While the NBA has earned a reputation for being socially conscious, that philosophy stops at the Chinese border. The league runs a training center in Xinjiang, a region where the state has imprisoned and subjugated an entire class of people who are part of the Uighur minority. The NBA’s most progressive coaches, Steve Kerr and Gregg Popovich, have rightfully spoken out against the Trump administration’s Muslim ban. If anyone associated with the league were to bring attention to human rights abuses it’s them, but neither man publicly addressed the Chinese government’s imprisonment of roughly a million Uighurs while they were in the country with USA Basketball for this summer’s FIBA Championships.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver addressed possible tensions at the outset of a “trade war” between the U.S. and China in June. “I am not concerned at this time,” he said. “Of course, we’re not immune from global politics. It’s something that we’re paying a lot of attention to. I look, though, to sports—and this is something Yao and I have discussed—where we can use basketball maybe in the way pingpong was used in the days of Richard Nixon. There could be something called ‘basketball diplomacy.’ ”
The NBA hosts two exhibition games in China this week and Silver will be in attendance. The league has already made it clear that it won’t stand by its stated values in the face of real financial pressure. “Basketball diplomacy” was easier when was it just about tariffs.
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