Bob Costas took a shot at the National Basketball Association on Wednesday over its ties with China when asked about the U.S. diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
“The NBA is up to its neck in China,” the legendary sportscaster explained during his appearance on CNN with Michael Smerconish. (RELATED: Enes Kanter Says LeBron James’ Former Teammates Told Him The Basketball Star Only Cares About His ‘PR’)
“China is a huge sports market,” he added. “Basketball is especially popular there. But they will put up with not even the slightest criticism. They reject it out of hand. And when they can, some of it might be just saber-rattling, like saying today that the U.S. will pay the price for its wrongdoings. But to the extent that they can, they exact a price.”
It comes at the 1:10 minute mark.
WATCH:
Props to Bob Costas — and @cnn! — for going after the NBA, the IOC, LeBron and Kaepernick for their hypocritical silence on Chinese genocide. pic.twitter.com/3FMm3IF7M7
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) December 8, 2021
“Back a couple of years ago when Daryl Morey, then the GM of the Houston Rockets, tweeted ‘Stand with Hong Kong,’ Rockets games were suddenly off the air for an extended period in China,” Costas continued. “And the Rockets are one of the most popular teams there because Yao Ming was the first big Chinese star in the NBA. More recently, Enes Kanter, who grew up in Turkey … he spoke out against China. Same thing: Celtics games, like that, gone.” (RELATED: NBA Player Enes Kanter Says He’s Becoming A Citizen Of ‘The Greatest Country In The World’)
The sportscaster even suggested at the end of the interview that the “feed of this conversation” the two were having about China and the NBA would no longer exist in China.
The Boston Celtics center, Kanter, has been one of the only voices in the league to speak up for Uyghurs and the people of Tibet as he’s slammed China for its human rights violations.
He also recently called out basketball star LeBron James for valuing “money over morals” and American companies “for turning a blind eye toward human rights abuses in China.”