NBA Defends Relationship with Ruthless Chinese Communists: ‘Engagement is Better Than Isolation’
Shane Trejo
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The National Basketball Association (NBA) is defending its relationship with China, claiming that they are making the world a better place by taking money from the ruthless communist nation.
“We continue to televise our games in China,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said during an interview with TIME.
“Our most significant television partner is Tencent, which is a streaming service in China. And we have hundreds of millions of fans in China who we continue to serve. I’ll take a step back there and restate the NBA’s mission, which is to improve people’s lives through the game of basketball,” he added.
Silver made excuses for the business relationship, attempting to paint his profiteering as some kind of humanitarian effort.
“And we think exporting NBA basketball to China and to virtually every country in the world continues to fit within our mission. The political science major in me believes that engagement is better than isolation,” Silver said.
“That a so-called boycott of China, taking into account legitimate criticisms of the Chinese system, won’t further the agenda of those who seek to bring about global change,” he continued. “Working with Chinese solely on NBA basketball has been a net plus for building relationships between two superpowers.”
“I do think that in order to bring about realistic change, we have to build relationships,” Silver added. “At the end of the day we’re all human beings. And while there are many differences between our society and Chinese society, there are enormous commonalities as well. One of them is to love a sport. And basketball happens to be the most popular team sport in China right now. We think that through that common love and appreciation of the game of basketball, that that’s a way to bring people together. It’s as simple as that.”
Big League Politics has reported on the sinister relationship between the NBA and China:
“The National Basketball Association (NBA) is under fire following an ESPN report detailing the heinous condition of the league’s youth camps in communist China.
“American coaches at three NBA training academies in China told league officials their Chinese partners were physically abusing young players and failing to provide schooling, even though commissioner Adam Silver had said that education would be central to the program,” ESPN wrote in their bombshell report.
“One former league employee who worked in China wondered how the NBA, which has been so progressive on issues around Black Lives Matter and moved the 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte, North Carolina, over a law requiring transgender people to use bathrooms corresponding to the sex listed on their birth certificates, could operate a training camp amid a Chinese government crackdown that also targeted NBA employees,” ESPN added.
It is unclear whether or not NBA commissioner Adam Silver, who recently maxed out a donation to Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, knew about the horrifying conditions at the camps.
One of the camps operated in the Chinese city of Xinjiang, which is allegedly the hub of China’s many concentration camps. The NBA sent out a brief ordering their employees not to comment on the scandal and to feign ignorance if approached by ESPN.
An anonymous employee told ESPN that working the youth camps was like being in “World War II Germany,” with another claiming that it was “a sweat camp for athletes.” A former coach stated that “we were basically working for the Chinese government.” Many coaches reportedly quit the camps out of protest because of how badly the young players were being abused. One coach said that a Chinese coach threw a basketball in the face of a young man and then “kick[ed] him in the gut.”
“Imagine you have a kid who’s 13, 14 years old, and you’ve got a grown coach who is 40 years old hitting your kid,” the coach said. “We’re part of that. The NBA is part of that.”
The NBA attempted to deflect blame after being forced to address the camps.
“We weren’t responsible for the local coaches, we didn’t have the authority. We don’t have oversight of the local coaches, of the academic programs or the living conditions,” NBA deputy commissioner and chief operating officer Mark Tatum said.”
There is blood on the hands of the NBA for their deep ties to communist China.
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