Gladwell: "moral clarity" of Women's Tennis Association's response to China contrasts with NBA's "half-apology." (WTA, though, didn't have Tsai factor.)

The Women’s Tennis Association Set a Standard For Crisis Response, author Malcolm Gladwell wrote in his newsletter 1/15/22, contrasting it with the NBA's response to a parallel China contretemps.

He noted that, upon "the disappearance of the top-ranked Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai, just after she accused a senior Chinese goverment official of sexual assault," the governing Women’s Tennis Association, despite a huge, ten-year deal for tournaments with the Chinese government, "decided to suspend all future tournaments in China and Hong Kong until Shuai’s allegation was properly investigated.

And the NBA?

By contrast, when in October 2019, then Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey retweeted “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong,” the Rockets lost all cooperation and content in China, Morey had to apologize, and NBA commissioner Adam Silver initially said:

“We recognize that the views expressed by Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey have deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China, which is regrettable. While Daryl has made it clear that his tweet does not represent the Rockets or the NBA, the values of the league support individuals’ educating themselves and sharing their views on matters important to them. We have great respect for the history and culture of China and hope that sports and the NBA can be used as a unifying force to bridge cultural divides and bring people together.”

As Gladwell points out, that's incredibly mealy-mouthed, a "half-apology" plus misdirection.

Recovering, partly

Gladwell adds:

A few days later Adam Silver relocated his conscience, from the closet where it had been hidden by his legal team, and issued a followup statement to reporters in Tokyo:

"The NBA will not put itself in a position of regulating what players, employees and team owners say or will not say. We simply could not operate that way.

"I do know there are consequences from freedom of speech; we will have to live with those consequences," he added. "For those who question our motivation, this is about far more than growing our business."

But that's still far from "the simplicity and moral clarity of the WTA’s response."

Then again, Gladwell could've mentioned a complication: perhaps the most important person in the NBA's relationship with China is Brooklyn Nets' owner Joe Tsai, the Taiwanese-Canadian NYC/La Jolla resident who made his fortune as co-founder of the Chinese behemoth Alibaba, and who, notoriously, penned an "open letter" reflexively defending the Chinese regime (and has continued to do so).