The drama between the NBA and China has been all encompassing it seems.
Since Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted support for protesters in Hong Kong, a chain reaction of events has put the league and it’s relationship with China in the forefront and has put a lot of pressure on players to join the conversation.
LeBron James drew all sorts of criticism when he called Morey “misinformed” when he sent out the since-deleted tweet.
Now, Jaylen Brown is weighing in on the topic.
“It’s tough because you don’t want to neglect someone’s First Amendment rights,” Brown said, via The Boston Globe’s Gary Washburn in his weekly “Sunday Basketball Notebook”. “You don’t want to neglect somebody’s freedom of speech, but at the same time you want to be considerate of people all over the world. Just because we do something a certain way here doesn’t mean that it’s OK somewhere else, so you have to be appropriate to what you say because other people might take offense to it, even if you don’t mean offense.
“Even if you disagree with it, people should have more understanding, be more respectful,” Brown added. “It’s definitely a tough situation. I don’t want to comment on it because I don’t want to say the wrong thing. I definitely think players should be able to speak freely on educated topics that they’ve informed themselves on and also make calculated, precise answers so it can’t be spun in the direction they don’t want it to be spun. You see the best of us make those mistakes and that’s why we have great media teams to make sure everything is on track.”
One has to think that the NBA is hoping the beginning of the regular season marks the beginning of the end of the drama with China, but for now, Brown asks that people try to understand one another.
“It’s a gray line. People should have an understanding for one another,” Brown said. “This world is a big place, it’s complicated, but we all need each other, so have an understanding of one another and work to make change over time.”
