The bottom line is this: If you’re going to stand for righteousness and confront evil and injustice, then, to quote Nike (another hypocritical player), just do it – evenly, and across the board. I am not speaking about individual NBA players or their motivations (although some players, to be sure, could be called out). I’m speaking of the league as a whole, of the organization. Its hypocrisy is absolutely sickening.
In October, 2019, I stated that the NBA was a spineless little bully, noting that “this multi-billion dollar organization, which spans the globe, was happy to bully North Carolina in 2016 when the state had the audacity to declare that men’s bathrooms were for men and women’s bathrooms were for women.”
Yet, I wrote, the “NBA has had no problem getting in bed with an oppressive country like China, which imprisons and tortures Christians and Muslims and others who do not toe the party line. Tens of millions of people experience severe daily restrictions under the tyrannical policies of President Xi, with countless tens of thousands suffering right now in ‘reeducation camps’ and jails.”
Since then, the crackdown against Christians and Muslims in China has continued to increase, with reports of the demolishing of church buildings, destruction of Christian homes, fresh arrests and beatings, along with more deportation of Muslims into concentration camp-like facilities. And now there are reports “alleging that Chinese coaches at three NBA training academies in the Asian country physically abused their players and failed to provide them with promised schooling.”
This prompted Sen. Tom Cotton to say, “They even had one of these camps in northwestern China, where China is running reeducation gulags for a religious minority … they liken it to Nazi Germany in World War II. I understand the NBA has deep financial ties to China, but you have to ask at some point, what’s wrong with the NBA?”
Yet the very same day Cotton made these remarks – Thursday, July 30 – was the day that the NBA launched its abbreviated season finale. What timing! And, true to form, before the national anthem of the first game, every single player and coach took a knee, and every one of them wore a Black Lives Matter shirt. This is the NBA with a deep social conscious. The NBA proclaiming loudly and clearly that it stands against racism and injustice.
What rank hypocrisy. What gross double standards. What a shameful display of self-righteousness. In fact, to the extent that the NBA is serious about these slogans, it makes their deep cooperation with China all the more disgraceful.
The bottom line is this: If you’re going to stand for righteousness and confront evil and injustice, then, to quote Nike (another hypocritical player), just do it – evenly, and across the board.
Otherwise, best not to do it at all. The hypocrisy is downright offensive.