as well stand with Hong Kong and their pursuit of freedom. However, Morey and I significantly differ in our professions and influence. There is a huge difference between tweeting this myself, and a renowned NBA official doing so. From a business standpoint, Morey’s tweet was a disastrous, miscalculated business decision that contrived insurmountable negative impacts, costing his league hundreds of millions of dollars. There is no issue with what he tweeted, but it is because of the massive repercussions tailored against his own employer because of those few taps on the screen of his phone that has made everything about his tweet wrong. Yet, I, nor should anyone else be surprised by Morey’s actions and how they unfolded, or go as far as feeling bad for him.
As someone who studies NBA executives and closely follows NBA news and rumor mills, I know what kind of general manager Daryl Morey is. The NBA’s analytics boy, product of Baraboo, Wisconsin, is the perfect example of toxic, attention-seeking GM’s in professional sports. You will, without much deduction, find these GM’s to be jealous and flustered by the amount of attention and press their prized athletes and coaches receive, and constantly chase after that very same spotlight and coverage. These GM’s constantly post on social media, sharing their unwanted thoughts and opinions to the press and the world, and consistently talk about their players and “visions” for their organization’s future without providing any real, thoughtful, or substantial information.
Although, why shouldn’t he be one of these GM’s? Morey is a part of the “new breed” of sports executives, where staying silent, hidden, and working behind the scenes while quietly winning numerous titles is no longer appealing. The last thing sports executives want is drama, because sports should be an escape from that uncomfortable facet of life. While I’m not saying Daryl Morey loves drama, he doesn’t necessarily make it difficult for it to find him. Thus, he has no one to blame for this one but himself. Thankfully, since Morey’s costly decision, he has maintained a significantly low-profile (finally).
The toughest pill to swallow is realizing how meaningless his tweet was. This tweet is perhaps already shared by hundreds of thousands to millions of people, so what kind of impact was Morey hoping to achieve by sharing it? Did he truly believe that sharing this one tweet would achieve global recognition on a scale that would finally free the people of Hong Kong? Or was it simply an act of boredom, that Morey felt the need to post something on social media that most people would agree with, ultimately getting a few likes, retweets, boost his reputation and ego, and to keep himself occupied? I tend to believe the latter.
While I believe Daryl Morey should ultimately keep his job after only expressing his American, democratic rights, it’s hard to see a guy like former Philadelphia 76ers General Manger Bryan Colangelo lose his job over making fun of his own players on burner accounts on Twitter, while Morey keeps his after costing the league hundreds of millions of dollars and significantly affecting the NBA’s future financial structure with a single tweet. Now, one can certainly argue that the NBA was going to have to face a political/social dilemma with China soon, with or without Morey. However, whether a problem was or was not impending to occur, it was Morey who pulled the final straw.
Doing business with China was always going to be a complicated process for the same reason democracies conducting political relations and ties with the Asian superpower are; China is a completely different beast. The overpopulated country of over 1 billion people has long been ruled by one of the most oppressive, powerful, socially restrictive governments on the planet, fueled by one of the world’s strongest economies and militaries.
The most common perception of China held by many of the world’s democracies and capitalist economies is that China is essential, yet dangerous. Because of their economic power and influence, doing business with them is almost required, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it. When President Nixon became the first U.S. President to visit China in the 1970s, he didn’t do it because he wanted to but because he needed to. China had become an emerging political, economic, social and militaristic superpower during that decade, an emergence that couldn’t be ignored by any nation. It’s the same reason Commissioner Stern brought the NBA to China; It was perfect for business, and in order to achieve certain revenue aspirations, it was business that had to be done.
Of course, it goes without saying that the United States and China significantly differ in politics, economics, military, culture and society. Because of these differences, and as ties grew stronger between the American-based company of the NBA and China, future political and social tensions were almost inevitable. The only reason the NBA and China have been able to sustain its over three-decades long relationship is by conducting its business relations in an incredibly sensitive, carefully, well-calculated manner. This of course was mainly done through successfully handling media relations regarding their long relationship, avoiding political dialogue altogether for obvious reasons.
Beyond the business dilemmas and fiscal implications that Morey and Lebron’s tweets have had on the NBA, their actions are symbolic of a much more significant issue, and perhaps the greatest threat to all of sports: Politics. We have for years been enveloped in and suffered through one of the most domestic/internationally politically divisive times in human history. Sports remains, yet maybe not for long, to be one of the only areas to escape those uncomfortable aspects of life. I am NOT advocating for players to ‘Shut up and dribble’, and I do believe politics and social dialogue does have a time and place in the world of sports, and certainly plays a significantly beneficial role in guiding society’s moral and social framework, but we must remember to have everything in moderation, even moderation.
The old-me would say that the global sports community should avoid politics like the plague. Unfortunately, we live in an era of immense political and social disaster where that simply is no longer possible, so instead we must learn how to prepare ourselves for these various issues and how to prevent them from occurring in the future.
Daryl Morey could have ignored his apparent insatiable urge to tweet or post on social media, and could have just kicked his feet up in his multi-million dollar mansion and watched preseason basketball like everybody else. LeBron could have just remained annoyed that Morey ruined his Lakers’ preseason tour in China without sending out a single tweet, and simply moved on from the issue without throwing himself into the middle of the debacle and keeping his Chinese reputation intact.
As a society, we sometimes feel it is our civic duty to always speak up during certain situations and causes, but fail to recognize and foresee its possible overarching negative implications. Now, this does not mean I don’t support players and executives efforts to dedicate certain actions and accomplishments to certain figures or causes in the game, but to try and create systemic and cultural issues that don’t really exist only hurts everyone involved.
To Daryl Morey, LeBron James, and all others who constantly try to throw their political views and social issues into the realm of sports; Please, don’t ruin this for us. I’m sure I speak for the majority of sports fans when I say there is enough problems to deal with on an everyday basis, just leave sports alone. Let sports be about competition and entertainment, and competition and entertainment alone. Morey and LeBron should be perfect examples of all that can go wrong with the introduction of politics into sports.
I absolutely advocate for athletes, coaches and executives to always stand up for what they believe is right, and to defend their strongest morals and beliefs against any threat that endangers them. These are all members and key contributors to our society and American democracy, whether they be citizens or foreign. No matter how great their popularity, level of skill, or respective sports they play, each and every athlete has been given a platform. It is because of this, I only ask what is fair, and that is to make sure those in the sports community do so when it is totally needed and necessary, and that it is always for the greater interest of themselves and others. When we are given a platform, it is only right and just that we ensure we use it wisely.
It seems after his fateful tweet, Daryl Morey’s only friends in the world may be his team, family, and the “freedom fighters” of Hong Kong.
For a well-run, highly successful league, it is always shocking to witness certain issues rock the NBA, for the league has always been the best amongst American and international sports at avoiding most political/social issues, scandal and corruption, with the exception of a very few instances. Essentially, the NBA is a model sports organization for building and constantly projecting success. That’s what makes this one of the most bizarre stories in sports.
While NBA executives remain hopeful and optimistic, the future of NBA global culture and expansion is dark and lacks solutions of repair. While tensions have somewhat eased since the incident, the damage has already been done, and permanent scars cannot be erased. Unfortunately, it was inflicted by one of the NBA’s most successful and highly decorated executives in the league. People make mistakes in the world of business, but not are always this grand. Daryl Morey escaped an ejection, but I’m still going to have to give him a technical foul. Maybe even a flagrant.