Shorter Lebron: Stick to Sports
By 
The NBA continues to refuse to cover itself with glory:
LeBron James believes Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey “wasn’t educated” before he sent the tweet in support of antigovernment protesters in Hong Kong that damaged relations between China and the NBA.
Speaking to the media for the first time since Morey’s tweet on Oct. 4 set off a firestorm, James declined to comment about the politically tense situation between China and the NBA but did talk about Morey’s tweet and how it has jeopardized the relationship between China and the league, owners, teams and players.
“I don’t want to get into a [verbal] feud with Daryl Morey, but I believe he wasn’t educated on the situation at hand, and he spoke,” James said before the Los Angeles Lakers played the Golden State Warriors in a preseason game at Staples Center. “And so many people could have been harmed not only financially, physically, emotionally, spiritually. So just be careful what we tweet and say and we do, even though, yes, we do have freedom of speech, but there can be a lot of negative that comes with that, too.”
Say it like an NFL general manager, Lebron!
My guess is that Lebron is squaring the circle here with some kind of “fix your own house before you complain about someone else’s” logic. That’s bad in general, but it’s really bad when a) you’re making bank off the authoritarian country that’s conducting the repression, and b) you’re essentially celebrating the efforts of that country to repress speech within the United States. And really, Lebron didn’t have to comment on this at all; he went out of his way to criticize Morey.
Let’s hope for some kind of course correction soon.