Adam Silver Can’t Explain Away the NBA’s Cozy Relationship with China

[Michie]

National Basketball Association (NBA) commissioner Adam Silver is among those rarest of things: a political-science major making a lot of money. A lot of money — around $8 million a year, in fact. There’s not a single congressional staffer or journalist or operative with that same degree who isn’t jealous of Silver’s financial success. There’s also not, for those who’ve read Silver’s recent interview with Time, a single one who’s not haunted by the question: How did he do it? Because as a trained talker with the task of representing a sport, Silver embarrassed himself in what was supposed to be a flattering piece about the league. Asked about the state of the NBA’s relationship with China, Silver responded like this:

We continue to televise our games in China. 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. 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. 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. Working with Chinese solely on NBA basketball has been a net plus for building relationships between two superpowers.

Continued below.
NBA & China: Adam Silver's Weak Defense | National Review

 

[jgarden]

It wasn't all that long ago that the former President was "wining and dining" his good friend, China's Xi Jinping, at Mar-a-Lago, meanwhile North Korea's "Rocket Man" was being relegated to the role as Trump's designated "arch villain!"

Fast forward a few years and those roles have now been reversed - assuming that Premier Xi hasn't undergone a "lobotomy" during the interim, what was it that Americans and their leaders should have found so appealing about him and China then, that they're now supposed to hold in contempt!

Apparently America's political "revolving door" of love-hate relationships with China have made it difficult for the private sector to distinguish the heroes from the villains - given the past sequence of events, NBA Commissioner Silver would be receiving
accolades for those same decisions 2 years from now!