9 thoughts on “More Basketball Idiocy”

  1. Science and engineering tend to select for smart people. Basketball tends to select for tall people, and especially tall people who spend their time on the court instead of in the library.

    You could even go deeper and argue that basketball selects for people who accept arbitrary rules and oppressive officiating. Why can’t they take four running steps to the basket? Because it’s not allowed. Why can’t they just they stuff the guy trying to make a shot? Because they’ll be ejected from the game by those that enforce the arbitrary rules.

    There are many people in China who won’t follow the rules. They immediately get hit with penalties. Too many penalties and they get benched, and for more serious infractions they get ejected.

    Americans whose power and money revolve around maintaining arbitrary rules might not have a problem in enforcing a few more arbitrary rules, such as never criticizing China.

    1. Sorry George, that leaves me skeptical. For arbitrary rules golf has got to be way up there. “Be quiet while someone is teeing off”. WTF is that all about? And the Chinese are notorious for their hatred of that activity. I can’t immediately point to a pro golfer, or the PGA promoting the Hong Kong protesters, but I still think acceptance of arbitrariness can’t be a significant factor.

      A natural thought projection here would lead to comparisons with the NFL. The Chicoms obviously would have great consternation with the idea of members of a Chinese sports team kneeling during the national anthem, so a greater acceptance of basketball over NA football could be expected. So why do we see NFL players (also highly selective for physical attributes and field-over-library time preferences) much more amenable to that type of behavior than NBA players?

      1. Well, in golf you have arbitrary rules, but if you violate them you might have to *gasp* give yourself a two-stroke penalty. It’s all very proper and works on the honor system, as opposed to having referees following you back and forth and watching your every move for the slightest mistake. Get a little rough under the boards and you get ejected, and the league might give you a three-game suspension, or worse.

        Golf is a very individual, unsupervised sport. Football encourages both aggression and determined resistance. Baseball gives each player their individual time to stand at the plate and face down the opposing team, and each team member has times where they must act alone to catch that ball and change the course of the game.

        I just figured that maybe the Chinese Communist Party figured out which game would best promote Chinese communist values of teamwork and obedience to authority, where no one will really excel because the country only has the one tall person and they sent him abroad. ^_^

  3. It’s just money. It’s generally a bad idea to insult your customers.

    I read that the NBA makes about 10% of their gross from China. Up til now they saw this as pure profit with virtually zero cost. If their groveling cost them less than 11% in other markets, they will break even. That’s assuming that there is no decline in China. What if the Chinese fans are no more enthusiastic about mixing sports and propaganda then we are?

    Globalism can’t survive. It’s one thing for an enterprise to silently acquiesce and ignore the depredations of various juntas in order to do business. If they are now required to loudly endorse them, they’re going to have to chose sides.

    What it really shows is how fragile the Chinese regime finds their position. They might manage to control expression within their own borders, if they have to somehow control the whole world, I don’t see how they survive for long.

    1. I think there is an ideological component here as well. Our friends to the left have been trying to make the USA more like China for years and many of these business owners are left wing.

      In many cases of our businesses helping the Communist Party in China, it isn’t really a tough sell.

      1. I am sorry , maybe misremembering my younger days but don’t think the “free Tibet”/Amnesty International/Lisa Simpson was a particularly right wing movements or characters.

        Pretty sure the lefty’s more despised the Chinese they prefer their Soviet/Cuban/Vietnamese communism to the Chicoms/Khemer rouge form. Other than a brief popularity of the Little Red Book in the 60’s that were no longer that hot of a item by 1972.

  4. Don’t we have some anti-corruption laws that deal with how American companies act in foreign countries? Maybe they could be applied in situations where companies work with China to disenfranchise people of their human rights.

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