NBA superstar LeBron James may not have limited himself to odd public comments about the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, he may have actually pressured league commissioner Adam Silver to punish the Houston Rockets GM who tweeted his support for demonstrators over fears James and the NBA could lose Chinese business.
The Daily Caller and The Athletic report that James, concerned with his and the league’s bottom line, leaned Silver to punish Daryl Morey for his comments, claiming that NBA players would be fined or benched for decisions that had a financial cost.
“Nearly a week ago today, in a Shanghai hotel room, or Shanghai hotel ballroom, Adam Silver got up and addressed the players, and LeBron James is one of the players who got up and spoke and said, ‘Hey, what are we doing here? Daryl Morey made these statements,’” Dave McMenamin of ESPN noted, according to both outlets. “You know damn well if a player made the same statements and caused such poor ramifications for the league, there would be some sort of league recourse.”
“There would be repercussions the player has to pay. You know, potentially this tweet could cost the NBA hundreds of millions of dollars. That could come out of the players’ pockets, and so that’s the double standard that was being addressed in that meeting,” McMenamin added in his interview. – READ MORE