Chinese businesses suspend ties with Houston Rockets over Hong Kong tweet

[beijingwalker]

Chinese businesses suspend ties with Houston Rockets over Hong Kong tweet
By Laura He, CNN Business
Updated 2:50 AM ET, Mon October 7, 2019

Hong Kong (CNN Business)Several Chinese businesses are suspending ties with the Houston Rockets after the American basketball team's general manager expressed support for Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests.

Daryl Morey set off a firestorm in mainland China over the weekend when he posted an image on Twitter that read, "Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong." Tensions between Hong Kong and Beijing, which controls the former British colony, have been fueled by months of political unrest.

Backlash from China followed quickly. The Chinese Basketball Association said Sunday it would suspend all cooperation with the Texas-based team. The association's chairman is Yao Ming, a former Rockets player.

China's consulate general in Houston also urged the team to "clarify and immediately correct the mistakes" in a statement released Sunday.

The NBA team's partnerships in China were thrown into doubt, too. CCTV 5, the sports channel of China's top state broadcaster, announced that it would suspend airing Houston Rockets events on television.

And Tencent Sports said it would suspend live streaming for Houston Rockets games, as well as news about the team. Tencent (TCEHY) is the NBA's exclusive, official digital partner in China. Nearly 500 million people in China watched NBA programming on Tencent platforms, according to the companies. They recently signed a five-year extension of that partnership.

Sponsors distanced themselves from the Houston Rockets as well. Li-Ning Company, which makes sportswear, and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank each said over the weekend that they would suspend cooperation with the team.

The backlash triggered responses from the NBA and Morey. The NBA said Monday that it recognizes that Morey's views "have deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China, which is regrettable."

"While Daryl has made it clear that his tweet does not represent the Rockets or the NBA, the values of the league support individuals educating themselves and sharing their views on matters important to them," NBA Chief Communications Officer Mike Bass said in a statement, which was published on the Chinese social media website Weibo. "We have great respect for the history and culture of China and hope that sports and the NBA can be used as a unifying force to bridge cultural divides and bring people together."

Morey on Monday said in a series of tweets that he was speaking on his own behalf.
"I did not intend my tweet to cause any offense to Rockets fans and friends of mine in China," Morey said. "I was merely voicing one thought, based on one interpretation, of one complicated event. I have had a lot of opportunity since that tweet to hear and consider other perspectives."

Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta tried to distance the team from politics. The team is in Tokyo for a series of preseason games against the Toronto Raptors this week.

Morey "does NOT speak for the @HoustonRockets. Our presence in Tokyo is all about the promotion of the @NBA internationally and we are NOT a political organization," Fertitta said Saturday on Twitter.

The NBA's response, though, has sparked controversy in the United States. Several US politicians criticized the organization.

"It's clear that the NBA is more interested in money than human rights," said Senator Rick Scott, a Republican from Florida, on Twitter. "The NBA is kowtowing to Beijing to protect their bottom line and disavowing those with the temerity to #standwithHongKong. Shameful!"

Beto O'Rourke, a Democrat from Texas who is running for the party's presidential nomination in 2020, called the NBA's response "an embarrassment."

"The only thing the NBA should be apologizing for is their blatant prioritization of profits over human rights," he wrote on Twitter.

Joe Tsai, the executive vice chairman of Chinese tech giant Alibaba (BABA) and owner of the Brooklyn Nets NBA franchise, sought to diffuse the tensions.

"The NBA has been very progressive in allowing players and other constituents a platform to speak out on issues," Tsai wrote in a lengthy Facebook post, before outlining the problem with supporting what he described as a "separatist movement" in a territory controlled by China.

"Chinese citizens stand united when it comes to the territorial integrity of China and the country's sovereignty over her homeland. This issue is non-negotiable," he said.
Tsai also partially defended Morey, while urging Chinese fans to "keep the faith" in the NBA.
"I am sure he's a fine NBA general manager, and I will take at face value his subsequent apology that he was not as well informed as he should have been," he said. "But the hurt that this incident has caused will take a long time to repair."


https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/07/business/houston-rockets-nba-china-daryl-morey/index.html

 

[beijingwalker]

'We Love China': Houston Rockets star apologises over NBA team GM's Hong Kong tweet
Issued on: 07/10/2019 - 08:51

Houston Rockets star James Harden on Monday apologised to China over a tweet by the team’s general manager backing Hong Kong’s democracy protests that cost the franchise TV exposure and sponsorship in the lucrative Chinese market.

The team and the NBA were forced into defensive mode as China’s state broadcaster said it was yanking Rockets games from the air and sponsors abandoned them.

The controversy quickly spread across the Pacific, as commentators and even a presidential candidate rounded on the league for kowtowing to authoritarian Beijing.

In Tokyo, where the team is playing two exhibition matches this week, Harden distanced himself from the controversy.

“We apologise. We love China,” he said, standing alongside fellow Rockets guard Russell Westbrook.


“We love playing there. Both of us, we go there once or twice a year. They show us most support so we appreciate them.”

The furore comes after general manager Daryl Morey whose Rockets have had a huge following in China since they signed Yao Ming in 2002 -- posted a tweet Friday featuring the message “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong”.

On Monday he tried to calm the water.

“I did not intend my tweet to cause any offense to Rockets fans and friends of mine in China,” he tweeted.

“I was merely voicing one thought, based on one interpretation, of one complicated event. I have had a lot of opportunity since that tweet to hear and consider other perspectives.”

“I have always appreciated the significant support our Chinese fans and sponsors have provided and I would hope that those who are upset will know that offending or misunderstanding them was not my intention,” he added.

‘Get out of China’

Semi-autonomous Hong Kong has been battered by four months of increasingly violent pro-democracy protests.

The rallies were ignited by a now-scrapped plan to allow extraditions to mainland China, fuelling fears of an erosion of liberties in Hong Kong under the 50-year “one country, two systems” model China agreed before the 1997 handover from Britain.

The NBA issued its own statement, saying it recognised Morey’s views “have offended so many of our friends and fans in China, which is regrettable.”

“While Daryl has made it clear that his tweet does not represent the Rockets or the NBA, the values of the league support individuals’ educating themselves and sharing their views on matters important to them,” the statement issued by chief communications officer Mike Bass said.

But a Chinese-language version of the statement posted on Weibo went further, saying the NBA was “deeply disappointed by the inappropriate remarks”.

In the United States, the NBA found itself under fire for its apology, which presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, a Texan, called “an embarrassment.”

“The only thing the NBA should be apologizing for is their blatant prioritization of profits over human rights,” he tweeted.

The NBA’s statement also did little to mollify fans in China, with furious comments among the 15,000 responses on Weibo.

“This is an apology?” one user wrote. “Get out of China,” added another.

‘Incorrect comments’

The Los Angeles Lakers and Brooklyn Nets are due to play pre-season games in Shanghai and Shenzhen later this week.

Chinese state broadcaster CCTV and Tencent Holdings, which streams NBA games in China, have both said they will halt Rockets broadcasts.

And sponsors including sportswear brand Li Ning and the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank announced they were cutting ties.

The moves came after the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) said it would sever ties with the Rockets over Morey’s “incorrect comments”.

The Rockets had already tried to distance themselves from the controversy, with owner Tilman Fertitta on Friday writing on Twitter that Morey “does NOT speak for the @HoustonRockets... we are NOT a political organization.”

The Rockets are in Japan for two exhibition games and Harden said Monday that remained the team’s focus.

“The reason why we’re here in Japan is we got two amazing games tomorrow and Thursday,” he told reporters.

“(It’s) an opportunity for fans to come and watch NBA... we’re excited to be here.”

(AFP)

https://www.france24.com/en/2019100...houston-rockets-harden-apology-gm-morey-tweet

 

[gambit]

'We Love China': Houston Rockets star apologises over NBA team GM's Hong Kong tweet

Sure...They do...

 

[damm1t]

'We Love China': Houston Rockets star apologises over NBA team GM's Hong Kong tweet

Sure...They do...

You kidding? I heard Westbrook has a Winnie the Pooh picture on the wall!

 

[gambit]

You kidding? I heard Westbrook has a Winnie the Pooh picture on the wall!

When I was active duty, we had strict rules on expressing our political opinions. Put it simply, US military members have the most restrictions on the freedom of speech than any other demographics of America. If I want to support a certain candidate, I am not allowed to have my uniform be visible anywhere near that candidate. I can support that candidate in civilian attire and make contributions of my money and time, but I am not allowed to associate the US military to that candidate any way, even by inference of a uniform. The intention is to keep the US military establishment as politically neutral as possible. For the most part, the policy works as most military members are low key people anyway. We may contribute financially but we keep that to ourselves and we vote anonymously.

Civilians are not so restrained and therein lies the danger.

If you are in charge of an organization, you will ALWAYS runs the risk of associating your organization to whatever expressions and activities that have no relations to your organization. One example of this -- the morality clause for people in the public eye.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morals_clause

If you are in charge of an organization and you express a political opinion without making it clear that said opinion is yours alone, you runs the risk of association your organization to your political cause. That is what happened here.

I can see both sides. On the one hand, Daryl Morey is a free US citizen with all rights and freedoms granted to him, but on the other hand, I can understand China's objection to having someone socially prominent opining on an internal issue. This is a case of someone with a big mouth vs someone overly sensitive. No one gained anything here but everyone lost some face.

 

[beijingwalker]

NBA will keep apologizing to China to protect its business interests: Crisis manager

 

[phancong]

From players to Morey boss and NBA commissioner apologize for Morey insensitive remark on the internal affairs of China. Piss off 1.3 billions market to support for Hong Kong really a stupid choice. Rockets or the NBA will never have China support and business.

 

[KAL-EL]

It’s all about the money..

From players to Morey boss and NBA commissioner apologize for Morey insensitive remark on the internal affairs of China. Piss off 1.3 billions market to support for Hong Kong really a stupid choice. Rockets or the NBA will never have China support and business.

I agree, the NBA should immediately cease business in China

 

[phancong]

It’s all about the money..



I agree, the NBA should immediately cease business in China

But they shamelessly apologize to Chinese people in China, you see money talk and bullshit walk.

 

[KAL-EL]

But they shamelessly apologize to Chinese people in China, you see money talk and bullshit walk.

Exactly! That’s why I said “it’s all about the money”

 

[beijingwalker]

Colliding With China, the N.B.A. Retreats With a Bruised Spine
Daryl Morey’s tweet, quickly deleted, caused a stir mostly because it rattled the league’s access to a billion-dollar market.

The N.B.A. has long coveted access to Chinese consumers. A new N.B.A. store opened in Beijing in April.

Oct. 7, 2019

I got off a plane Sunday afternoon and checked my phone and saw a statement from the N.B.A. apologizing to China for something that Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey had tweeted. What line, I wondered, had Morey transgressed? Had he slurred a player? A team?

From the perspective of the N.B.A., the answer was much worse: Morey had slurred a great pile of money.

With a single tweet, quickly deleted, Morey had expressed support for the democracy movement in Hong Kong. The Chinese government and the gilded companies that act as its shadows proclaimed their immediate outrage, fury and hurt, so much hurt. Companies canceled games, and a billion-dollar contract perhaps fell into doubt.

For the N.B.A., which has been on woke roll these past few years, it was a head-on collision with not-so-woke global politics and finances. And Commissioner Adam Silver and his marketing team crumpled into a fetal position.

“We recognize that the views expressed by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey have deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China, which is regrettable,” the N.B.A. said in a statement Sunday night. (The league’s Chinese-language apology went further, calling Morey’s message “inappropriate” and saying he had “seriously hurt the feelings of Chinese basketball fans.”)

On Monday, Silver tried to rediscover his spine, claiming the league’s statement was supportive of Morey’s speech, which was true if you held it up to a reading lamp and took the most generous interpretation possible. Silver added that he also supported the Brooklyn Nets owner Joseph Tsai, a partner in China’s wealthiest e-commerce company, who in a Facebook post claimed that “all citizens of China” opposed the Hong Kong protests and blasted Morey for a poorly informed tweet that did not take into account China’s hurt feelings over the Opium Wars of the 19th century.

For now, why don’t we leave Silver alone to sort out his thinking?

The N.B.A. faces an existential problem. For the better part of a decade, the league’s leading players and coaches have spoken out, often eloquently, on issues like police brutality, gay rights, guns and the president of the United States. They even toppled the retrograde racist owner of the Los Angeles Clippers.

The league capitalized handsomely. Its audience was young, hip and politically liberal, and the N.B.A. marketed itself as the most woke of pro leagues.

And then one of its general managers decided to tiptoe beyond the boundaries of this nation.

“The league enjoys LeBron James being a spokesman back in Akron and Cleveland and speaking out on American politics,” noted Victor A. Matheson, an economist of sports and a professor at College of the Holy Cross. “Where it messes with you is that the N.B.A. does not necessarily want its folks to be outspoken on China.”

The pro leagues, in fact, run like bloodhounds after the scent of their fan bases. The N.F.L. is the N.B.A.’s doppelgänger. Its fan base, although diverse racially, tends toward cultural and political conservatism. When the lords of the N.F.L. boycotted Colin Kaepernick for the crime of silently taking a knee during the national anthem, they could do so in the reasonable expectation that their fans would either applaud, or grumble but still buy another sausage or team jersey.

The N.B.A.’s challenges are complicated after a different fashion. To read some of its press clippings is to guess that the league is on an inevitable march to the top of the sports mountain. The conductor should toss the brakes on that train. The N.F.L. stands as the undisputed champ of the American sports, and Major League Baseball remains in comfortable, if sleepy, second place.

The N.B.A. has those brilliant demographics, but further rapid growth in the United States is not assured. The league’s genius instead was to extend its tentacles around the world, the first American sports league to lay plausible claim to becoming a global business. Its stars hail from many continents, and its television contracts extend from Europe to Tencent in China, which this year signed a five-year, $1.5 billion deal.

The N.B.A.’s challenge, its headache, comes encoded in this dynamic. Social justice marketing is grand for the hoop audience in the United States but looks far less attractive to an authoritarian power in Beijing.

“This is the vulnerability for the N.B.A.,” said Matheson, the sports economist. “Social justice and free speech does not sell well in China.”

That international businesses go supine when human rights collide with marketing opportunities is desultory but hardly surprising. Last year, Mercedes-Benz cast itself to the ground and apologized to the Chinese government for having the temerity to quote the Dalai Lama in a corporate Instagram post. (It showed one of its luxury cars by the ocean alongside this bit of Dalai wisdom: “Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open.”)

“We know,” Mercedes wrote to China in contrition, “that this has hurt the feelings of people of this country.”

So the N.B.A. has arrived at a woke juncture. Silver on Monday suggested that in time this brouhaha would pass. Tsai, the Nets’ owner and a man who has become wonderfully wealthy thanks to his acumen and his closeness to the Chinese government, hinted that redemption might come slowly for those who flap their lips too much.

“The N.B.A. is a fan-first league,” Tsai wrote. “When hundreds of millions of fans are furious over an issue, the league, and anyone associated with the N.B.A., will have to pay attention.”

The sight this weekend was of N.B.A. owners nodding eagerly. Woke finances after all take one but so far.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/sports/basketball/nba-china-powell.html

 

[Nein]

Whats the reason for China backing the Rockets in NBA?

 

[Dungeness]

Whats the reason for China backing the Rockets in NBA?

Thanks to Yao Ming.

 

[Nein]

Thanks to Yao Ming.

But he no longer plays.

 

[kankan326]

I agree, the NBA should immediately cease business in China

Good. What will Chinese lose if there is no NBA in China? Nothing. It's not a good business for China anyways.