Clueless In China: At Home NBA Has Weakening Product and PR Problems

February 23rd, 2023 11:15 AM

Rick Hamilton The National Basketball Association already has a huge public relations problem due to wokeness and its lapdog subservience to the Chinese communists. If you thought its image couldn’t get much worse, guess again. 

Breitbart reported Wednesday that the NBA is deepening its ties with the evil Asian empire. 

The NBA and Chinese tech giant Ant Group will team up for joint marketing campaigns, digital collectibles, and video content, writes Dylan Gwinn, of Breitbart. This includes Chinese access to NBA video content through an Alipay app. Alipay is also a Chinese group. 

Despite receiving tremendous criticism in the U.S. for being in bed with communists (note photo of former player Rick Hamilton dishing up China love), the NBA bullheadedly just keeps digging a bigger PR hole for itself. How deep? 

Well, last Sunday’s NBA all-star game in Salt Lake City exposed the woke league’s sinking fortunes here in the States. Television ratings for that game plummeted a whopping 32 percent compared to last year. Just 3.7 million people bothered to watch the NBA all-star game.  

The all-star game’s ratings among the all-important 25-54 age group dropped by 28 percent. It was the smallest audience among that group in NBA all-star game history. Call it a stinging rebuke from the American public. 

All-star game coach Michael Malone, of the Denver Nuggets, called it the “worst basketball game ever played.” 

Few players gave any thought to playing defense, and Team Giannis Antetokounmpo beat Team LeBron James, 184-175. Boston all-star Jaylen Brown said the spectacle wasn’t “even basketball. That was just highlights and layups and jump shots. Probably just two foul calls the entire game. For me, I’m sure people would like to see a little bit more than what we displayed. But I guess that’s the format of what we’ve been doing, and I’m not sure how to change it.” 

The enlarged Chinese audience providing this substandard fare will make the NBA’s bank account richer, but the American public’s dwindling interest in the product continues to go unaddressed by the league’s stubborn leadership. 

ESPN reported last May the troubling extent to which multiple NBA owners are joined at the hip in their business entanglements with communist China. These relationships have serious implications for U.S. interests.