The NBA which portrays itself as the woke, social justice league didn’t just overlook human rights abuses in China, they actually were active participants in running basketball academies that physically abuses young players while denying them an education.
The fact that woke social justice warriors like Lebron James, Gregg Popovich & Steve Kerr remain silent is very revealing.
A bombshell investigation by ESPN’s Steve Fainaru & Mark Fainaru-Wada found that NBA’s basketball academies in China were wrought with physical abuse of young players.
In addition, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver had claimed that schooling at these academies would be central to the program, but in two of the three camps, no schooling was provided.
One American coach who worked for the NBA in China described the project as "a sweat camp for athletes."
At least two coaches left their positions at the academies in protest to theabuse of the young players.
“One requested and received a transfer after watching Chinese coaches strike teenage players, three sources told ESPN. Another American coach left before the end of his contract because he found the lack of education in the academies unconscionable: "I couldn't continue to show up every day, looking at these kids and knowing they would end up being taxi drivers," he said.Not long after the academies opened, multiple coaches complained about the physical abuse and lack of schooling to Greg Stolt, the league's vice president for international operations for NBA China, and to other league officials in China, the sources said. It was unclear whether the information was passed on to NBA officials in New York, they said. The NBA declined to make Stolt available for comment...
One former coach described watching a Chinese coach fire a ball into a young player's face at point-blank range and then "kick him in the gut.""Imagine you have a kid who's 13, 14 years old, and you've got a grown coach who is 40 years old hitting your kid," the coach said. "We're part of that. The NBA is part of that."...
In Xinjiang, players lived in cramped dormitories; the rooms were meant for two people, but a former coach said bunk beds were used to put as many as eight to 10 athletes in a room. Players trained two or three times a day and had few extracurricular activities. NBA coaches and officials became concerned that although education had been announced as a pillar of the academy program, the sports bureaus did not provide formal schooling. When the players -- some as young as 13 -- weren't training, eating or sleeping, they were often left unsupervised...
One former league employee who worked in China wondered how the NBA, which has been so progressive on issues around Black Lives Matter and moved the 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte, North Carolina, over a law requiring transgender people to use bathrooms corresponding to the sex listed on their birth certificates, could operate a training camp amid a Chinese government crackdown that also targeted NBA employees."You can't have it both ways," the former employee said. "...
You can't be over here in February promoting Black History Month and be over in China, where they're in reeducation camps and all the people that you're partnering with are hitting kids."
Just remember according to the league, Daryl Morey is the bad guy for tweeting "Fight for freedom, Stand with Hong Kong."