Due to a Tweet by Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey, the National Basketball Association is in a standoff with China.

Morey said via Twitter: 

“Fight for Freedom, Stand with Hong Kong.”

The tweet has since been deleted, but China hasn’t forgotten about it. They have threatened to cancel all NBA China games from here on out. The NBA supports Morey. Their stance is that they will stand by their workers’ rights to have freedom of speech and to be able to speak their opinions without getting punished.

The NBA is completely in the right here. Their workers have a right to be able to say what they want to about a topic without getting punished for it. China is blowing this way out of proportion, and is making it seem like this has caused the end of the world. Punishing the whole league and other teams that had nothing to do with the situation is preposterous.

China is cutting off all of the Rockets’ sales and threatening to cancel all NBA China games and is going at it with the NBA’s Commissioner, Adam Silver. It’s gotten to the point where China has taken it so far that even the President of the United States has chimed in on the topic. 

“They have to work out their own situation. The NBA’s — they know what they’re doing. I watched the way that [Golden State Warriors coach Steve] Kerr and [San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg] Popovich and some of the others were pandering to China, and yet to our own country, it’s like they don’t respect it,” President Donald Trump said. He also made a comment about how Coach Kerr sounded like, “a scared little boy” when he spoke on the issue.

It’s understandable why China could be mildly frustrated with this comment, since it’s basically against them, but to punish everyone over this and to punish the China NBA fans especially over this nonsense is outrageous. I can kind of understand the canceling of sales of Rockets’ gear, but that’s personally where I think this whole ordeal should have ended.

To solve this problem, the NBA needs to come to terms with China and talk one-on-one, because the more one side hears from the media, the more hostile this thing gets. The Rockets could do a better job as an organization to be more active in this issue, since they were the ones who started this whole shobockle. China should also be a lot more understanding because their citizens are the ones suffering the most.

The Chinese government shouldn’t be handling this situation the way they are. They should be a little more willing to understand Americans have freedoms, including the freedom of speech. Cracking down on what NBA team officials are allowed to say won’t solve the problem because players themselves exercise their own freedoms.