ward Page 48 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

LeBron James, One Day After Tossing Daryl Morey Under A Bus: "I Won't Talk About It Again"

LeBron James finally spoke on Monday about the outsized controversy surrounding Daryl Morey’s deleted tweet supporting pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. LeBron’s position was weak and transparently cynical, and he took a justified beating for sharing it, and ultimately spent part of his Monday ...

LeBron Made His Choice, And He Chose LeBron

For whatever his faults may be (not being on your favorite team, hubris, brazenly studying the room without trying to hide it, etc.), LeBron James has consistently been a voice of progressive reason, but he has also been relentlessly acquisitive. Thus, no one ought to be nearly so surprised, shocked...

Enes Kanter Appears To Take Shot At LeBron James's China Comments, Says "Freedom Is Not Free"

On the most generous possible read, the NBA-China news cycle has revealed just how little players and coaches have ever considered the ethical stakes of doing business with an authoritarian state. The more cynical read is that they understand these stakes well enough but have decided there’s way to...

LeBron James Finally Takes Question About China, Responds By Licking The Boot

LeBron James has been silent on the matter of China throwing a massive temper tantrum over Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeting and deleting a limp slogan in support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. With the NBA spasming and losing bowel control around him, the world’s most visible ...

The Future Of Adrian Wojnarowski's Tencent Show Is Up In The Air After He "Liked" Daryl Morey's Hong Kong Tweet [Update]

Now that last week’s roiling spat between the Chinese government and the NBA has mostly cooled, the global-sports-industrial complex is back to business as usual. Pre-season NBA games were held in China on Thursday and Saturday and everything went off relatively smoothly (with only a few minor hitch...

Steve Kerr Reminds Us Who The NBA's Unifying Powers Really Serve

“The world is a complex place and there’s more gray than black-and-white.” That is how Steve Kerr rationalized his refusal to comment on the not-actually-all-that-complex topic of the NBA bowing to the Chinese government’s rage over an American in America exercising of one of America’s most fundamen...

Rockets Flack Tells Reporter To Stick To Sports After She Asks Players About Political Expression

Russell Westbrook and James Harden each dropped 22 points in the Rockets’ preseason victory over the Raptors in Saitama, Japan. In the postgame presser, CNN’s Christina Macfarlane asked a question of the two players:...

The Inherent Demeaning Effects Of Global Capital, Bootlicking, Things Of That Nature

In a better world, we’d all probably still work a decent amount. Probably not quite as much and definitely not under conditions that work in a thousand different ways to demean and diminish every human involved at every level, while somehow serving to enrich only the worst of those, but in that bett...

Maybe It's Not That Complicated

Over the last few days, many people in the NBA and wider sports media world have settled on a basic talking point when discussing the ongoing international incident that Rockets GM Daryl Morey kicked off when he tweeted a message of support for pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong: It’s complicated...

Meatball President Criticizes NBA Coaches For Weak Statements On China, Instead Of Answering Direct Question About China

President Trump was asked a direct question Wednesday about the ongoing and escalating conflict between the NBA and the Chinese government, which started with a seven-word tweet of support for Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters from Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey. Because he is incapabl...

Panicked <i>First Take</i> Host Initiates Commercial Break As Stephen A. Smith Brings Up Israel-Palestine Conflict

At the tail end of First Take’s extended discussion today about the ongoing debacle between the NBA and China, Stephen A. Smith had one final take he wanted to get off. He began auspiciously, if not with his trademark eloquence: “I would remind you that, throughout this world, one of the things that...

The Athletic Outrages White Men Everywhere By Censoring Their Opinions On China

The Athletic didn’t publish any articles about Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey’s since-deleted Friday tweet in support of pro-democracy Hong Kong protestors, or about the subsequent manic attempts at damage control by the Rockets owner and the NBA, until a couple days after the controversy began. It ...

Internal Memo: ESPN Forbids Discussion Of Chinese Politics When Discussing Daryl Morey's Tweet About Chinese Politics

If you paid attention to ESPN channels yesterday, you saw the network repeatedly attempt to grapple with the story of Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey creating an international incident after tweeting and then deleting his support for pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong. You heard talki...

Adam Silver Issues Statement Meant To Appease Everybody; China Doesn't Buy It

NBA commissioner Adam Silver has released a second public statement regarding the controversy over Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey’s tweet in support of Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, and the Chinese government’s punitive response to the tweet....

Hello, do you work for an NBA team, ESPN, or any other organization connected to the league? We’d love to see any memos or communiques sent from the league office about the Daryl Morey-China situation. You can send us anything you want at [email protected] or contact us securely using SecureDrop....

Stephen A. Smith Pauses Between Bootlicks To Tell Daryl Morey To Grow Up

Ahead of his radio program this afternoon, Stephen A. Smith clearly thought long and hard about Daryl Morey’s tweet supporting Hong Kong protestors, the ensuing controversy and Morey’s subsequent backtracking, and the large-scale implications of all of the above on relationships between China and U....

The Chinese Government Is Gamergating Daryl Morey

In summary: On Friday night, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted a fairly bland slogan-like expression of support—“Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.”—for ongoing protests against the mainland Chinese government’s encroachment on the autonomy of Hong Kong. Because the Rockets a...

The NBA Doesn’t Give A Fuck About People

The NBA already knows the math. The NBA already knows that whatever price it may pay for aligning themselves with the Chinese government against one of its own teams’ employees—all because Rockets GM Daryl Morey tweeted out a show of support for protesters in Hong Kong—will be nothing compared to wh...

How Much Is China Worth To The NBA?

Adam Silver has been credited for many things in his time fronting the money of the National Basketball Association, and even after you allow for the 30 percent reputational mark-up when compared with the other commissioners in North American sports, he’s done quite well. But now he is confronted by...

The NBA Is Happy To Play China's Game

If you were to work backwards, you’d find it pretty difficult to understand what exactly Daryl Morey said, and who exactly was so offended by it....