New York Times basketball writer Sopan Deb has identified the real problem with the NBA’s capitulation to China’s genocidal regime: conservatives who condemn it.
Deb took to Twitter to complain that Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter was only attacking NBA star LeBron James for his pitiful pandering to the Chinese Communist Party, even though Kanter has teammates who signed with Nike. Deb then expanded his complaint to conservatives writ large, who he accused of going after LeBron while ignoring Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta.
Not exactly the most important point here, but Kanter’s own teammate, Jayson Tatum, is a former Nike guy now with Jordan Brand. Dennis Schroder also a Nike guy I think. Interesting that Kanter is going at just LeBron. pic.twitter.com/2O76FqM8fU
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) November 18, 2021
Look, I know conservatives like selectively getting behind NBA players when it suits their political agenda.
And James is a valid target. But when Tillman Fertitta, the Houston Rockets owner and GOP donor, slapped down Daryl Morey over the tweet, conservatives went silent. https://t.co/qotnYHPh3c
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) November 19, 2021
Deb wants you to think that Fertitta or Celtics players such as Jayson Tatum hold the same cultural power as LeBron James, arguably the most recognizable athlete in the United States. Fertitta is indeed a spineless coward who refused to stand by former general manager Daryl Morey. Tatum, just like nearly every other player in the NBA, is indeed regrettably silent about Nike’s ties to China. But they aren’t “King James.”
LeBron is the target of scorn for two major reasons. The first is that cultural power, which allows LeBron to speak out about politics and have his opinions plastered across media outlets, even outside of the sports media ecosystem. Other NBA figures with similar cultural stature are also roundly mocked by conservatives for their appeasement of China, including Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. But LeBron, not Kerr or Cuban, is the face of the NBA and the face of athlete activism in the U.S.
The second reason is that LeBron wasn’t just silent about Chinese abuses: He emphatically defended the CCP. The quotes on Kanter’s shoes are a reference to LeBron’s comments when Morey voiced his support for Hong Kong protesters. LeBron said that Morey was “misinformed or not really educated on the situation.”
LeBron is one of the single most powerful cultural figures in the country. He is the most prominent figure who doesn’t just excuse China’s authoritarianism but has openly defended it. He is propped up by liberal media as a voice of social justice while he walks on eggshells to avoid offending a genocidal regime. Most people couldn’t even pick Tatum or Fertitta out of a lineup.
That is why Kanter and conservative media focus on his transgressions. LeBron’s hypocrisies and China apologia reach a bigger audience than Fertitta, Tatum, or even Deb’s newspaper could hope to reach. He is the one who made himself an amateurish political pundit while he shuts up and dribbles for China. The idea that he’s receiving a disproportionate amount of criticism is absurd.
