Steve Kerr china NBA
Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

If you’ve been following the news this week, you’re probably aware of the furious kowtowing the National Basketball Association has been doing in order to avoid displeasing the Chinese Communist Party any more than it already has.

The Houston Rockets’ general manager, Daryl Morey, put up a since-deleted tweeted in support of Hongkongers who have been protesting to preserve whatever remaining democracy they still enjoy.

Morey Tweet China
Courtesy Twitter

With that, China became…upset. Just as with Taiwan, the Chinese government doesn’t brook any support for those who oppose their iron-fisted rule. And given the fluid situation in the former British colony, an NBA executive expressing solidarity with Hong Kong’s demonstrators simply could not be tolerated.

Why does anyone care? It seems the Chinese are big fans of NBA basketball and the league has an extensive deal with the ChiComs to broadcast the league’s games there.

After Morey’s tweet, Chinese TV cancelled broadcasts of the league’s pre-season games and Houston Rockets merchandise has been pulled from stores across the Middle Kingdom. So angering the Chinese Communist Party could cost the league hundreds of millions of dollars.

Morey, of course, was made to atone by deleting the offending tweet and apologizing profusely for his ill-considered support of democratic principles.

There’s apparently no truth to the rumor that NBA commissioner Adam Silver stood over Morey with a gun to his head making sure Morey’s apology was sufficiently sincere.

The whole kerfuffle came at an awkward time for the league as some of the NBA’s premier teams were scheduled to play exhibition games in Shanghai this week. Yesterday when a CNN reporter tried to ask two Rockets players about the incident, she was challenged by NBA PR people who didn’t like the question.

The league also cancelled all press conferences for the teams while they’re in China to avoid facing any inconvenient questions from members of the media.

One of the league’s most prominent political pontificators, Golden State Warriors Coach Steve Kerr, has been a frequent critic of the current administration and an advocate for gun control. At first, he adopted the party league line regarding the China controversy and clammed up.

But it was only a matter of time. Kerr was asked yesterday if he’d ever been asked about the human right situation in China during his past trips to the county. Kerr claimed that he hadn’t. But he took the opportunity to draw a moral equivalence between the oppressive Chinese political system — a communist dictatorship that maintains concentration camps for political dissidents and suspect minority groups — and the constant oppression he perceives here in the US of A.

Yes, mass shootings (most of which are accomplished with handguns, by the way) are truly horrific. As are any deaths involving firearms. But they’re not a tool used to exert government control over a subjugated population and maintain its grip on power.

Kerr’s equating atrocities such as the 45 million murdered under Mao or — more recently — the murderous crackdown at Tiananmen Square (10,000 dead there) and is both politically obtuse and morally repugnant.

But don’t worry. Kerr won’t face any blowback for what he said from the NBA’s higher-ups over his latest tendentious moralizing. After all, not only do Silver et. al likely agree with him, but claiming that the the abuses in China are no worse than what happens in the United States won’t cost the league a dime. So it’s all good.

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74 COMMENTS

  2. Yep, N B A, N F L, & a couple of M L B, teams caving in to the p c crowd & commissions just to protect their money,,, who cares about freedom anyway when money is involved, or morals,,, exactly why I don’t watch pro sports anymore, they’ve been taken over by greed & pc culture…& get way too political…over paid bunch of ungrateful jerks.

    • Do they make the players stand for the Chinese National anthem? I don’t think there’s going to be much kneeling to protest police brutality in that country.

      • If the locals don’t stand for the anthem the police may make them kneel. In front of a ditch…….

        • So, when asked about Human Rights abuses in China, Kerr responds by complaining about 2nd amendment rights in the U.S. The stupidity is astounding.

  3. Hey Coach, just STFU and coach. How much intelligence does it take to teach someone to dribble a basketball. Global politics and economics is not for you, you lack the intellect.

  6. Eff the Chinese Communist party and those other Communists to include those in our nation currently running for the CommiecRat nomination as well as those of the NBA.

  7. NBA who? Never watch it. Or the NFL.

    The only game in professional sports that might be watched in my house is the Superbowl, and even then I sometimes skip it. Otherwise, I couldn’t care less who wins *this* trophy or *that* championship.

    • “The only game in professional sports that might be watched in my house is the Superbowl, and even then I sometimes skip it.”

      Pretty much the same here.

      ‘Professional’ sports died for me with the 1981 Major League Baseball strike.

      I noticed a bunch of millionaire baseball players and millionaire baseball team owners were arguing about money. Fuck them both.

      The feeling was reinforced in 1998 when Major league baseball came to the Tampa Bay area, and I caught a game. One game.

      About 5 dollars for a fucking hot dog, and 7 dollars for a glass of beer reminded me why I dumped baseball in the first place.

      (I do kinda follow Tampa’s hockey team, the Lightning though. Even been to few games over the years. Where the prices remind me why I despise pro sports…)

      • Funny how government passes anti-price gouging laws that don’t apply to sporting events, concerts or airports. Professional sports teams aren’t made up of moral philosophers and the hoi polloi should ignore them accordingly. BTW, Steve Kerr has proven again that he would be happy living under a brutal dictatorship and sucks as a human being.

    • Never watch professional sports of any kind. They’re nothing but a bunch of over payed, drugged up, drunken thugs.

  9. I thought they had drug testing in the NBA. If they do they need to retest this guy. This dude should go over and stay there and see how long it takes for him to wind up in a camp or dead via saying the wrong things.

  13. I’m not agreeing with what kerr said but I think his father or some family member may have been shot and killed. Still the nba and nfl are crap to me as is nike who pulled all their rocket merchandise from the Chinese shelves. It’s gotten to the point where I look up the company to see who they are affiliated with before I buy. I just bought a pair of boots and was deciding Wolverine or Sketchers. Sketchers is a commiefornia company so I went with the Michigan company.

  15. Congratulation Steve Kerr. First time I’ve ever seen international intersectional prostitution. I didn’t even know that was a thing.

    • That would be where you engage in prostitution with two individual patrons located in different countries in two totally different ways at the same time. I didn’t even think it was possible.

    • So he chooses to criticize America over China. I guess China is the bigger sugar daddy to this sugar baby. If it’s the Chinese National Basketball Association, China should be subsidizing their stadiums and giving them tax exemptions not America.

    • You inadvertently raise a good point – The new Leftist code-word to watch for is “Intersectionality”.

      “Intersectionality” means leftist crap is incoming. It can be bent and massaged to mean nearly anything a Leftist wants…

      • It’s a way to combine all your social grievance points into one unified score. In one sentence he manage to prostitute himself to the Chicomms on their human right issue and the american progressive communists and their position on gun control at the same time.

        • It was itching at the back of my head for a while specifically why intersectionality bothered me so. It finally fell into place for me very recently, “argument from authority fallacy”. The merits of an argument should be separate from whomever the arguer is. Just because someone is perceived as a victim, and no one wants there to be victims (armed society = polite society), doesn’t make that person’s actual argument any stronger. Same thing comes up with the “Doctors, stay in your lane”.

          How long has a clear and long established fallacy been the driving technique of political power? This is kinda worrisome, that it hasn’t been called out on a larger scale.

  17. I haven’t watched/followed the NBA since well dipchit Cur er Kerr was a Chicago Bull. Why does he think his opinion matters?!? It doesn’t…as far as China I try to avoid Chinese junk(😄) but it’s hard. Phone,TV, computer,microwave,toaster,George Foreman cooker all got the mark of the beast.

  18. Thank God I stop watching the NBA a long time ago. I will not support the BS that is going on about China.

  19. What else would one expect to hear from the hammer and sickle Democrats of San Francisco. Steve Kerr stay in your basketball lane, stop stepping out of bounds and stop expecting the rest of the patriots in America to accept the Peoples Republic of Kalifornia talking points.

  20. Another reason not to watch the NBA. I guess killing’s all right, as long as it’s a government mowing it’s own citizens down with tanks. I’m also going to go out on a limb and assume he’s pro-choice, too. So, children are only worthy to be protected if they’re lucky enough to make it out of the womb.

    You know what keeps oppression at bay? An AR-15 in a citizen’s hands.

  23. Pretty sad when a Communist nation has enough financial clout to stifle the First Amendment in the USA half a world away.

    China wants to rule the world…they are achieving their goal through the financial and manufacturing markets without firing a shot…and all the P.C. poseurs who are busy denigrating the USA while praising China.

    Kerr kan kiss my kulo!

  24. I care about the opinion of an NBA official about as much as I care about the opinion of the guy with the dancing monkey. Quite frankly, the guy with the monkey manages better talent.

      • “the NBA’s always been kind of slimy…”

        Kind of slimy? You’re far too kind.

        The NBA is the only highly limited-admission professional association where over 40 percent are registered *Felons*.

        Like I’m gonna listen to someone federally prohibited from owning guns that I can’t have a gun?

        F-you sideways, dude…

  25. “…China became…upset…”

    That is the last line of this I read. Poor babies. I hope the Chinese Communists get so upset they croak.

    • “Chicoms don’t care what any overpaid NBA person thinks.”

      Oh, yes, they do.

      Very much so. Just imagine if China decides NBA merchandise can no longer be made in a China factory. Or any of the ingredients used to make that crap can be exported to Vietnam or Malaysia or any other child sweat-shop country.

      Actually, I’d like to see that. NBA merchandise ought to be made with American made materials in an American factory by American (or someone with a legit-looking green card) workers.

      All of “pro” sports should do that…

  27. Steve Kerr is very “nuanced” when it comes to the jihadis that assassinated his father, he is not so “nuanced” when it comes to the rights of his fellow countrymen. In fact even when a jihadi committed the Pulse Nightclub attack Kerr could only see the 2nd Amendment as the cause. The dude has serious issues and the death of his father doesn’t give him a pass or the authority to lay a guilt trip on me.

  28. Steve Kerr is an ignorant moron if he really believes that. Mao killed 70 or more million through famine and political re-education by gunfire and he compares the two countries? He and Golden State can go to hell. Any decent American should refuse to play for him and demand his removal.

  29. So he sat on his hands and this is what he finally came up with? Appalling! You want to be for gun control, fine. But to equate AR-15s to China is misguided at the least and just plain stupid at best! They must be afraid to lose their golden goose!

  32. I’ve owned two AR-15s, and so far the death toll stands at Scott’s AR-15s 0, Ted Kennedy’s Oldmsobile 1.

    • You do know that all the NBA teams are owned by white people correct??? And that President Lyndon Johnson (D) said in his words “those niggers will be voting democrat for the next 200 years”, after he signed the voting rights act.

      The same Law that he and senator Kennedy (D) voted against in 1957 because it was a republican president back then.

  35. I know when I have deep philosophical questions about human rights, I immediately turn to somebody who tells felons how to chase an inflated animal skin…

  36. There is a simple solution to dealing with clueless-sports-morons, don’t pay to watch them, don’t buy their logo garbage made in China, and DON’T support their sponsors…

  38. Just to add….I refuse to be a spectator to a racist organization such as American sports leagues…
    Just like they’ve done with TV shows, I BOYCOTT THEIR BLACK DOMINATED HIRING PROCEDURES UNTIL THEY HIRE MORE WHITES AND OTHER RACES…
    STAND UP TO THE BIGOTRY AND RACISM THAT IS AMERICAN SPORTS….

  40. I can always rely on TTAG to give me good sources. Thank you. I’ve often wondered how many people were murdered by the communist Chinese in Tiananmen Square. 10,000 is a lot of innocent folks.

    Francis O’Rourke is now saying that the Second Amendment doesn’t let you have an AR-15 or a bazooka. Unfortunately he and so many other people don’t know American history. Explosive Ordnance weaponry was in the hands of American civilians for more than half of this country’s existence. The second amendment is about Arms its not about guns.

    You make an army stop murdering civilians by making it very expensive for that Army to kill civilians by killing more soldiers.

    That is why we have a second amendment. To protect civilians from a tyrannical government federal state or local.

    • Arms, all arms, not just of the “fire” variety: swords, spears, rocks, grenades, shuriken, slingshots, nunchaku, cannons, tanks, blowdarts, crossbows, pointy sticks… anything useful in a “military situation”.

  42. Hey Kerr, how about you shut your cakehole and coach basketball. You ain’t getting paid for your political gassin’. That goes for all you overpaid kneeling assclowns!

  43. The NBA providing further proof ( if any was really necessary) that morals take a back seat to money every time in professional sports.

  44. So the NBA is all about the money? It’s not about equal rights for ALL citizens of the world? Well, knock me over with a feather. SARC!
    It’s no surprise to ANYONE with an IQ above room temp that “woke” culture has NOTHING to do with what it professes, and EVERYTHING to do with monetizing victimhood.

  45. Yes, mass shootings (most of which are accomplished with handguns, by the way) are truly horrific. As are any deaths involving firearms. But they’re not a tool used to exert government control over a subjugated population and maintain its grip on power.

    Drive-by shootings by criminal gangs are a lot more common than mass shootings.

    Of course, both are far inferior a comparison to Jim Crow laws.

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