China Dictatorship (中国独裁统治)

7.5.5.3. LeBron James opposes Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests (2019)

NBA is huge in China.

On 2019-10-05 (Friday) 7:41PM Daryl Morey, NBA’s Houston Rockets manager sent a tweet with an image that read:

Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.

Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20191005025317if_/https://twitter.com/dmorey/status/1180312072027947008

Then Daryl was a coward, removed this tweet, and apologized on 2019-10-07 (Monday) 1:18 AM https://twitter.com/dmorey/status/1181000808399114240 (archive), so by then it was already deleted.

I did not intend my tweet to cause any offense to Rockets fans and friends of mine in China

Then TODO date the uberstar LeBron James (not a Houston Rockets player), a big supporter of black rights in the US, criticized this.

LeBron’s words:

I don’t want to get into a word or sentence feud with Daryl Morey, but I believe he wasn’t educated on the situation

Related video of LeBron saying similar things on interview (TODO same?): 2019-10-15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjM43blzaRc "LeBron addresses Daryl Morey’s tweet and Lakers' trip to China | NBA on ESPN"

Led to: Sport event live broadcast image attacks (体育赛事直播图片攻击).

2019-10-15 https://apnews.com/article/dd96d002394f45a6859c280c889afcb7 "LeBron: Rockets' Morey 'wasn’t educated' on China tweet"
2019-10-07 (Monday) "Rockets' general manager’s Hong Kong comments anger China"
2019-10-07 Lakers vs. Heat NBA Tencent (腾讯, Tengxun, WeChat owner) Live Stream cancelled due to fan wearing the Taiwanese flag

Figure 114. Fan wearing Taiwan flag in 2019-10-07 Lakers vs. Heat showing fan and text (TODO from Tencent (腾讯, Tengxun, WeChat owner)?) saying that the match will be cancelled. Source.
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49956385
- https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/07/business/houston-rockets-nba-china-daryl-morey/index.html

Some good LeBron cartoons:

https://twitter.com/Christi71386739/status/1312730174497058816/photo/1 Rebel Pepper (变态辣椒, RFA cartoonist) 2019-10-15 "You are the king"

Kneeling by Adam Zyglis NFL Colin Kaepernick vs NBA LeBron James

Figure 115. "Kneeling" by Adam Zyglis (2019) compares the NFL’s Colin Kaepernick (科林·卡佩尼克), who kneeled during the playing of the U.S. national anthem during the 2016 season to protest against social injustice, vs NBA’s LeBron James, who instead supports China’s dictatorship unconditionally. Source.

Figure 116. In 2020-10-04 American billboard company Outfront Media refused to post this ad by the NLPC conservative think tank critical of LeBron James' stand on Hong Kong. The ad shows the NBA superstar with a Chinese flag covering his mouth and the message "Silence is Violence." and URL http://freedom4china.com/. To obey is to betray comes to mind. Source.