The NBA’s hypocrisy in pandering to China while pitching itself as a social justice league has been clear for some time. According to an ESPN report, that hypocrisy was downright despicable.
ESPN reported that the NBA’s basketball academies in China were wrought with abuse, with Chinese coaches physically abusing the young players. Commissioner Adam Silver said schooling would be central to the program, but in two of the three camps, none was provided. American coaches were surveilled and harassed.
The goal of the academies, which took place in Chinese government facilities, was to find new players to increase Chinese excitement for the NBA. Two former NBA employees told ESPN the league wanted to “find another Yao,” referring to popular Chinese star Yao Ming, a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame and the chairman of the Chinese Basketball Association. Having another Chinese-born star in the NBA would have boosted interest in a market the NBA is increasingly reliant on.
The report details that league officials knew of what was going on in these academies. One American coach called them “sweat camps.” NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum said the league wasn’t aware of any human rights issues in 2016 when it opened its camp in Xinjiang, where the Chinese government is detaining and torturing Uighur Muslims. Tatum later said, “Our job is not to take a position on every single human rights violation.”
Except, the NBA has increasingly seen that as its job. The league has fully embraced Black Lives Matter, putting the slogan on its courts and allowing players to wear BLM slogans on the back of their jerseys. The NBA pulled the All-Star Game out of Charlotte in 2017 over North Carolina’s transgender bathroom bill but didn’t shutter its Xinjiang camp until last year.
It’s not hard to see why the NBA let the abuse go on until the scrutiny over its China ties became too severe. According to ESPN, NBA China is a $5 billion enterprise. The NBA even asked current and former employees not to speak to ESPN about this story.
To its credit, ESPN, which also has financial ties to both China and the NBA, went ahead with this report. It’s a damning indictment on the NBA that it pursued this project as a cash grab and now are looking to cover its mistakes as best it can. This goes beyond simply overlooking the abuses of the Chinese government; the NBA made itself an accessory to them, and it must answer for it.
