There was significant backlash for the comments made by Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James regarding the pro-Democracy tweet made by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey. During a recent appearance on ESPN's The Jump, the topic of James' answer about Morey's tweet naturally came up. With Kendrick Perkins on as a guest, he provided an interesting response expressing his support for James' comments.

https://youtu.be/G-S0dw0-PCs

Perkins believes that the media took James' comments ‘out of context' and that he wasn't agreeing or disagreeing with Morey's tweet. A belief that Perkins expressed was that Adam's Silver's job is to control the situation as the NBA's commissioner and it's not James' role.

“First of all, with LeBron’s interview, he didn’t agree or disagree with Daryl Morey’s tweet. … People took it out of context and went at ‘Bron for not speaking up when they do have to realize that ‘Bron is the face of the NBA,” Perkins said, via NESN. “He’s the face of Nike basketball. And whether or not, if he speaks up on that, either way, he’s going to get backlash. So, he’s pretty much just taking a backseat, and I think it’s more on the NBA to speak up. It’s more of Adam Silver’s job to control this situation. This is not on LeBron.”

Perkins went further to express his belief that James was not the one being selfish in the situation. In fact, Perkins believes that Morey was the one who was acting selfishly because he never tweets about events ‘happening in his own country' but decided to speak up about China.

“And on another note, when you look at things, NBA players go through media training as players. Social media training, and they tell you different things on before you hit the ‘send’ button, rethink this. Maybe GMs should go to media training and stuff like that because Daryl Morey — outside of Magic Johnson — is one of the most active GMs that tweets all the time. And I follow Daryl Morey, but I never once seen him tweet about things that’s happening in his own country. So, why take a stance on when you all are over there in China, in a whole other country, and decide to send out a tweet like that was very selfish and you weren’t looking out for others.”

“So, LeBron is not the selfish person at hand. Daryl Morey actually is.”

The comments that Perkins expectedly received backlash similar to LeBron James. The main reasoning is that neither of them mentioned the human rights violations in China or the struggles of the pro-Democracy protestors in Hong Kong in their comments.