This morning, NBA commissioner Adam Silver issued a new statement about Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey’s support for protesters in Hong Kong, and it is a somewhat better one, declaring, “The NBA will not put itself in a position of regulating what players, employees and team owners say or will not say on these issues. We simply could not operate that way.”
In that statement, Silver sounds like a man who wants to do the right thing but realizes that doing so will cost his organization a fortune and perhaps even endanger people. Silver continued to try to talk a tightrope Tuesday at a news conference in Tokyo before a preseason game between the Rockets and NBA champion Toronto Raptors.
“Daryl Morey, as general manager of the Houston Rockets, enjoys that right as one of our employees,” Silver said. “What I also tried to suggest is that I understand there are consequences from his freedom of speech and we will have to live with ...