Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey has said plenty of controversial things before, and when it’s basketball-related the team and owner will have his back.
However, on Friday night, as the Rockets were headed to Japan for an NBA exhibition game, Morey got political and posted a now-deleted Tweet about the ongoing protests in Hong Kong. He posted the image and verbiage — “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong” — used on official protest websites.
That brought a quick rebuke from Morey’s boss, Rockets’ owner Tilman Fertitta.
Listen....@dmorey does NOT speak for the @HoustonRockets. Our presence in Tokyo is all about the promotion of the @NBA internationally and we are NOT a political organization. @espn https://t.co/yNyQFtwTTi
— Tilman Fertitta (@TilmanJFertitta) October 5, 2019
Fertitta told Tim MacMahon of ESPN not to read too much into this, Morey’s relationship with him and the organization is all good.
Tilman Fertitta to ESPN: “I have the best general manager in the league. Everything is fine with Daryl and me. We got a huge backlash, and I wanted to make clear that [the organization] has no [political] position. We’re here to play basketball and not to offend anybody.” https://t.co/tS15GIOpMh
— Tim MacMahon (@espn_macmahon) October 5, 2019
The NBA has worked hard for years to establish itself in the vast Chinese market, and the Rockets — thanks to Yao Ming — remain one of the most popular teams in China. Morey’s Tweet brought backlash from official sources and Chinese people/bots on Weibo (the Chinese social media platform).
Protests in Hong Kong have been going on for months, which started with people in the semi-autonomous region protesting a new extradition law that allowed Hong Kong residents to be sent to mainland China. Those protests have grown in both size and scope, morphing into a larger movement as residents there strive to keep their freedoms and push back against Chinese interference in the region. China itself has responded with increasingly intense crackdowns on the protestors, which included one protestor being shot.
