https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-nba-falls-victim-to-its-own-hubris_3449830.htmlESPN explains in its report:

“The NBA ran into myriad problems by opening one of the academies in Xinjiang, a police state in western China where more than a million Uyghur Muslims are now held in barbed-wire camps. American coaches were frequently harassed and surveilled in Xinjiang, the sources said. One American coach was detained three times without cause; he and others were unable to obtain housing because of their status as foreigners.”

It turns out many of the kids being found by the coaches and brought to the academy for training were in fact Uyghurs themselves, and the U.S. coaches observed the CCP coaches they were partnered with physically abusing these kids.

At least two of the U.S. coaches left their positions over the treatment of the Uyghur kids whom they personally observed. One of the former coaches told ESPN in evident disgust that he “watch[ed] a Chinese coach fire a ball into a young player’s face at point-blank range and then ‘kick him in the gut.’”

“‘Imagine you have a kid who’s 13, 14 years old, and you’ve got a grown coach who is 40 years old hitting your kid,’ the coach said. ‘We’re part of that. The NBA is part of that.’”

The good news is it looks like this recent shock to the NBA’s system is causing some prominent figures within the sports league to suddenly begin to express second thoughts.

Steve Kerr is the head coach of the Golden State Warriors, a team that has dominated the league for the past six years, appearing in the last six straight championship series and winning three of them.

Last October when he was asked about Morey’s controversial tweet and the Hong Kong democracy protests, as well as the recent viral footage of Uyghurs being loaded onto trains bound for slave labor camps, Kerr was positively tongue-tied. He stammered his way through a painful couple of sentences before quickly dodging the subject.

Guy Benson at Townhall.com remembers:

“I’ve been quite harsh in my assessment of Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, an outspoken lefty whose hypocrisy vis-a-vis social justice and China has been glaring. Late last year, Kerr cravenly dodged questions about Beijing’s myriad abuses, more or less regurgitating the NBA’s official ‘see no evil’ line. He stooped to disgusting moral equivalencies as a means of deflecting the conversation away from the regime’s egregious and systemic abuses, and onto America’s flaws.”

Well, today I must give Kerr some credit. He has publicly reversed himself, admitting to reporter Candace Buckner of The Washington Post during a recent interview that he deeply regrets not voicing support for Daryl Morey back in October.

Now that Kerr has stood up and broken the firewall of silence from the NBA on the China human rights issues, it remains to be seen if any other top figures in the league can find their voice.

Brian Cates is a writer based in South Tex