Adam Silver seems to be drawing a line in the sand with China and it appears he is going to be on the right side of history.
He didn’t go all the way to the point of condemning China, but he did say he supports Morey and free speech. He wants to repair the relationship but doesn’t guarantee the NBA will be coming back according to this interview he did with TMZ.
“It bothered me that in saying we regretted upsetting hundreds of millions of Chinese fans while at the same time supporting Daryl Morey’s speech, it bothered me, I’d say, that it was interpreted as an apology to the Chinese government.”
“We certainly didn’t apologize to the Chinese government.”
“We supported Daryl from the get-go in terms of his ability to tweet. We also made clear that there were consequences from that speech. And, I think that was no doubt frustrating to a lot of people in the NBA community because it was incredibly disruptive. But, you know, we accepted that. Daryl knew we accepted that. There was not much we could do about that. But, I think it bothered me that somehow even though we – I felt were holding the line in a way that many companies haven’t been able to in China, meaning there was no discipline of our employee, there was never a suggestion that we weren’t supporting him.”
It seems Silver is showing more support for Morey than LeBron and other NBA players.
Flip the page for the full video.