OPINION:
Mark Cuban, the wildly successful entrepreneur, charming host of CNBC’s “Shark Tank,” and owner of the Dallas Mavericks is no shrinking violet. Mr. Cuban has an opinion on, well, everything. College? He’s against it. NBA officiating? It stinks. President Donald Trump? He’s awful.
Yet when it comes to a matter rather close to Mr. Cuban’s own interests — the brouhaha involving another Texan NBA team, the Houston Rockets, the People’s Republic of China, and the mistreatment of Rockets’ general manager Daryl Morey — he has uncharacteristically clammed up. His usually prolific Twitter feed has gone silent and he’s made no public statements on the matter.
That reticence continued Tuesday evening. Reached via his personal email account, Mr. Cuban would only tell the Washington Times, “’ll refer you to Adam silvers [sic] comments.” NBA Commissioner Silver released a statement earlier this week declaring that “we have seen how basketball can be an important form of people-to-people exchange that deepens ties between the United States and China.”
Of course, Mark Cuban is hardly the only usually chatty NBA figure to go uncharacteristically silent on the China issue. Steve Kerr, the Warriors coach whose postgame press conferences tend to dwell more on politics than rebounds and the pick and roll, has evinced complete ignorance on the matter. LeBron James, the wildly talented forward for the Lakers who never shies from politics, has gone silent.
But Mark Cuban’s silence is the most telling. When Mark Cuban — I repeat, Mark Cuban! — of all people declines to comment, you know how much fear of China there really is out there.
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