LeBron James called Daryl Morey "misinformed" for supporting Hong Kong protesters while the NBA quietly protected its Chinese revenue.
Now Steve Kerr is admitting he did the same thing – and called it exactly what it was.
What the Warriors coach just confessed to a New Yorker reporter about China, cowardice, and Donald Trump will leave you wanting to hear a lot more.
The Coach Who Stayed Silent While China Cracked Down
In October 2019, Daryl Morey – then the Houston Rockets' general manager – posted a single tweet supporting Hong Kong protesters fighting for their freedom against the Chinese Communist Party.
The NBA panicked.
The league had built a massive business in China, and one honest tweet threatened to burn it down.
LeBron James flew to China, came back, and told reporters that Morey had been "misinformed" and should have "waited a little bit" before speaking.
Steve Kerr – the most outspoken coach in the NBA, the man who had spent years loudly and on the record attacking Donald Trump, gun violence, and every political cause he could find – suddenly had nothing to say.
"I gave a really weak answer," Kerr admitted to the New Yorker. "I was trying to walk the line."
https://twitter.com/WashTimes/status/2048900035530707300?s=20
When the interviewer asked if he regretted it, Kerr didn't flinch: "Yeah. I was wrong."
The Double Standard He Finally Had to Admit
This is the same man who called President Trump a "buffoon" – loudly and on the record.
But when the Chinese Communist Party cracked down on millions of Hong Kong citizens demanding basic freedoms, Steve Kerr decided that was the moment to stay quiet.
He explained why: "We had a lot of players on our team that were doing business in China. A lot of our players would go there offseason. The NBA had this huge relationship with China."
In other words, the man who posed as America's moral conscience chose Chinese revenue over Chinese dissidents.
He even named the calculation directly: "I was trying to walk the company line and not make the NBA mad."
Compare that to his Trump commentary, which came without any financial consequence whatsoever – and flowed freely for years.
Kerr's regret on the "buffoon" comment is also worth noting.
He told the New Yorker he wishes he had pointed out policy decisions and American values instead of going personal – because he was "representing a large group of people."
That's not an apology to Trump.
https://twitter.com/warriorsworld/status/2048456259029106848?s=20
But it is an admission that years of treating the President of the United States as a punchline while genuflecting to the Chinese Communist Party was not exactly a coherent moral framework.
The NBA's China Problem Never Really Went Away
The NBA spent years pretending the Morey episode was a one-time stumble.
It wasn't.
American leagues and corporations have been bending the knee to Beijing for decades – quietly editing content, self-censoring players, and making sure nothing threatens access to 1.4 billion Chinese consumers.
The pattern is always the same.
An American speaks the truth about China.
The money is threatened.
The institution panics and the voices go silent.
Kerr's 2019 silence was not an accident or an oversight – it was a choice, made in real time, with full knowledge of what was happening in Hong Kong.
https://twitter.com/CallieforTrump/status/2048743428696195232?s=20
Every woke league, every activist celebrity, every corporation that slaps a social justice slogan on its homepage has a China policy that looks exactly like Steve Kerr's.
They'll lecture you about American democracy.
They'll call the President a buffoon on national television.
They'll issue statements and wear ribbons and take knees.
But the moment Beijing threatens the revenue stream, the microphone goes dead.
Kerr didn't just expose himself in that New Yorker interview.
He exposed the entire machine.
The moral authority was always for sale – it just happened to be priced in Chinese yuan.
But he just told you everything you need to know about every celebrity activist who's spent the last decade telling you how to think about America – while keeping very, very quiet about China.
Sources:
- Dylan Gwinn, "Steve Kerr Regrets Calling President Donald Trump a 'Buffoon,' Concedes His Comments on Hong Kong Were 'Weak,'" Breitbart, April 27, 2026.
- "Has Steve Kerr Had Enough," The New Yorker, April 2026.
