Senator Josh Hawley wrote a letter to the NBA Commissioner Adam Silver criticizing the NBA for once again kowtowing to Communist China. Here’s how his letter began:
On July 3, the National Basketball Association (NBA) came to an agreement with the NBA players union allowing players to wear certain social and political messages on their jerseys, almost all aligned with the message of recent anit-police protests. Conspicuously missing from the list of approved phrases are any in support of the victims of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including the people of Hong Kong, whose remaining freedoms are being extinguished by the CCP’s newly-enacted national security law.
Given the NBA’s troubled history of excusing and apologizing for the brutal repression of the Chinese Communist regime, these omissions are striking. Last October, you no doubt recall you chose to apologize to the CCP after Daryl Morey, General Manager of the Houston Rockets, spoke up on behalf of the Hong Kong protesters.
Hawley goes on to challenge the NBA commissioner to allow slogans in support for Hong Kong and American law enforcement as well.
Below is the full letter you can click and read if you like:
If @NBA is going to put social cause statements on uniforms, why not “Support our Troops” or “Back the Blue”? Or given how much $$ @nba makes in #China, how about “Free Hong Kong”! Today I wrote to Adam Silver to ask for answers pic.twitter.com/PthYR4OxmE
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) July 10, 2020
Hawley sent this out in a press release via email and got this response back from ESPN analyst Adrian Wojnarowski, otherwise known as “Woj”:
Don’t criticize #China or express support for law enforcement to @espn. It makes them real mad @Outkick pic.twitter.com/WJDxrotUBD
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) July 10, 2020
Yikes!
ESPN has acknowledged the email is real:
I asked ESPN about the Woj/Hawley email. Spokesman said it appears to be real and ESPN is looking into it.
— Ben Strauss (@benjstrauss) July 10, 2020
So far I haven’t seen whether ESPN is going to punish Woj in any way but I’ll let you know if I do…