Opinion | With polarising perspectives on the NBA and Hong Kong protests, both China and the US should show more maturity

It’s disheartening to see the “Morey incident” spiral downward in two parallel universes, both of which I am fond of. I’m talking about the incident involving Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey, who set off an international firestorm this month when he tweeted a since-deleted image captioned “Fight For Freedom, Stand With Hong Kong”.

Immediately, the Chinese Basketball Association, Chinese sponsors and a Chinese sports channel said they would cease cooperation with the Rockets.

The National Basketball Association of the US issued a conciliatory statement and Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James weighed in, saying he didn’t think Morey was sufficiently informed about the situation. But even as the NBA tried to contain the fallout from the tweet in China, it succeeded in drawing harsh criticism from politicians and citizens back in the US.

To many Americans, this was an open-and-shut case: the NBA’s apologetic response was a shameful capitulation to a repressive regime. The basketball league was kowtowing to money, at best, and to authoritarianism at worst, and betraying the core values of America.