The NBA, the NFL, and the mixed messages we send about sports and activism

The fundamental problem most people have with free expression is pretty simple: It’s usually far easier to defend, and demand public acceptance for, the speech we like than the speech we dislike. It’s why some people will defend the right to burn Qurans but not American flags, and vice versa. And it’s why sports leagues are expected to foster expression about racism but not Hong Kong, and vice versa. Simply put, when it comes to hypocrisy over protests in sports, there is a lot of blame to go around, both for athletic leagues and for their critics. Sometimes people want leagues to be political. Sometimes they want players to be able to protest. And sometimes they want no dissent at all. Maybe it’s time for everyone to become a little more tolerant of dissent in sports.

Silver and Fold

The NBA has proven itself to be incapable of taking a stance on China when it matters. I won’t rehash everything that happened between Daryl Morey and the rest of the league last October. But the events from the past two months should make crystal clear how truly embarrassing some of the high-profile responses to Morey’s #StandWithHongKong tweet were, especially given that Hong Kong residents now risk subversion charges — and serious, lasting consequences — for engaging in such basic political expression themselves. If you didn’t see why someone might be compelled to tweet about the issue then, I hope you do now.

The questions surrounding the NBA’s relationship with China didn’t disappear after October, though. In recent weeks, Adam Silver bafflingly said of China, “they have a different view how things have been done, how things should be done. And hopefully, we can find mutual respect for each other.” It didn’t help Silver’s case that his statement about “mutual respect” came out a day after a horrifying report about China’s forced sterilization of Uighurs. And later on, before disallowing jersey customization altogether, the NBA store “inadvertently prohibited” fans from getting custom jerseys with the message FreeHongKong. 

Then last week, ESPN published a report detailing, among other things, accusations of abuse at the NBA’s academies in China. Included in the report were comments from NBA deputy commissioner and chief operating officer Mark Tatum, who is responsible for the NBA’s overseas operations and spoke about the academies in China. ESPN wrote that Tatum ignored questions about the human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Tatum said: “My job, our job is not to take a position on every single human rights violation, and I’m not an expert in every human rights situation or violation. … I’ll tell you what the NBA stands for: The values of the NBA are about respect, are about inclusion, are about diversity. That is what we stand for.” 

Why can’t the NBA get this right?

It’s clear that China is engaging in horrific human rights abuses against Uighurs and attempting to eliminate dissent in Hong Kong. The NBA has had multiple opportunities to take a strong stance against China’s human rights violations, and address its own relationship to them, and has essentially hinted that everyone please find something else to talk about. The NBA has professed values — respect, diversity, inclusion, each of which is a laudable goal. But it’s clear that those values are buzzwords with an asterisk too serious to ignore.

Defenders of the NBA’s conduct will often suggest that it’s unfair to expect its leadership to take political stances about a country’s conduct just because they conduct business there. Why? Plenty of people have to face tough questions about the ethical challenges of their jobs, ones that come with far less money and prestige; why should it be any different for the NBA?

With each passing account of human rights violations conducted by China, this becomes more and more repugnant to watch. If you have both the opportunity and the audience to make people pay attention to concentration camps and forced sterilizations and don’t, you are failing a basic moral test. There are times it’s worth risking some of your wealth and business opportunities to speak out. If this isn’t one of those times, what is?

Do we want an NBA that protests? Or an NBA that protests China?

But if we’re going to criticize the NBA as it deserves, it’s worth considering whether others deserve criticism, too. It’s unclear if some of the NBA’s detractors want an NBA that protests injustice, or an NBA that protests injustice in China. Those two things are not the same. 

We have good reason to believe that Americans are inconsistent on dissent in sport. When it came to anthem protests in the NFL, many fans, politicians, and pundits were essentially saying: If you want our business, you won’t allow players to kneel during the anthem. If you do allow it, we boycott. 

To be clear, they’re fully within their rights to use their expression to demand the NFL punish expression. What they wanted was the NFL to narrow the space for dissent, and to associate a price tag with allowing it to continue. Well, what the NBA faced in October, and still faces now, is a price tag associated with dissent about China. If criticism of China is present in the league, they stand to lose out on lucrative opportunities in the country.

Take Ted Cruz, for example. Regarding Goya, Cruz recently tweeted “the Left is trying to cancel Hispanic culture and silence free speech” by boycotting the company over its CEO’s pro-Trump leanings. But in 2016, he tweeted regarding Colin Kaepernick: “Poll show 1/3 of fans may boycott NFL. Free speech: strong First Amendment response to disrespecting the flag.” Boycotts silence free speech, except when they exemplify it? 

More recently, Cruz tweeted a suggestion that the NBA would not allow players to wear “Free Hong Kong” on their jerseys. And in a spat with Mark Cuban, he asked Cuban to condemn China’s treatment of Uighurs and express support for Hong Kong. It would seem from his various public statements that Cruz, undoubtedly like many of his supporters and detractors, wants protest in sport, except when he doesn’t. 

Arguments that the NBA should show more concern for morals than money when it comes to China — arguments I agree with — would be more convincing if they were applied on a principled basis. So we should be clear what we mean when we talk about sports leagues and protests. Do we want athletes and sports leagues to protest? Or do we want them to protest China, or other causes we care about? These are two very different questions.

Two years ago, I wrote regarding NFL anthem protests that dissent is often uncomfortable but we’re better off fostering environments where it’s allowed. I wish the response to dissent in the NFL had been far more reasonable in 2018, and I wish the NBA were far more interested in fostering dissent in 2020. 

The views expressed here are Sarah’s and should not be considered positions of organizations she’s affiliated with.