After Rebuking Daryl Morey, Rockets Owner Stays Quiet

And then he went quiet.

In his first public comments since the interview with ESPN, Fertitta, whose team opens the season on Thursday night against Milwaukee, agreed to provide written answers to questions through a spokeswoman. He said he “never considered firing or punishing Daryl” in the wake of Morey’s Twitter post. Fertitta also said that he needed to initially distance the Rockets from Morey because, “I felt it was important to make the distinction between Daryl speaking as a private citizen and Daryl as a representative of the Houston Rockets.”

He added, “We have never commented on another country’s foreign policy.”

Then it was back to silence. Fertitta declined to answer several follow-up questions, including whether he wished he had handled anything differently since Morey’s post. The Rockets said Morey was not available for comment.

Having the Rockets at the center of what has become a contentious relationship between the N.B.A. and the Chinese government has presented Fertitta with the most significant challenge of his two-year tenure leading one of the N.B.A.’s top franchises — well beyond the challenge of trying to bring the city a third championship.

The Rockets were the team of Yao Ming, the Hall of Fame center and one of the most popular athletes in China. Morey’s tweet, in which he shared an image that said “Fight For Freedom. Stand With Hong Kong” has — for now — mostly collapsed the partnership between the N.B.A. and China, a country in which the league has spent decades making inroads to expand its business.

The Rockets lost all team sponsorships with Chinese companies, including the apparel company Li-Ning and the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank. Chinese broadcast networks have scaled back coverage of the league, and, after N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver said that he refused a demand from the Chinese government to have the Rockets fire Morey, China Central Television, the state-run network, broadcast an editorial threatening “retribution” against Silver.

Source: The New York Times

Powered by NewsAPI.org

Keywords:

Daryl Morey • ESPN • Milwaukee • Twitter • Houston Rockets • Foreign policy of the United States • Houston Rockets • Houston Rockets • National Basketball Association • National Basketball Association • Houston Rockets • Yao Ming • Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame • China • Daryl Morey • Twitter • Hong Kong • National Basketball Association • China • China • Company • Clothing • Company • Li-Ning • Shanghai Pudong Development Bank • China • Commissioner of the NBA • Adam Silver • Government of China • Houston Rockets • China Central Television •