LeBron James Receives Backlash For Comments On China, Daryl Morey

LeBron James clearly wasn’t a fan of Daryl Morey’s recent tweet in support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, particularly because of the financial ramifications and how it has tarnished relations between the NBA and China.

Speaking to reporters on Monday night, LeBron said that Morey “wasn’t educated” and was “misinformed” before he sent a now-deleted tweet on October 4 that read, “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.” 

LeBron’s full comments (H/T ESPN):

“I don’t want to get into a [verbal] feud with Daryl Morey, but I believe he wasn’t educated on the situation at hand, and he spoke,” James said. “And so many people could have been harmed not only financially, physically, emotionally, spiritually. So just be careful what we tweet and say and we do, even though, yes, we do have freedom of speech, but there can be a lot of negative that comes with that, too.”

“I believe he was either misinformed or not really educated on the situation, and if he was, then so be it,” James continued. “I have no idea, but that is just my belief. Because when you say things or do things, if you are doing it and you know the people that can be affected by it and the families and individuals and everyone that can be affected by it, sometimes things can be changed as well. And also social media is not always the proper way to go about things as well, but that’s just my belief.”

The four-time MVP received a ton of backlash on social media immediately after making those comments and he quickly attempted to clear things up, but he’s going to need some serious damage control on this one.

Check out LeBron’s follow-up tweets, as well as the reactions to his statement, below.