NBA's China mess

[Sibelius Hindemith]

No nation should be doing business with China that doesn't have to, and the U.S. doesn't have to. The whole idea in opening up our manufacturing to China was that this would lead them to becoming a more open and free society (as well as make scads of American industrialists filthy rich(er)) but it was a huge miscalculation. Time to pull the plug, at whatever cost.

[Donn Beach]

well really there is a pretty big difference, this is an international issue, it involves another country. So the premise would be he understood it, and did it to cause an issue. I don't think he could have looked at it as not affecting him personally, that is, his own income, if he decided to put the wheel into play he would have no idea where it would stop. So like a dedicated politico, as opposed to being naive. Interesting, have think about that.

Yep, more worried about the feelings of a communist country with incessant and ongoing Human rights violations than American citizens including the military and their families. And people are surprised that Trump got elected. lol

thought the issue was tweeting about supporting freedom for some dumb demonstrators on the other side of the world, why should we give a shit about them? Thought Trump was about letting other countries deal with their own problems, isn't that what he said when he pulled the troops out of Turkey's way? Does Trump tweet about supporting freedom? Well he certainly shafted the Kerds in that regard, and the Kerds happened to be allies But hey, supporting freedom for our allies is none of our business. That is all you have to say to China, our bad, what you do in HK is your business, someone stuck their nose in where it didn't belong. Trump never would have been caught dead sending a tweet like that, he knows better

[Sibelius Hindemith]

The Hong Kong demonstrators are dumb? Really? You can't be serious. I would say that they are much smarter than the average American because they understand the value of freedom.

[Donn Beach]

No nation should be doing business with China that doesn't have to, and the U.S. doesn't have to. The whole idea in opening up our manufacturing to China was that this would lead them to becoming a more open and free society (as well as make scads of American industrialists filthy rich(er)) but it was a huge miscalculation. Time to pull the plug, at whatever cost.

not that simple, Apple in fact tried to pull their phone manufacturing back to America and couldn't do it, couldn't put the supply chain together. When you look at the cost of manufacturing things today, labor tends to be a pretty small item. Its not really driving manufacturing decisions. Its about relative efficiency. The Chinese are good at manufacturing things, fine let them do it. Find other things to be good at, be more efficient. Which is what has happened with the advent of robotics. This whole job issue thing is like so yesterday, there are not high paying manufacturing jobs like the sixties, we can't bring those jobs back from China, they don't exist anymore, and that is because machines are doing them, and they are doing them in China too. And that is another thing, shipping jobs off to China was not a bad idea. Sure, folks got hurt, lost their jobs, and if they couldn't evolve they got left in low paying jobs. Hello, that is called capitalism, socialism is protecting jobs. Sure shipping the jobs off made some guys rich, but again, that is called capitalism. You want manufacturing jobs again and nobody getting rich, go live in a socialist county. And yes, shipping those jobs off was good for America, because it forced us to innovate, its what we do, we change things. There is actually plenty of manufacturing going on in america these days. I remember being told that there would be a time when cars would no longer be built in america, well seems to me car manufacturing is alive and well. Sure, there are no longer the machinist jobs, now there are robotic design jobs, IT jobs. High paying jobs have gravitated to another sort of education. Got a friend that is highly thought of in terms of machine intelligence design. He is on the way to getting rich. He has a degree math, the tool he uses for his work is math, he is good at it. Its just that he commented to me that he didn't feel his success was so much brains as timing, he happened to be born in a period of history where math degrees had become valuable. A lot of it is timing, being born at a time that what you are good at pays well. I don't trying to freeze those moments in time would work. Again, look at China, they are criticized for not being able to innovate, and that is because in part due to a centrally planned economy that is reluctant to allow things to change. If you want to be a capitalist, then you need to be willing to embrace change, capitalism is not nostalgic, its the antithesis.

If you guys want to believe that the answer is to try and turn things back to the 70's fine go for it, but kiss your GPD growth goodbye. Growth comes from innovation, efficiencies, engagement, not nostalgia, and isolation. And that is the thing with the idea of getting America's allies to stand with us and disengage with China. Nobody is listening to Trump, America doesn't have allies these days, remember its America first. Its hard to sell isolation to your allies. And the sad thing is, as far as i am concerned, Trump is accelerating the demise of America as the world's premier power because he has a habit of putting it on the sideline, particularly in Asia, which is where the center of world power seems to be gravitating. By opting out of treaties there he has left the field wide open for China. Trump takes his ball and goes home because its America first, ok but there is still a game being played. Countries are cutting deals with China, and really aggressively these days. China has instituted a very aggressive Foreign policy, cutting deals all over the place. and we have made it easier for them because conversely, we have decided to go it alone in isolationism, we are leaving the field wide open to the Chinese. Anyway, don't want to make this into a political debate, that is how I see things, you guys see it differently, not interested in debating. Good luck with your america we us back to putting ketchup on our steaks

[Donn Beach]

The Hong Kong demonstrators are dumb? Really? You can't be serious. I would say that they are much smarter than the average American because they understand the value of freedom.

i was not serious, it was heavy sarcasm. Dumb in that they are not Americans, not American...pretty much means dumb doesn't? Like the Kurds, they fought and died with us defeating ISSIS, pretty much our proxy army. Guess they were dumb, thinking America would lift a finger to defend their freedom, or at least the coward that is our president would. Speaking of dummies, wasn't that the term Trump used for Americans that were drafted into the army? Guess this is what one should expect when you elect a draft dodger president


I looked at some articles, guess its not that surprising he didn't fully understand the situation, believe that was what it was, its basically what his apology said. There is also possibly not really understanding Twitter, China and the internet. He might not have realized tweeter reached to China, in fact it doesn't, but its being monitored. I might not have occurred to him China would know what he tweeted, in fact that might be the best guess, more not realizing China would be listening to him, rather than not understanding the country. There are also stories that the Rockets would love to be able to fire him, but they can't because that would piss of their american fans. An interesting dilemma they created, two sets of fans bases with opposing interests and values.

In terms of freedom of speech, this will probably dampen it rather than help promote it. Getting back to Morely's lack of understanding, maybe its more a lack of preparation from the Rockets, china issue training for their employees since happen to be trying to do business there. This is going to be the poster boy case of future training courses for companies doing business in China. And its not going to be allowed to happen again, along with that training is going to be a heap of new restrictions and how employees get to use social media. They are not going to be put in a cross of the companies interests and employee freedom of speech a second time

[D-train]

The Hong Kong demonstrators are dumb? Really? You can't be serious. I would say that they are much smarter than the average American because they understand the value of freedom.

i was not serious, it was heavy sarcasm. Dumb in that they are not Americans, not American...pretty much means dumb doesn't? Like the Kurds, they fought and died with us defeating ISSIS, pretty much our proxy army. Guess they were dumb, thinking America would lift a finger to defend their freedom, or at least the coward that is our president would. Speaking of dummies, wasn't that the term Trump used for Americans that were drafted into the army? Guess this is what one should expect when you elect a draft dodger president


I looked at some articles, guess its not that surprising he didn't fully understand the situation, believe that was what it was, its basically what his apology said. There is also possibly not really understanding Twitter, China and the internet. He might not have realized tweeter reached to China, in fact it doesn't, but its being monitored. I might not have occurred to him China would know what he tweeted, in fact that might be the best guess, more not realizing China would be listening to him, rather than not understanding the country. There are also stories that the Rockets would love to be able to fire him, but they can't because that would piss of their american fans. An interesting dilemma they created, two sets of fans bases with opposing interests and values.

In terms of freedom of speech, this will probably dampen it rather than help promote it. Getting back to Morely's lack of understanding, maybe its more a lack of preparation from the Rockets, china issue training for their employees since happen to be trying to do business there. This is going to be the poster boy case of future training courses for companies doing business in China. And its not going to be allowed to happen again, along with that training is going to be a heap of new restrictions and how employees get to use social media. They are not going to be put in a cross of the companies interests and employee freedom of speech a second time

Tells you how fucked up China is that they monitor the English version of twitter to punish any dissenters. Imagine the US doing that to Chinese twitter.

[Donn Beach]

Well the NSA is doing its share of monitoring...The Chinese have a CCTV surveillance system with facial recognition. They demonstrated it awhile ago with a BBC reporter. He was someplace on the street in Beijing. The police were given his picture, from when they entered it into the system to actually physically picking him up...seven minutes

[Donn Beach]

lengthy in-depth piece on it...he is very savvy, he kind of gives an explanation, it was in response to friends in HK, i guess that is his reputation, loves to stir things up, the situation is a function of his personality, don't know a thing about him. Some GMs figure he will manage to use it to his advantage somehow in the end.

Few of Morey's colleagues around the NBA were surprised by his post. Most fellow execs saw Morey's decision to comment on Twitter about the conflict between Hong Kong and Beijing as consistent with his behavior during his 13 years as Rockets GM.

guess he kind of freaked them out...

When Morey reached out to a number of friends from Hong Kong soon after the story exploded, a few were too petrified to speak to him. Others, including some friends stateside who were concerned about surveillance and hacking, instructed him to install secure apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal. One of Morey's closer friends from Hong Kong had his attorney return Morey's call on his behalf. The lawyer, who declined to offer his name when contacted by ESPN, told Morey that all communication should be channeled through him until further notice.

I marvel at it

Some around the NBA marvel at this perfect storm, and the number of variables at work is remarkable:

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/280 ... aryl-morey

[Donn Beach]

HKer arrested in Singapore, sounds like for discussing the protests in a bar...

https://www.rappler.com/world/regions/a ... 1574382031

[D-train]

Good on Lebron. Even took the time to pull out the sweaty inserts:

https://twitter.com/BleacherReport/stat ... 2930764801