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Boston Celtics star Jaylen Brown shared his thoughts on ongoing NBA-China controversy, a debacle that has started affecting the league and its players financially.
Brown was careful with his words and explained why he — and plenty of other NBA stars — were hesitant on letting their opinions known about the issue.
Article Continues Below“You don’t want to neglect somebody’s freedom of speech, but at the same time you want to be considerate of people all over the world. Just because we do something a certain way here doesn’t mean that it’s OK somewhere else, so you have to be appropriate to what you say because other people might take offense to it, even if you don’t mean offense,” Brown told Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe.
“Even if you disagree with it, people should have more understanding, be more respectful,” Brown added. “It’s definitely a tough situation. I don’t want to comment on it because I don’t want to say the wrong thing. I definitely think players should be able to speak freely on educated topics that they’ve informed themselves on and also make calculated, precise answers so it can’t be spun in the direction they don’t want it to be spun. You see the best of us make those mistakes and that’s why we have great media teams to make sure everything is on track.”
The NBA found itself in trouble with China after Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted in support of Hong Kong protesters.
It's understandable where Brown is coming from. As China is a country that is patriotic and sensitive to any negative press said against them, it's not in anyone's best interests to actually anger them any further.
Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James recently spoke about the issue and criticized Morey for his “misinformed” and “not educated” action. LeBron received massive backlash for his comments, though he later clarified he is talking about the consequences of the tweet rather than the substance or belief Morey upholds.
Fans can expect more and more players to start talking about this as days go by, though. After all, this scandal affects all of them.
