Dribbling: Americans should shut up about China atrocities, says NBA-TV analyst

Perhaps NBA figures should just shut up about politics and human-rights abuses entirely, especially after the league’s partnership in exploiting and abusing children in Xinjiang concentration, er, training camps. Instead, NBA-TV and TNT analyst Stan Van Gundy advises Americans to shut up about China’s ongoing atrocities because history ‘n stuff, or something. This all started with a derisive column from the Orlando Sentinel’s David Whitley yesterday, in which he marveled at China’s ability to do what Laura Ingraham only dreamed of — getting the NBA to “shut up and dribble”:

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Amid all the preaching, would someone make a peep about a country that commits more human rights abuses in 10 minutes than the U.S. does in 10 years?

Don’t press your ears against the NBA’s bubble waiting for an answer.

The league officially declared it has no soul in October, when Houston general manager Daryl Morey sent one measly tweet supporting the democracy protests in Hong Kong.

The Chinese Communist Party started pulling NBA games off TV and merchandise off shelves. With its multibillion-dollar relationship threatened, the NBA quickly bowed in subservience and sent Morey to re-education camp.

Since then, the NBA has stayed mum as China ransacked all rights in Hong Kong, unleashed COVID-19 on the world and herded countless more Uighur Muslims onto trains bound for slave labor camps.

Somewhere, Laura Ingraham must be cackling.

Van Gundy took exception to Whitley’s accusations of hypocrisy and corruption in the midst of its “social justice festival” this season. The TNT and NBATV analyst then made it pretty clear just how far NBA figures were prepared to go in maintaining both:

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If that’s the standard, then the NBA’s involvement in Xinjiang should keep every single one of its employees silenced for the next 400 years or so. After all, their partnership in the physical abuse of children in Xinjiang — not to mention collaboration with a genocidal regime just a stone’s throw away from its concentration camps — is still ongoing. And their obsequiousness to Beijing in shutting down any in-league criticism of China’s policies makes Marshal Petain look positively patriotic.

Van Gundy’s basically attempting the Steve Kerr maneuver, which won Allahpundit’s NBA China Cuck of the Week award last October:

If Van Gundy set out to prove Whitley’s argument, he could hardly have done a better job.

Our pal and colleague Guy Benson was merciless in his response:

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I’d guess that “galaxy brain” is not an accurate description of Van Gundy’s intellectual power. Neither is it an indication of his integrity. It does, however, show that China didn’t really have to exert much effort into getting the league to knuckle under to its economic power, or to get social-justice hypocrites to defend Beijing, of all regimes. “Shut up and dribble” started off as an insult, has transformed into the status quo, and it might end up being very good advice for the future.

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