It Will Be So Quiet In The NBA Bubble Maybe You Can Hear Them Talk About China

For some people, China can do no wrong. Picture from https://www1.cbn.com/

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2020 so far is known for two stories 1) COVID 19 2) George Floyd . Let’s talk about every pinoys 3 favorite letters, I know it is not DUI since nobody here knows what it is since nobody here is ever caught . Those 3 letters are NBA. The only league that pinoys care about that plays outside of our borders.

The NBA ‘bubble” is now in place and the teams , league officials and media are slowly making their way in. Adam Silver though dreads a scenario where he might have to burst the bubble.  Trying to get any sport going is already difficult under big story #1. The NBA is definitely a league that can identify with the issues brought up by the aftermath of the death of George Floyd. One of their alumni considered Floyd a “brother”.   Many players were thinking of not returning this year not because of big story #1 but because of big story #2.

Today I woke up to a story in the Washington Post about an ace NBA reporter sending a senator a two word email using his ESPN account.  The first word starts with an “F” and the second word starts with a “Y”. This was in response to the senator taking a shot at the NBA and ESPN picking and choosing their political battles. Hong Kong has a new law courtesy of mainland China. It is so effective that they arrested people on the first day. Unlike the Philippines where we allegedly have a DUI law.

The NBA is all over the Black Lives Matter movement as they should be. Black people not just black athletes go through so much harassment just by living their lives. I give you former NHL goalie and his experiences reaching the pinnacle of his sport and what he had to go through. Some of those experiences were in that alleged politically correct paradise known as Canada.

Yes what happened to George Floyd is wrong and the NBA players want change and they want the world to know. You want to provoke the polar opposite effect league wide about it? Bring up the new protest law in Hong Kong and watch the NBA players make like Greta Thunberg talking about the Anti Terrorist act. LeBron James did not spend one minute enrolled in a university until he was a 10 year NBA vet. Not that there is anything wrong with that but he was so quick to poo poo Daryl Morey’s opinion about the Hong Kong protesters in 2019.

LeBron called Daryl Morey misinformed. Morey , I might add got his undergrad degree in Northwestern in Computer Science and his MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts,  LeBron I am sure has way more money than Morey and if that is the metric where we define right and wrong please at least come out and say it.

It is not just the best NBA player of the last decade who is directing his violent reactions to somebody who I believe to be more grounded in the real world. Steve Kerr and Popopvich are two of the best NBA bench bosses in the last 20 years. They have 8 rings combined and this total does not include Kerr’s playing days where he earned 5 rings playing for the Bulls and Spurs. You might be surprised how involved those two were in international politics before they made their names in the NBA.

Popovich majored in Soviet Studies at the Air Force Academy, then spent several  monitoring Russian activity. Steve Kerr’s father was assassinated while he was a professor and the president of the American University in Beirut . Both Steve Kerr  and Gregg Popovich  were blessed with life experience that puts them both  in a unique position to educate NBA fans on the reality of China. Yet both rather bash Trump which 99% of entertainers do anyway. I am not defending Trump but isn’t China also bash worthy? Oh I forgot you are not playing man to man, only zone.  The satire website Babylon Bee actually does a better job discussing  the reality of Hong Kong through Bernie Sanders. 

What happened in Tienanmen Square in 1989 was wrong . It is so wrong as far as the Chinese government is concerned , it never happened. The protesters in Hong Kong  have a point and are passionate about it. China provokes other countries besides the Philippines but other countries with their territorial claims. Just last week the director of the FBI did not mince words what he thought of China’s intentions. Sadly in a world where we have Google, some people feel having several NBA rings gives this entitlement to their own facts.  I pity those around the world specially in the one country in the world where the NBA is king who let the faces of the NBA ( many of whom have less than one year of university) “educate ” them on China.

Gogs

Putting a very sharp needle into the balloon known as Pinoy Pride since 2012.