Abdul-Jalil and Superstar Management has worked in PRIVATE EVENTS with several members of the Saudi Arabian Royal family including His Royal Highness (HRH) Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulazziz Al-Saud and his son His Royal Highness Prince Khaled bin Al Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia.
Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud is a Saudi Arabian billionaire businessman, investor, philanthropist and Royal. He was listed on Time magazine’s Time 100, an annual list of the hundred most influential people in the world, and the fifth-richest man in the world, with a net worth of nearly $28 billion! Al Waleed bin Talal’s grandfather was Saudi Arabia’s founding monarch.
His Kingdom Holding Co. spans four continents. Over the years, he has acquired major stakes in companies such as Citigroup Inc. to the Four Seasons luxury hotel chain, Apple Computer Inc., AOL Time Warner Inc., News Corp., Saks Inc.- parent of retailer Saks Fifth Avenue and owns the Disney company’s Paris resort- Euro Disneyland Paris and its sister park, Walt Disney Studios.
Euro Disney, cost more than $3 billion and is Disney’s most lavish resort, is 4,400 acres parkland, seven hotels, boasting more than 5,000 rooms designed by famed architects Michael Graves and Robert Stern, dozens of restaurants, an entertainment village designed by Frank Gehryat, and has the Paris Metro express to the site 20 miles east of Paris.
He owns the Four Seasons Hotel George V (Sanc), in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, France. An art-deco landmark built in 1928, Four Seasons Hotel George V is nestled in the Golden Triangle of Paris, just off the historic Champs-Elysees. It has oversized suites with Eiffel Tower views welcome you after a day of wandering the quaint, Parisian streets, with three restaurants – with five Michelin stars among them – are home to some of the best food in France. A decadent new spa, an elegant swimming pool and a courtyard for whiling away the afternoons with a glass of wine from our cellar are just some of the pleasures unique to our historic destination.
The prince owns three 747 jets, a 317-room castle in Riyadh (with bowling alley) and a 288-foot yacht once owned by Donald Trump he calls the “Kingdom.”
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Abdul-Jalil, Superstar Management worked PRIVATE EVENTS for members of Saudi Royal Family In Giza at Pyramids
Abdul-Jalil and Superstar Management has worked in PRIVATE EVENTS with several members of the Saudi Arabian Royal family including His Royal Highness (HRH) Prince Turki Ibn Abdel Aziz and his wife His Royal Highness Princess Hend Shams El-Din El-Fassi of Saudi Arabia.
Prince Turki, a Saudi Arabian politician and businessman was a member of the House of Saud, he was the full brother of King Fahd and King Salman. Prince Turki was a member of the Sudairi Seven, a powerful faction of brothers within the Al Saud.
His parents were King Abdulaziz and Hassa bint Ahmed Al Sudairi. He was known as Turki the second because he was the second son of King Abdulaziz named “Turki”.
Prince Turki studied at the Princes’ School established by his father.
Turki bin Abdulaziz assumed the Riyadh principality delegation in 1957, because his brother Salman, governor of Riyadh (later King Salman), travelled with King Saud to Lebanon.
In 1960 he also served as the acting governor when Prince Salman was on leave.
Turki bin Abdulaziz was appointed deputy defense minister on 24 July 1969 by a royal order. His tenure lasted until 1978 when he was forced to resign from office due to his marriage to Hend Shams El-Din El-Fassi.
The stunning beautiful 20-year-old Princess Hend Shams El-Din El-Fassi, a Gulf Royalty socialite in the Mubarak era, was perhaps the FIRST Arab Feminist, in her fighting for womens liberation and rights, she became a tabloid queen. For nine years, the family and their entourage travelled the World, enjoying a lavish and outlandish culture of life that came to define the “Lifestyles of The Rich and Famous” with Robin Leach with their very own “champagne wishes and caviar dreams.” They had multiple popular destinations for vacation, recreation, and resort residences all over the world, while they retreated to Miami, Florida, USA and their compound occupied the top three floors of the Ramses Hilton, Cairo, Egypt. They also had the fabulous 5 Star Marriott Mena House Resort, in Giza at the Pyramids in Egypt.
We performed events for Princess Hend and the young Sheik Turki in Giza at the Pyramids in Egypt.
LEGAL STRATEGY THAT JOE TSAI, THE NETS, NBA, AND NIKE OWE KYRIE IRVING FULL CONTRACTUAL BENEFITS, DAMAGES
LEGAL STRATEGY THAT JOE TSAI, THE NETS, NBA, AND NIKE OWE KYRIE IRVING FULL CONTRACTUAL BENEFITS, DAMAGES
Kyrie Irving forced to make an unqualified apology
As a 50 year, LEGENDARY, pioneering SUPER AGENT/BUSINESS MANAGER/ADVISOR of the Sports and Entertainment Legal Business field, IT IS MY PROFESSIONAL OPINION THAT THERE IS A LEGAL STRATEGY WITH A GREAT POSSIBILITY THAT JOE TSAI AND THE NETS, THE NBA, AND NIKE, AMONG OTHERS, OWE KYRIE IRVING HIS FULL CONTRACTUAL BENEFITS AND FOR THE DAMAGE TO AND LOSS THEREOF HIS NAME, CREDIBILITY, REPUTATION AND EARNING CAPACITY FOR ENDORSEMENTS, ETC.! THE DAMAGE WAS CAUSED BY THE NETS, THE NBA, AND NIKE THEMSELVES WITH THE ONEROUS PUNISHMENT FORCED UPON KYRIE FOR THE ALLEGED ANTI-SEMITIC ACTIONS THAT HE DID NOT COMMIT AND THE FURTHER PERSECUTION OF IRVING WITH THE IMPOSITION OF THE EXTRA JUDICIAL INHUMANE “SIX CONDITIONS” BY JOE TSAI AND THE NETS WITH COMPLICITY OF THE NBA, THAT HE HAD TO CURE TO OVERCOME HIS BEING “UNFIT TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH THE TEAM”!!
Those steps included a spoken/written apology condemning the film, a $500,000 donation to anti-hate causes, sensitivity and antisemitic training, as well as meetings with the ADL, Jewish leaders, and Nets owner Joe Tsai. The HYPOCRITE NBA Commissioner Adam Silver with his feigned SELF-SERVING, SELF RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION AND OURAGE stepped in and DEMANDED a meeting and an UNQUALIFIED APOLOGY, DENUNCIATION AND CONDEMNATION of the film from Kyrie BEFORE any reinstatement!
Irving issued several written apologies “To All Jewish families and Communities that are hurt and affected from my post, I am deeply sorry to have caused you pain, and I apologize” without outright condemning the film, made a $500,000 donation to anti-hate causes, and met with Tsai and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.
Kyrie apologized when he Did NOT offer an unqualified endorsement and more specifically verbally praise the alleged vile and harmful content contained in the film he allegedly chose to publicize? THOSE ARE ALL JOE TSAI AND THE NETS, THE NBA, AND NIKE, AMONG OTHERS, UNFORCED ERRORS, INTENTIONALLY WRONGFUL CONCLUSIONS OR OPINIONS!! THE ISSUE WAS Semitic/ANTI-Semitic! KYRIE WAS RIGHT ON THAT!
After their meeting, Tsai said “We spent quality time to understand each other and it’s clear to me that Kyrie does not have any beliefs of hate towards Jewish people or any group”.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said he has “no doubt” that Irving is not antisemitic” and “The Nets and Kyrie, together with the NBA and NBPA, are working constructively toward a process of forgiveness, healing and education” the National Basketball Players Association told its members in an email.
Yet Irving was NOT permitted to play!
Tsai tweeted the guard “still has work to do.”
The original suspension by the Nets detailed “We were dismayed today, when given an opportunity in a media session, that Kyrie refused to unequivocally say he has no antisemitic beliefs, nor acknowledge specific hateful material in the film,” the Nets wrote in a statement not attributed to any individual. “This was not the first time he had the opportunity — but failed — to clarify.
“Such failure to disavow antisemitism when given a clear opportunity to do so is deeply disturbing, is against the values of our organization, and constitutes conduct detrimental to the team. Accordingly, we are of the view that he is currently unfit to be associated with the Brooklyn Nets.”
“He has to show people that he’s sorry,” Tsai told The New York Post. “What’s important — and what people miss — is he only apologized after he was suspended.”
Jalen Brown, VP of the National Basketball Players Association called the response from Tsai, “alarming for multiple reasons.”
“We have maintained from the beginning, and will continue to repeat every chance we get, that Kyrie and the Players Association unequivocally condemn antisemitism and all other forms of hate,” the union wrote.
It added, “We continue to make sure that Kyrie’s rights, and the rights of all future players, have been protected at every turn, and look forward very soon to a resolution of all matters satisfactory to all parties.”
Apparently he still had to satisfactorily complete “sensitivity and antisemitic training, as well as meetings with the ADL, Jewish leaders”.
Kyrie Irving missed the Brooklyn Nets’ six games after the team issued the guard a five-game minimum suspension for his repeated refusal to apologize for posts linking to an alleged antisemitic film.
The suspension continued and Irving was losing $252,000 per game!
Tsai’s DEMANDS that Irving has to “outright condemn the film”, satisfactorily complete “sensitivity and antisemitic training, as well as meetings with the ADL, Jewish leaders” may be the MOST ONEROUS AND DAMNING EVER IN VIOLATION OF HIS CONSTITUTIONAL AND RELIGIOUS RIGHTS!
Nets owner Tsai was the face of NBA’s TERRORIZING Kyrie Irving and over one million Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities- has financially contributed to the Chinese government’s Human Rights violations in the cultural genocide of the Muslim population, jailing them in barbed-wire camps, sterilizing women, destroying mosques, forced labor, banning religious activities including the Holy month of Ramadan, and forced “re-education” as an Advocate of China’s Communist Regime! KYRIE IRVING IS Muslim! MOST SEMITES ARE MUSLIMS!
Tsai claims Irving is “UNFIT TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH THE TEAM” because he had declined to say he has no antisemitic views in the week since he posted a link on Twitter to a film with alleged hateful claims about Jewish people.
“Such failure to disavow antisemitism when given a clear opportunity to do so is deeply disturbing, is against the values of our organization, and constitutes conduct detrimental to the team,” the Nets said in a statement.
Irving’s tweet WAS NOT a “TEAM ACTIVITY”, he was acting as an individual without any responsibility nor liability to nor for the team!
The TEAM CAUSED AND IS RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL THE DAMAGE BY THEIR KNEELING DOWN BEFORE AND TO THE JEWISH “ANTI-SEMITIC” KABBALAH MEDIA MACHINERY BULLYING THEM INTO SUBMISSION WITH THEIR ILLEGAL, IRRELIGIOUS DEMANDS!
THE NBA Players Association should have IMMEDIATELY filed a Federal Grievance Complaint and request for arbitration and had the NBA stay ANY and ALL actions by the team until the matter was decided.
The ILLEGAL, IRRELIGIOUS DEMANDS of JOE TSAI AND THE NETS, THE NBA, AND NIKE, AMONG OTHERS, NOT ONLY
Jack Ma standing, Joe Tsai seated
VIOLATE HIS NBA CONTRACT, it violates the tenets of Kyrie’s own self professed religion of Islam and his being forced to denounce anything that may violate his personal beliefs as well, is just further evidence of TSAI AND THE NETS, THE NBA, AND NIKE, AMONG OTHERS, belief that they can coerce Kyrie into their form of forced “re-education” as Tsai has with the over one million Uyghur Muslims in China’s Communist Regime!
Under what paragraph in Irving’s contract with the Nets and the NBA/NBAPA Collective Bargaining Agreement allows for these conditions to be LEGALLY imposed upon a player??!!
IT IS AN OUTRIGHT VIOLATION OF HIS CONSTITUTIONAL AND RELIGIOUS RIGHTS TO DEMAND HE “outright condemn the film”!
IT IS AN OUTRIGHT VIOLATION OF HIS CONSTITUTIONAL AND RELIGIOUS RIGHTS TO DEMAND HE “satisfactorily complete “sensitivity and antisemitic training”!
IT IS AN OUTRIGHT VIOLATION OF HIS CONSTITUTIONAL AND RELIGIOUS RIGHTS TO DEMAND HE “meet with the ADL, Jewish leaders”!
THESE DEMANDS ARE IN DIRECT CORRELATION TO TSAI’S COMMUNIST CHINESE GOVERNMENT GENOCIDE AND TERRORIZING OF THE UYGHUR MUSLIMS HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS OF JAILING THEM IN BARBED-WIRE CAMPS, STERILIZING WOMEN, DESTROYING MOSQUES, FORCED LABOR, BANNING ISLAMIC RELIGIOUS ACTIVITIES INCLUDING THE HOLY MONTH OF RAMADAN, AND FORCED “RE-EDUCATION” TO PROGRAM THEM OUT OF ISLAM!!
IT IS APPARENT THAT TSAI AIMS TO FORCE IRVING’S “RE-EDUCATION” TO DEPROGRAM HIM OUT OF HIS ISLAMIC FAITH!!
Here in America, there has been numerous reports of how certain elements of society has attempted to release (someone) from apparent brainwashing, gender/sexual inclinations/deviations, addiction, typically that of a social or religious group/cult, by the systematic re-indoctrination of conventional values!
Additionally, there have been numerous complaints from Jewish/Hebrew/Israeli groups that have found fault with the ADL and certain Jewish leaders that would make meetings with them even MORE PROBLEMATIC and AN OUTRIGHT VIOLATION OF HIS CONSTITUTIONAL AND RELIGIOUS RIGHTS!
IT IS BECOMING MORE AND MORE CLEAR IN THIS CASE THAT THIS IS THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF TSAI’S!
KYRIE IRVING IS Muslim and a SEMITE AS ARE MOST MUSLIMS!
It is Tsai that needs to “satisfactorily complete “sensitivity and antisemitic training”!
THIS BRINGS INTO QUESTION AND DEMANDS A RESPONSE FROM TSAI as there HAVE BEEN NUMEROUS ATTEMPTS, BUT THERE IS NO RECORD OF HIS PUBLICLY ADDRESSING, MUCH LESS ISSUING AN APOLOGY, CONDEMNING THE GENOCIDE OF MUSLIMS IN CHINA WITH HIS FUNDS AND TECHNOLOGY that many China experts hold him accountable for!
In China, under Tsai’s leadership, Alibaba funded companies that helped China build “an intrusive, omnipresent surveillance state that uses emerging technologies to track individuals with greater efficiency,” according to a 2020 congressional report.
Those companies are blacklisted by the U.S. government for supporting a “campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention and high-tech surveillance” through state-of-the-art racial profiling technologies that are being used widely in the western region of Xinjiang, where the government has forced more than 1 million Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities into barbed-wire “re-education” camps, policies that have been described as cultural “genocide” by the United States, several other countries and human rights organizations.
“Joe Tsai has had all the warning in the world about what is happening in Xinjiang, and if he thought it was important to extricate Alibaba, it would have happened,” said Matt Schrader, a China analyst for the International Republican Institute, which promotes democracy around the world. “Joe Tsai is the second-most powerful person at the company.”
On Oct. 7, 2019, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that 28 Chinese organizations — including Megvii and SenseTime, the Alibaba-funded artificial intelligence companies — had been added to the “Entity List,” which imposes trade restrictions on people or institutions engaged in activity “contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.”
Surveillance is at the core of China’s efforts to control the Uyghur population, a policy the government says is necessary to stop terrorism and maintain stability. ESPN reported in 2020 that American coaches at an NBA training academy in Xinjiang were surveilled and harassed. One coach said he was detained three times, comparing the atmosphere to “World War II Germany.”
JOE TSAI IS ANTI-SEMITIC!!!
Tsai’s DISGUSTING activities has now brought into play legally compelling responses requiring legal answers to his involvement in the
Sanction China over Uyghur “Genocide”
funding of the Communist Chinese Genocide of Uyghur Muslims, their forced re-education/de-programing, renouncing their illegal Human Rights policy violations, among others, THAT HE AND THE NBA DO NOT WANT TO BE INVESTIGATED, EXPOSED NOR LITIGATED!!
ADAM SILVER SHEKEL HIGHNESS- WHERE IS YOUR SELF-SERVING, SELF RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION AND OURAGE AT ANTI-SEMITE JOE TSAI FUNDING Chinese Genocide OF Uyghur Muslims, jailing them in barbed-wire camps, sterilized women, destroyed mosques, forced labor, banned Holy Ramadan, forced “re-education”!
“Amid growing international condemnation, the [People’s Republic of China (PRC)] continues to commit genocide and crimes against humanity” in the Xinjiang region, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. “The United States reiterates its calls on the PRC to bring an end to the repression of Uyghurs, who are predominantly Muslim, and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang, including by releasing all those arbitrarily held in internment camps and detention facilities.“
United States and its allies in Canada, Britain and the European Union announced sanctions on several Chinese officials alleged to have links to what U.S. officials say is a genocidal campaign against Uyghur Muslims. “These actions demonstrate our ongoing commitment to working multilaterally to advance respect for human rights and shining a light on those in the PRC government and [Chinese Communist Party] responsible for these atrocities,“ Blinken said.
U. S. Treasury also added that “Since at least late 2016, repressive tactics have been used by the XPSB against the Uyghurs and members of other ethnic minorities in the region, including mass detentions and surveillance.“
Tsai has publicly defended some of China’s most controversial policies. He described the government’s brutal crackdown on dissent as necessary to promote economic growth; defended a law used to imprison scores of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong as necessary to squelch separatism; and, when questioned about human rights, asserted that most of China’s 1.4 billion citizens are “happy about where they are.”
Matt Turpin, the former China director for the National Security Council, said Tsai is “under significant pressure to be seen as doing what Beijing wants him to do. I don’t necessarily fault him. He’s in this impossible position.”
But he said Alibaba’s support of Megvii and SenseTime and human rights abuses were well documented and should give the NBA pause.
“Last I checked, that’s a pretty abysmal thing to be associated with,” Turpin said. “In today’s NBA, I guess it’s not a problem.”
Last December, the U.S. Treasury Department added Megvii, SenseTime and six other Chinese companies to a separate blacklist that prohibits Americans from holding stock in those firms. A department spokesman accused the companies of “actively cooperating with the government’s efforts to repress members of ethnic and religious minority groups.”
Matt Schrader, the China analyst, said Tsai has a choice, ”Joe Tsai could resign,” , “He doesn’t have to do this. He’s a Canadian citizen. He has the freedom to make that choice so long as Alibaba continues to facilitate and participate in a genocide.”
Then Vice President Mike Pence, who later addressed the controversy in a speech, saying: “The NBA is acting like a wholly owned subsidiary of that authoritarian regime.”
Republicans and Democrats in Congress rallied and railed against the NBA. Silver then issued a statement, acknowledging the league’s first comments “left people angered, confused or unclear” and affirmed the NBA’s commitment to free expression. The next day, a bipartisan letter signed by, among others, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, said it was “outrageous that the NBA has caved to Chinese government demands for contrition.”
In a statement provided to ESPN, Silver said, “We have always supported and will continue to support every member of the NBA family, including Daryl Morey and Enes Freedom, expressing their personal views on social and political issues.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver with Kyrie Irving
The NBA declined to make Silver available for an interview.
“It doesn’t matter if you call him an entrepreneur, a sports owner or a philanthropist, he is channeling the kind of Chinese authoritarianism into the U.S. with a more soft approach that’s quite daunting,” Law said.
ESPN could find no record of Tsai publicly addressing China’s repressive policies in Xinjiang or Alibaba’s funding of companies whose technology was used by the government in the abuses. But many China experts hold him accountable. NBA China is valued at $5 billion. (ESPN owns 5% of NBA China.)
Like all foreign companies, the NBA operates in China at the whim of the Communist Party.
Neither Silver nor anyone from the league office has commented on human rights abuses in China.
AS HE HAS DEMANDED OF IRVING, TSAI MUST ISSUE AN APOLOGY CONDEMNING THE GENOCIDE OF MUSLIMS IN CHINA WITH HIS FUNDS AND TECHNOLOGY, DONATING $500 MILLION TO ANTI-ISLAMIC CAUSES, SATISFACTORILY COMPLETING SENSITIVITY AND TRAINING, MEETING WITH ISLAMIC LEADERS AND KYRIE IRVING!
AGAIN, Tsai’s DISGUSTING activities has now brought into play legally compelling responses requiring legal answers to his involvement in the funding of the Communist Chinese Genocide of Uyghur Muslims, their forced re-education/de-programing, renouncing their illegal Human Rights policy violations, among others, THAT HE AND THE NBA DO NOT WANT TO BE INVESTIGATED, EXPOSED NOR LITIGATED!!
AGAIN, IT IS MY PROFESSIONAL OPINION THAT THERE IS A GREAT POSSIBILITY THAT JOE TSAI AND THE NETS, THE NBA, AND NIKE, AMONG OTHERS, OWE KYRIE IRVING HIS FULL CONTRACTUAL BENEFITS AND FOR THE DAMAGE TO AND LOSS THEREOF HIS NAME, CREDIBILITY, REPUTATION AND EARNING CAPACITY FOR ENDORSEMENTS, ETC.! THE DAMAGE WAS CAUSED BY THE NETS, THE NBA, AND NIKE THEMSELVES WITH THE ONEROUS PUNISHMENT FORCED UPON KYRIE FOR THE ALLEGED ANTI-SEMITIC ACTIONS THAT HE DID NOT COMMIT AND THE FURTHER PERSECUTION OF IRVING WITH THE IMPOSITION OF THE EXTRA JUDICIAL INHUMANE “SIX CONDITIONS” BY JOE TSAI AND THE NETS WITH COMPLICITY OF THE NBA, THAT HE HAD TO CURE TO OVERCOME HIS BEING “UNFIT TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH THE TEAM”!!
The MAN who turns Hit$ into Million$
The MAN who turns Hits into Million$
By TOM WEIR Sports Welter
Oakland Tribune, Oakland, California
Thurs., Feb. 9, 1978
Tribune photo BY ROY WILLIAMS
Agent Abdul Jalil, and one of the benefits that goes with negotiating $3.3 million contracts
Lyman Bostock was frantic. The bids the free agent had anticipated all season finally were rolling in. A couple of million from the California Angels. A few hundred grand more from the Yankees. A higher bid from San Diego.
Another phone call. The Angels upped the bid to $2.5 million!
“Stop it. Stop it, pleaded Bostock, sounding like a gambler who wants to pull his winnings from the table before the dice roll again”.
The $2 million Bostock wanted had been offered by the Angels, the team the Southern Californian wanted to join.
“Let me sign,” Bostock begged his agent. Somebody else is going to offer me another million and I’ll look like a fool if I don’t take it!”
The agent smiled. With his client’s best interests in mind, he decided not to listen to the man for whom he worked.
Days later, Bostock sat down with the Cowboy, Gene Autry, and wrote his name on a contract with the Angels. For five years of baseball, Bostock would be paid $195,000 annually through 1994. It added up to $3.3 million, the biggest baseball contract ever. The agent, Abdul Jalil, was still smiling.
A dreary weekday morning in downtown Oakland. The young man standing outside the Tribune Building is clad in Levi’s and a leather jacket. He is neat, but his look is not terribly unlike the men who will stand outside bars later tonight, a couple of blocks away, keeping an eye on the girls who work the night shift.
“Agents aren’t our downfall. If anything we’re our own downfall. We can’t blame it on anyone else.”
-Gabe Paul
He could fit in there.
He offers a handshake. Not a soul shake. No shuffling of wrists and palms, just a handshake. The leather jacket falls open, revealing a $4 T- shirt with the R-R symbol of Rolls-Royce painted on. It matches the silver emblem on the $50,000 vehicle parked at the curb. There is another one at home in the garage, for when this one is tied up at the garage.
Abdul Jalil climbs in, ignoring the gawkers. The powder blue machine swings into motion, gliding with the silence of a swinging third strike.
Jalil’s genius includes interest free loans and other innovative ways to avoid income taxes in his contracts to get which figure works out best on the 1040 form without letting Uncle Sam in on too much of the action. Yes, those 5 and 10 percent commissions on million dollar contracts do add up in a hurry.
“I wanted to be a millionaire by the time I was 30,” says the 28-year-old, blank-faced. “I think I’ll get that by next year.
Abdul Jalil used to be Randy Wallace, back when he was a three-sport athlete at El Cerrito High School. Three sports, that is, as a junior. As a senior he spent a lot of time in the bleachers, watching the teams he had been kicked off.
“I was uncoachable,” he explains, cruising down Telegraph Avenue. “I know it was my fault now”
He was a good athlete, he says, often lamenting that his personality kept him from ever showing it in pro sports. A year later, Wallace entered the University of California and played freshman basketball on a squad that included Phil Chenier. He was mad over not getting enough playing time. Eventually, a choice developed between going to practice or poetry class. Jalil chose to study Homer instead of hoops.
At the same time, Wallace started thinking about a career based around professional sports. Oddly, the one sport he continued to compete in was track, where every four years one guy like Bruce Jenner cashes in while the rest of the stars sneak under the bleachers to accept a free pair of spikes.
His coach at Cal, Dave Maggard, doesn’t remember Jalil’s form in the hurdles as anything special. He has to think twice, three times, before saying he really can’t think of much to say either way about Jalil the athlete.
“But I’ll tell you this,” says Maggard, struck more by the memory of Jalil in street clothes then in sweats. “He was very personable. The guys were attracted to him.
“He has a flare for that kind of thing,” said Maggard, referring to Jalil’s work as an agent. “He’s not afraid to ask. He’s confident. I can see him asking for anything.”
Jalil’s passenger fumbles with the door of the Rolls. The locking mechanism isn’t exactly as familiar as the one on the Ford back at the office.
“Forget it,” says Jalil, also ignoring the fire hydrant he’s pulled up in front of, outside a bank. Inside, a woman executive girds for his approach.
They get down to business. “And I’ve got to have the date for that $100,000 check Denver sent Brian Taylor, And I need $12,000 for Lyman.”
The woman keeps scribbling notes, her eyes rolling as if she’s allergic to zeroes in gangs of three or more. Jalil pockets a wad of bills from a third transaction. The cash and a couple of cashiers checks are treated with the same disregard as the unlocked Rolls outside.
A desk away, the bank president fails at keeping his sideways glance as casual.
“It’s all psychological,” says Jalil, explaining his negotiating style. “Once I figure out the person I’m dealing with, the rest is easy. Sometimes they even give you things you haven’t asked for just because they’ve heard you’re going to ask for them.”
The people he deals with must hate him, or at least be filled with suspicion, right?
Not quite.
Gabe Paul the former New York Yankee general manager who now holds the same post with the Cleveland Indians, has dealt with Jalil. His first reaction is not to speak of outrageous demands or endless sessions at the negotiating table.
“Jalil? He’s a darn good cook.”
Paul enjoys Jalil’s culinary abilities so much he’s arranged for a West Coast business trip just so he can visit the agent’s dinner table again.
The agents aren’t our downfall,” says Paul of baseball’s old guard. “If anything, we’re our own downfall. We can’t blame it on anyone else, We’ve got to recognize the modern era.”
Cedrick Tallows, the new Yankee GM, agrees with his predecessor.
“Jalil leveled with me and I leveled with him”
“Jalil is very intelligent, pleasant and extremely prepared. He knows he is representing the best, and ALL of his players are getting those extraordinary salaries”
Buzzy Bavasi, who completed the dealing for Bostock at California after Harry Dalton was fired as GM, says simply, “He told me what be wanted. We consummated the deal in five minutes. We shook hands and that was it. Everything was aboveboard. The agents know what they want, and the teams know what they can afford.”
And so does Jalil.
Jalil was quick to recognize the approach of that modern era that Paul, Tallows and Bavasi mention. He prepared for it six years ago, when he enlisted Isaac Curtis as his first client, while both ran track at Cal. When Curtis left Cal for San Diego State, Jalil stepped up his own training, earning a master’s degree in business after graduating at Berkeley.
The days on The Farm were not happy ones.
“I just wanted to get that piece of paper and get out of there,” says Jalil, still bothered by the social structure at Stanford. “Everybody wanted to know everybody for the future, so they could use you later. I didn’t need that. I knew I wouldn’t need them.”
An Atlanta sportswriter once wrote that Junior Moore’s negotiations with the Braves were clouded because the young ballplayer was under the influence of black militancy, through his agent, Abdul Jalil.
Junior, before he played his first major league game, won a contract that allowed him to be a free agent after his rookie season. The Players Association, after a decade of negotiations, won the same right for its members – only after six seasons of major league play. A year later, Moore has a two-year contract for $300,000.
It’s the name explains Jalil, all too aware. I am not a Black Muslim, nor follower of the Nation of Islam, or Elijah Muhammed, I don’t hate white people.”
To back up the statement, he merely walks into his Superstars Management office in San Francisco. There are no statuettes of clenched fists, no memorials to Huey Newton or Malcolm X. There aren’t even any black people, nor is his name on the door.
The offices belong principally to an investments firm to which he directs a lot of the business of his clients. The people in the office all have one thing in common. They are white.
“A lot of people say a lot of that kind of thing about him, or that he’s trying to wreck the game.” rages Bostock. “Just because you’re an orthodox Muslim doesn’t mean you’re racist or militant. Why don’t they ever say Jerry Kapstein and the Jews are trying to wreck the game?”
Lunch at Burnett’s in Oakland, Jalil unquestionably has an ego, and it starts to show itself here.
As his omelette, fried zucchini, milk and orange juice are delivered, he surveys the array of men in three-piece suits, “I think every lawyer in town must come here,” he says, not too impressed. Lawyers seem kind of silly to Jalil. He possesses power of attorney for many of his clients, yet has never attended a day of law school.
He wolfs down the food, relaying biographical information between bites. He talks about his problems with women bothering him, sounding a little too egotistical.
Just then a model-gorgeous woman walks by and hears her name. She pivots on a spiked heel, admits she remembers Jalil’s face, but not his name. It’s a nice act, but loses a little when she asks for his phone number. Twice.
Jalil complies. Then the near-millionaire calls for a doggy bag for his leftover zucchini. Maybe he’s not so egotistical after all.
The day winds up in Jalil’s Oakland apartment, his temporary living quarters while re- modeling work is completed on a home in the Oakland hills.
Before the day is over Junior Moore will call, as will a couple of college players who want advice about transferring schools.
Fritzic V. Allen, a member of the Richmond City Council, will bring by drawings of his city’s marina plan, with hopes Jalil might pass the investment information on to his clients. Eddie Miller, the Harry Ells graduate now with the Braves, and Cleo Smith, when just signed with the Chicago White Sox, drop by to use the sauna.
“How much was the White Sox’ first offer?” Jalil asks Smith, “About $2,900 a month. the rookie answers sheepishly, admitting he wanted to sign for that amount. “And what did the total one-year package end up amounting to?”
Smith seems to get dizzy just thinking about it. He takes a breath and admits he will earn about $95,000 for joining Bill Veeck’s payroll this year.
There are people who don’t like Jalil, make no mistake about that.
Galvin Griffith, owner of the Minnesota Twins, has called Jalil and his ilk a menace to the game. In Denver, where Brian Taylor declared himself a free agent in mid-season under Jalil’s guidance, the Nuggets management doesn’t speak too fondly of the agent.
But they also don’t speak too loudly about him. They are like Bill Lucas, the No. 3 man on the Atlanta Braves’ organizational chart. Lucas was a key man in accepting the history-setting terms of Moore’s contract. He has been hearing about it ever since.
Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai is the face of NBA’s uneasy China relationship
Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai is the face of NBA’s uneasy China relationship
Two and a half years after he bought the Nets, Joe Tsai personifies the compromises embedded in the NBA-China relationship. ESPN illustration
Apr 14, 2022
Mark Fainaru-WadaSteve Fainaru
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JOE TSAI, THE billionaire owner of the Brooklyn Nets, made his fortune in China. His company, Alibaba, began in a Hangzhou apartment and has since been described as “Amazon on steroids.” When Tsai bought into the NBA, commissioner Adam Silver predicted he’d be “invaluable” to the league’s expansion in the world’s largest market.
Two and a half years later, Tsai personifies the compromises embedded in the NBA-China relationship, which brings in billions of dollars but requires the league to do business with an authoritarian government and look past the kind of social justice issues it is fighting at home.
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In the United States, Tsai donates hundreds of millions of dollars to combat racism and discrimination. In China, Alibaba, under Tsai’s leadership, partners with companies blacklisted by the U.S. government for supporting a “campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention and high-tech surveillance” through state-of-the-art racial profiling.
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Tsai has publicly defended some of China’s most controversial policies. He described the government’s brutal crackdown on dissent as necessary to promote economic growth; defended a law used to imprison scores of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong as necessary to squelch separatism; and, when questioned about human rights, asserted that most of China’s 1.4 billion citizens are “happy about where they are.”
A former college lacrosse player with investments in the WNBA, Major League Soccer and professional lacrosse, Tsai sees himself as a bridge between two increasingly polarized cultures, according to sources close to him who spoke on condition of anonymity. He believes China’s restrictions on personal freedoms have paved the way for economic development that has improved the lives of millions of its citizens.
But his positions and association with companies implicated in human rights abuses have drawn criticism from a bipartisan collection of U.S. officials, human rights activists and academics focused on China.
“Joe Tsai is emblematic of U.S. sports and business figures who are critical of American imperfections, as we all should be, but who make excuses for human rights atrocities committed in China, where he makes money,” said Matt Pottinger, a former deputy national security adviser and China specialist in the Trump administration. “We’re going to self-censor or even compliment the policies of a totalitarian dictatorship that’s committing crimes against humanity?”
Tsai declined to be interviewed for this story.
An ESPN examination of Tsai’s record — and the China investments of all 30 NBA teams’ principal owners — shows how the league’s global ambitions come in conflict with its commitment to social justice. In 2019, a pro-democracy tweet by then-Rockets general manager Daryl Morey exposed the political land mines faced by the league as it navigates the tension between value and values.
The NBA still hasn’t recovered from Morey’s now-infamous tweet — an image that read: “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.” Banned from state TV for most of three seasons and shunned by some sponsors, the league operates under sanctions that have cost hundreds of millions of dollars and “years of goodwill,” an American coach who spent years in China told ESPN.
Within two months of taking control of the Nets, Tsai inserted himself into the controversy. Morey’s supporters believed Tsai was pushing the NBA to fire Morey and offer a full-throated apology, part of a behind-the-scenes drama that reached the White House and has not been previously disclosed. Tsai also published an open letter that accused Morey, inaccurately, of “supporting a separatist movement.”
Both the Nets and the NBA denied that Tsai tried to get Morey fired or that he pushed the NBA to apologize.
A former college lacrosse player with investments in the WNBA, Major League Soccer and professional lacrosse, Tsai sees himself as a bridge between two increasingly polarized cultures, according to sources close to him. Adam Pantozzi/NBAE via Getty Images
Later, after Morey saved his job with help from powerful supporters who championed his right to free speech, the Nets quietly refunded Morey’s purchase of a suite for a Rockets game at Barclays Center. Morey believed Tsai had disinvited him, according to a person who was scheduled to attend. A source close to the Nets said Tsai was unaware of the decision, which was related to concerns about possible protests.
Morey declined comment for this story.
Tsai is hardly the only NBA owner heavily exposed in China.
ESPN employed Strategy Risks, a New York-based firm that quantifies corporate exposure in China, to examine the portfolios of 40 principal NBA owners. Heat owner Micky Arison is chairman of Carnival cruise lines, which has a joint venture with a state-owned Chinese shipbuilder facing U.S. government sanctions. Hornets owner Michael Jordan earns millions through Nike’s China business, which makes up 19% of the company’s revenue. Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke owns Arsenal, the first English Premier League club to establish an office in China, and is a partner there — with state-run China Central Television (CCTV) — on one of the most popular soccer programs in the country.
The investments create an awkward dance in which the NBA, owners and players avoid positions on issues they otherwise embrace in the United States. No owner reflects this tension more than Tsai, for whom more than half of his $8.7 billion net worth is linked to China through Alibaba and his ownership of the Nets, according to Strategy Risks. Since Tsai became an owner, the NBA has expanded a long-standing partnership with Alibaba, allowing fans to view content and purchase gear across the company’s platforms.
To a growing degree, sports is a flashpoint in the U.S.-China conflict. The United States led a diplomatic boycott of the recent Winter Olympics in Beijing — an event some critics dubbed the “genocide games.” In December, the Women’s Tennis Association indefinitely suspended play in China to protest the treatment of Peng Shuai, a player who has rarely been seen in public after accusing a high-ranking Chinese official of sexual assault.
For this story, ESPN, assisted by Strategy Risks, reviewed financial data, human rights reports and China’s state-run media, as well as interviewing current and former NBA employees, human rights monitors, U.S. policymakers, academics and others in the United States, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China.
Tsai (at right) gave up a $700,000-a-year job to co-found Alibaba with Jack Ma (standing). Tsai incorporated Alibaba, raised capital and became Ma’s right-hand man and alter ego. VCG via Getty Images
A NATURALIZED CANADIAN citizen, Tsai, 58, was born in Taiwan. His parents fled Mainland China in 1948 during the Communist takeover. His father, Paul Tsai, was the first student from Taiwan to earn an elite J.S.D. degree at Yale Law School; Paul Tsai later returned to Taiwan to start a prominent law practice and serve in the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Joe Tsai was sent to the United States at 13, attended a private high school in New Jersey, earned undergraduate and law degrees at Yale and gravitated to a career in private equity. He speaks fluent Mandarin and considers himself Chinese — an ethnic distinction that transcends borders or nationality.
In 1999, Tsai was introduced to Alibaba founder Jack Ma, then working out of a small apartment in the city of Hangzhou. The entrepreneur seemed like a character out of “a Kung Fu novel,” Tsai later recalled, referring to Ma’s charisma. Tsai gave up his $700,000-a-year job to translate Ma’s vision into a legitimate enterprise. Tsai incorporated Alibaba, raised capital and became Ma’s right-hand man and alter ego.
Alibaba developed into the largest ecommerce company in China, with sales surpassing Walmart’s, eventually expanding into logistics, cloud computing, financial services and entertainment. The company’s $25 billion IPO in 2014 was the largest on record at the time. Tsai holds 1.4% of Alibaba’s shares, according to the company’s annual report. He is listed by Forbes as the world’s 254th-richest person.
Over the past two years, Alibaba has come under the growing sway of China’s Communist Party, part of a government effort to exert more control over the country’s tech industry. In 2020, the government abruptly canceled a $37 billion IPO for Ant Group, a financial technology spinoff of Alibaba, after Ma publicly criticized banking regulations.
Alibaba is “effectively state-controlled,” according to a recent study on the company by Garnaut Global, an independent research firm that analyzes the Chinese Communist Party structure and China’s technology footprint.
Under Tsai’s leadership, Alibaba funded companies that helped China build “an intrusive, omnipresent surveillance state that uses emerging technologies to track individuals with greater efficiency,” according to a 2020 congressional report.
Those technologies have been used widely in the western region of Xinjiang, where the government has forced more than 1 million Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities into barbed-wire “re-education” camps, policies that have been described as cultural “genocide” by the United States, several other countries and human rights organizations.
Human rights groups say companies affiliated with Alibaba have supported government practices in the western region of Xinjiang that are described by some as cultural genocide. Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images
ESPN could find no record of Tsai publicly addressing China’s repressive policies in Xinjiang or Alibaba’s funding of companies whose technology was used by the government in the abuses. But many China experts hold him accountable.
“Joe Tsai has had all the warning in the world about what is happening in Xinjiang, and if he thought it was important to extricate Alibaba, it would have happened,” said Matt Schrader, a China analyst for the International Republican Institute, which promotes democracy around the world. “Joe Tsai is the second-most powerful person at the company.”
On Oct. 7, 2019, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that 28 Chinese organizations — including Megvii and SenseTime, the Alibaba-funded artificial intelligence companies — had been added to the “Entity List,” which imposes trade restrictions on people or institutions engaged in activity “contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.”
In addition to his role as executive vice chairman, Tsai oversaw Alibaba’s investment committee. From 2017 to 2019, Alibaba participated in three major investment rounds for Megvii. In 2018, led by funding from Alibaba, SenseTime raised $620 million, making it the world’s most-valuable AI startup at the time. Alibaba and its affiliated companies currently control 29.4% of Megvii and 7% of SenseTime, according to recent financial documents.
Megvii and SenseTime form half of China’s “AI Dragons,” government-backed companies in the global battle with the United States for artificial intelligence supremacy. The companies promote tools for businesses and the public sector, but their facial recognition technologies have surfaced in connection with China’s ubiquitous surveillance network.
Surveillance is at the core of China’s efforts to control the Uyghur population, a policy the government says is necessary to stop terrorism and maintain stability. ESPN reported in 2020 that American coaches at an NBA training academy in Xinjiang were surveilled and harassed. One coach said he was detained three times, comparing the atmosphere to “World War II Germany.”
The NBA has since ended the academy program, which included two other locations, after an investigation determined “the centers did not meet our NBA standards,” a source familiar with the decision said.
ESPN Illustration
In a 2018 report titled “The Rise of Digital Authoritarianism,” China was identified as the “worst abuser” of internet freedom by Freedom House, a bipartisan nonprofit focused on promoting democracy.
“One of the things that makes [China] distinct is that tech there is designed to meet the standards of government needs,” said Samantha Hoffman, a senior analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), an independent research group.
“There is a type of cooperation between companies that is on the face normal but abnormal in a political context,” Hoffman told ESPN.
In 2019, Hoffman’s group issued a series of reports that linked Megvii, SenseTime and other tech firms to the abuses in Xinjiang. Citing Chinese documents and government reports, the research group said Megvii worked in cooperation with security services, including one instance in which its facial recognition software was used to trigger a “Uyghur alarm” that could be sent to police.
SenseTime, the group concluded, relies on the “largesse of the party-state, particularly its investment in two government projects linked to public security surveillance as well as the surveillance state in Xinjiang that have benefited from an estimated $7.2 billion worth of investment in the past two years.”
Also in 2019, The New York Times and Human Rights Watch both reported that Megvii and SenseTime were among companies that built algorithms enabling the government to track the Uyghur population.
SenseTime is one of two Alibaba-funded companies on the “Entity List,” which imposes trade restrictions on people or institutions engaged in activity “contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.” Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Alibaba became “concerned” after Megvii and SenseTime were placed on the Entity List, a source close to Tsai told ESPN. The company made sure it did not hold board seats in the two companies, was not directly involved in operations and was reassured by company executives that they weren’t targeting Uyghurs. Alibaba chose not to divest because of its responsibility to shareholders, according to the source, who described Alibaba as a “passive investor” in Megvii and SenseTime.
Alibaba’s investments took place before the companies were blacklisted, the source emphasized, adding that numerous U.S. investors also hold stakes in Megvii and SenseTime.
IPVM, a surveillance industry research firm, revealed additional evidence about Megvii and SenseTime in 2020 and 2021, and also reported that an Alibaba website included instructions on how to use software to identify Uyghurs.
Alibaba responded that it was “dismayed” and “never intended for the technology to be used in this manner.” The company also said it had “eliminated any ethnic tag on our product offering.” IPVM confirmed the changes.
Matt Turpin, the former China director for the National Security Council, participated in discussions over which companies to add to the Commerce Department blacklist in 2019. Tsai, he said, is “under significant pressure to be seen as doing what Beijing wants him to do. I don’t necessarily fault him. He’s in this impossible position.”
But he said Alibaba’s support of Megvii and SenseTime and human rights abuses were well documented and should give the NBA pause.
“Last I checked, that’s a pretty abysmal thing to be associated with,” Turpin said. “In today’s NBA, I guess it’s not a problem.”
Last December, the U.S. Treasury Department added Megvii, SenseTime and six other Chinese companies to a separate blacklist that prohibits Americans from holding stock in those firms. A department spokesman accused the companies of “actively cooperating with the government’s efforts to repress members of ethnic and religious minority groups.”
Schrader, the China analyst, agreed that Tsai is in a difficult position because of Alibaba’s dependence on the government. But he said Tsai has a choice.
“Joe Tsai could resign,” Schrader said. “He doesn’t have to do this. He’s a Canadian citizen. He has the freedom to make that choice so long as Alibaba continues to facilitate and participate in a genocide.”
In addition to the Nets, Tsai owns the WNBA’s New York Liberty and a professional lacrosse team, among other sports holdings. Visual China Group via Getty Images
TOTING A STACK of highlight reels to present to Chinese television executives, former commissioner David Stern introduced the NBA to the country in the late 1980s. Today, NBA China is valued at $5 billion. (ESPN owns 5% of NBA China.)
Like all foreign companies, the NBA operates in China at the whim of the Communist Party. “It’s not like the U.S., where regulatory bodies issue a warning or sue you, you hire a bunch of lawyers and defend yourself,” said Victor Shih, an expert on China’s corporate economy at University of California, San Diego.
“They can shut you down overnight,” Shih said. “The Chinese Communist Party creates the pressure on businesses and businessmen with a lot of exposure in China. It becomes very difficult for these people to navigate.”
Neither Silver nor anyone from the league office has commented on human rights abuses in China. When the league closed a training academy in Xinjiang two years ago, NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum repeatedly declined to say whether the move was related to human rights concerns there.
The NBA is far from unique. Numerous businesses have tried to capitalize on the immense Chinese market, only to be accused of selling out American values. That includes Disney, ESPN’s parent company, which faced criticism from human rights activists after filming part of the 2020 live-action remake of “Mulan” in Xinjiang. Last year, when Disney launched its streaming service in Hong Kong, the company did not include an episode of “The Simpsons” critical of the Chinese government.
Since 2016, ESPN has had a content-sharing partnership with Tencent, the technology giant that streams NBA games in China. After the Morey tweet, the Rockets, then the league’s most popular team in China, disappeared from Tencent. When Morey left Houston to become president of basketball operations in Philadelphia, the 76ers soon followed. Earlier this year, after then-Celtics center Enes Kanter Freedom called China President Xi Jinping a “brutal dictator,” Boston games were taken off Tencent.
Two weeks ago, regular-season NBA games appeared again on CCTV for the first time since the Morey tweet. The government-owned Global Times reported the network would now show fewer games and outside guest commentators no longer would be invited to work the broadcasts.
“The Chinese Communist Party has mastered the art of squeezing, or threatening to squeeze, the interests of elites, like NBA owners and players,” Turpin said. “All of this is a calculated influence campaign that has been underway for years, which uses the self-interest of business, entertainment, academic, political and cultural elites to get them to shape broader public perceptions of the regime in Beijing.”
Tsai, shown here with Bucks co-owner Marc Lasry last year, played a key role in the controversy that followed a tweet by former Rockets GM Daryl Morey. Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images
IN 2018, TSAI purchased a 49% interest in the Nets from Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov. Six months later, Silver announced that Tsai would join the board of NBA China, a separate entity with offices in Beijing and Shanghai.
The following spring, the NBA expanded a partnership with Alibaba to create an “NBA Section” across the company’s platforms; the deal gave Alibaba’s 700 million users one-stop shopping to view NBA highlights and other content and to purchase gear.
That fall, Tsai took full control of the Nets. He paid $2.35 billion, the highest price for a U.S. sports franchise at the time. He also owns the WNBA’s New York Liberty and a professional lacrosse team, and he has stakes in another professional lacrosse team, a lacrosse league, eSports and Major League Soccer’s Los Angeles FC.
“The NBA needed more of a foothold in China, and Alibaba is one of the largest, most powerful companies in that nation,” said Chris Fenton, a businessman who serves on the board of the U.S.-Asia Institute and has written extensively about the tradeoffs of doing business in China. “The NBA had to be thinking, ‘Holy cow, if we can get this guy in the league, it would make us awesome in China.'”
Two months after Tsai became sole owner of the Nets, Morey sent his tweet.
A former data analyst at MITRE, the federally funded research and development corporation, Morey had friends involved in the Hong Kong protests, the latest of which had followed a Chinese prohibition on masks to prevent protestors from shielding their identities.
Tsai was preparing to leave for China to attend exhibition games there when Morey tweeted. He was soon contacted by deputy commissioner Mark Tatum, who told him the tweet had provoked significant anger in China. Tsai thought he could play the “middle man,” a source close to him said. He drafted a letter and sent it to Tatum, who oversees international operations. Tsai received no response and posted it on Facebook from his private plane.
Tsai described the message as an “open letter to all NBA fans.” He invoked Chinese history to explain why “the Daryl Morey tweet is so damaging” and vowed to “help the League to move on from this incident.” He indicated that Morey had supported a separatist movement, a bitter point of contention for Morey and his supporters, who saw the protests as a fight for democracy.
As the issue raged on social media in both countries, senior NBA officials braced for China’s response. Silver was in Japan, about to travel to Shanghai; some worried the commissioner might be detained or that the government would shut down the games before tipoff. “We had contingencies for everything,” said a former senior NBA executive in Asia who asked to remain anonymous because the conversations were confidential.
The NBA, in its first statement, acknowledged that Morey’s tweet had “deeply offended” fans in China and called that “regrettable.” The league also noted its support for individuals “sharing their views.”
Even before the controversy, the NBA had begun to consider contingencies in the event a player spoke out about human rights. Inside the Hong Kong office, the tense political climate was creating divisions, and NBA officials worried about safety. The league studied how other foreign companies had saved their businesses by issuing apologies for offending China.
“It was, ‘These are some examples of what other companies have been doing,'” one NBA source familiar with the debate told ESPN. “I don’t think it ever got to the point where it was, ‘This is going to be our position.'”
Suddenly it was reality. To many NBA officials and league executives, the response was obvious: The league would have to fire Morey and issue a public apology.
Morey heard directly from at least one NBA owner that Tsai was pushing to fire him to appease the Chinese. Turpin volunteered to help Morey and quickly became convinced that the Rockets’ general manager was fighting not only the Chinese government but also Tsai.
“My impression of Joe Tsai’s role in this was that it was extremely unhelpful,” Turpin said. “He was laying out to the other owners how completely unacceptable it was that anyone weigh in on Hong Kong. It colored the way the rest of the league lined up against Daryl.”
The Nets strongly denied that Tsai intervened.
“Joe Tsai did not speak to any owners about Mr. Morey after the tweet and it’s absolutely false that he advocated for anything to happen to Morey,” Mandy Gutmann, a Nets spokesperson, wrote in an email. “Only the Rockets make personnel decisions about their team.”
Mike Bass, the NBA’s chief communications officer and executive vice president, said Tsai “never asked or intimated to the league office that Daryl Morey should be fired or that we should apologize.”
Regardless, the NBA’s stated principles were butting up against the realities of doing business in China. “I think the NBA was caught with its feet in two boats, and both were separating,” Fenton said.
In Shanghai, Tsai worried the government would cancel the games, the source close to him said. He asked his Alibaba co-founder, Jack Ma, to contact city officials to let the exhibitions continue. Ma was successful. Meanwhile, LeBron James, whose new movie “Space Jam: A New Legacy,” was in production, raged to players about Morey during a meeting in China at a Ritz-Carlton, according to a source familiar with the meeting. (After returning to the U.S., James said Morey was “misinformed” in his opinion about Hong Kong.)
With the Rockets pushing for an apology and powerful figures like Tsai and James aligned against him, Morey scrambled to save his career. He deleted the tweet soon after it was posted and later tweeted, “I did not intend my tweet to cause any offense to Rockets fans and friends of mine in China. … My tweets are my own and in no way represent the Rockets or the NBA.”
Morey spoke with current and former White House officials, a Democratic governor and others who rallied around him. Turpin worked Congress and the White House to push back.
“I wanted to make it clear to the NBA that there was a broader aspect and costs to the U.S. to being seen as caving in,” Turpin said.
Pottinger, then deputy national security adviser specializing in China, said the White House “knew we had to put a marker down somehow. I remember many of us at the White House saying this is really bad precedent. We don’t want American businesses abandoning values in order to abide by Chinese censorship.”
Pottinger said he spoke directly with then-Vice President Mike Pence, who later addressed the controversy in a speech, saying: “The NBA is acting like a wholly owned subsidiary of that authoritarian regime.”
Republicans and Democrats in Congress rallied behind Morey and railed against the NBA. Silver then issued a statement, acknowledging the league’s first comments “left people angered, confused or unclear” and affirmed the NBA’s commitment to free expression. The next day, a bipartisan letter signed by, among others, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, said it was “outrageous that the NBA has caved to Chinese government demands for contrition.
Morey, who believed he’d be forced to resign, stayed with the Rockets for another year before joining the Sixers.
In a recent statement provided to ESPN, Silver said, “We have always supported and will continue to support every member of the NBA family, including Daryl Morey and Enes Freedom, expressing their personal views on social and political issues.”
The NBA declined to make Silver available for an interview.
Shih, the scholar who studies Chinese elites and finance, said the Communist Party essentially has a playbook for events in which China comes under attack: All government workers and major business people are expected to stand with the party.
“So over the years, I’m sure business people like Joe Tsai have learned this expectation,” Shih said. “That’s not like a decree. It’s just over time you learn to say, ‘Oh, everyone’s doing this. When there’s negative publicity event, now I know the norm of what I’m supposed to do.'”
Seven months after the tweet, with little fanfare, the NBA changed leadership in China. With COVID-19 spreading, Derek Chang, who had been CEO for just over a year, resigned to join his family in London. He was replaced by Michael Ma, a Chinese national whose father, Ma Guoli, helped launch China’s first national sports channel, completed the first TV deal with the NBA and went on to become chief operating officer of broadcasting for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Shih said the move made sense: “You hire someone like that with a lot of connections, they can call up their friends who are still in government and say, ‘Look, this was purely an accident. What can we do to make it OK for all the different stakeholders?'”
The league said the decision was based on Ma’s qualifications.
“Michael Ma worked at the NBA for more than a decade and helped launch NBA China in 2008 before leaving the NBA in 2016 and ultimately becoming CEO of Endeavor China,” said Bass, the NBA spokesman. “When Derek Chang resigned from his position in May of 2020, Michael’s experience in building and managing global brands, combined with his familiarity with the NBA from his prior decade-plus stint with the league, made him uniquely suited to lead our basketball and business development initiatives in China.”
Tsai, shown at a WNBA exhibition game against China in 2019, believes much of the criticism he receives is politically motivated by people who purposely distort his views, according to sources close to him. AP Photo/Mary Altaffer
TWO WEEKS AFTER Tsai’s Facebook post, hundreds of protesters attended a Nets game wearing black “STAND WITH HONG KONG” T-shirts.
The protestors included Nathan Law, a pro-democracy activist who, at 23, won a seat in Hong Kong’s legislature in 2016. At his swearing-in, Law protested the oath of allegiance to China, adding “You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.” His seat was revoked; the next year he was briefly jailed. Last spring, he was granted political asylum in England.
Law told ESPN that Tsai has “become like a spokesperson for the Chinese Communist Party, which he is in disguise of.”
“It doesn’t matter if you call him an entrepreneur, a sports owner or a philanthropist, he is channeling the kind of Chinese authoritarianism into the U.S. with a more soft approach that’s quite daunting,” Law said.
Tsai believes much of the criticism he receives is politically motivated by people who purposely distort his views, according to sources close to him. He supports personal freedoms but believes they can get in the way of stability that fosters economic growth and improves people’s lives. He likes to point out that China is still underdeveloped, with a per capita income ($10,435, according to the World Bank) far behind that of the United States ($63,593), and that living outside of poverty is itself a human right.
“It’s a cost-benefit [analysis],” the source said of Tsai’s views. “If you’re running a country of 1.4 billion people, you have to make a tradeoff between everything that’s just free and running amok versus bettering people’s lives over time.”
Like the NBA, Tsai has championed social justice in the United States.
Tsai and his wife, Clara Wu Tsai, have donated hundreds of millions of dollars to social justice initiatives and academia. After George Floyd’s murder, the couple committed $50 million to create the Social Justice Fund, a racial justice and economic recovery initiative in Brooklyn. Last May, Tsai and others raised $250 million in response to hate crimes against Asians during COVID. The Tsais donated thousands of masks and ventilators to New York when the city was the epicenter of the pandemic.
“Fortunately, I came here when I was relatively young, I spent most of my formative years in the United States, so I think I understand Americans,” Tsai said during a 2019 discussion at the University of California, San Diego’s 21st Century China Center. “I’ve involved myself a lot in sports, which is a very big part in America, so I feel quite fortunate in that I can have both perspectives and can be balanced about it.”
Tsai has taken a different view on civil liberties in China. During the 2019 forum in San Diego, he was asked about China’s crackdown on academic freedoms.
“It is what it is,” he responded. “The fact is, China today is a single-party system so there’s going to be restrictions on academic freedoms and freedom of expression. I mean, do people like that? I think most people don’t like it, but I think that’s how the Communist Party needs to control that in order to feel confident about pushing their policies in other areas.
“The single-party system is in place because the elite in China feel that China is still a developing country, and I talked about two broader goals: to make sure that the population is wealthier and doing better and also to restore this sense of renaissance and pride about Chinese culture. They feel that dissent has to take a backseat and whatever they’re doing is right.”
In 2018, during a panel discussion at the Milken Institute, Tsai said stifling democratic freedoms was necessary for China to develop its economy.
“You need to understand that it is important for the Communist government that there’s absolute stability in the country,” Tsai said. “In the American context, we talk about freedom of speech, freedom of press, but in the China context, being able to restrict some of those freedoms is an important element to keep the stability.”
In 2015, Alibaba paid $266 million to buy the South China Morning Post, the most prominent English-language newspaper in Hong Kong. In a letter to readers, Tsai insisted Alibaba wouldn’t compromise the newspaper’s editorial independence but made it clear the paper would provide a perspective on China missing from coverage by the Western media. “We see things differently, we believe things should be presented as they are,” Tsai said in an interview with the paper. He explained that one of the main reasons Alibaba bought the paper was “to tell the biggest story of our lifetime, which is China.”
A 2020 story in The Atlantic, headlined, “A Newsroom At the Edge of Autocracy,” detailed how editors at the paper had recast language in a story about the Hong Kong protests to show protesters in a more negative and aggressive light. The magazine cited sources as saying the changes “exemplified the heavy-handed, slanted editing that became common” at the paper during the demonstrations.
Neither Tsai nor anyone from Alibaba has attempted to shape the paper’s editorial policy, a source close to Tsai said.
Last year, during an interview with CNBC, Tsai defended Hong Kong’s 2020 National Security Law, under which authorities have detained at least 150 pro-democracy activists, academics, lawyers and journalists. The United States and other countries have imposed economic sanctions in response.
Tsai, who lists his business address as Hong Kong and maintains a residence there, pressed his argument during the Morey crisis that the crackdown was necessary to preserve stability and defend China against separatism.
“What is this for? It’s against sedition,” Tsai said. “It’s against people that advocate splitting Hong Kong as a separate country. I want to make sure that we prevent foreign powers from carving up our territories. I think Hong Kong should be seen in that context.”
Tsai’s views on Hong Kong stem from his personal experiences there, said the source close to him. He witnessed “rioters storming the Hong Kong legislature, vandalizing property and defacing the Chinese flag,” the source said. Tsai also was aware of protesters attacking Mandarin speakers, and he felt physically threatened, the source said. Tsai believes that the image of peaceful protestors simply seeking more freedoms is a false narrative created in the West, the source said.
In the CNBC interview, asked to comment on China’s human rights issues, Tsai said, “You have to be specific on what human rights abuse you’re talking about because the China that I see, the large number of the population — I’m talking about 80-90% of the population — are very, very happy for the fact that their lives are improving every year.”
Tsai’s response was widely circulated on Chinese social media, where he was credited with taking a controversial topic and turning it into “positive PR.” Some referred to the interview as Tsai’s “shining moment.”
Tsai’s assertion that the Hong Kong protests are an independence movement is disputed by many activists and China experts who seek to hold China to promises for free elections and assembly, among other rights.
“His hinting that the uprising in Hong Kong is because of foreign powers is completely false,” Law said. “Hong Kong people have their own demands. They want democracy.”
Tsai is convinced that “self-determination for Hong Kong” is part of Law’s “manifesto,” according to a source close to Tsai.
Jerome Cohen, a professor emeritus at New York University School of Law who spent decades representing American companies in China and who was a classmate of Tsai’s father at Yale Law School, said Tsai is presenting a “somewhat distorted picture.”
Cohen said he appeared as part of a series of panel discussions at Yale in 2016, when Tsai donated $30 million and the school’s China Center was renamed to honor his dad. “I thought I’d be mischievous and pointed out that Yale Law School seemed to be a very dangerous place for people from China. I named six or seven scholars, great people who had spent time at Yale Law School, and after leaving they got locked up in China.”
Cohen said Tsai downplayed concerns about “human rights in China” in a subsequent panel.
Cohen said he wasn’t surprised: “I already anticipated what the argument would be from somebody who had just made billions of dollars on the Mainland.”
ESPN’s John Mastroberardino contributed to this report.
U.S., allies announce Sanctions on China over Uyghur “Genocide”
The United States and its allies in Canada, Britain and the European Union on Monday announced sanctions on several Chinese officials alleged to have links to what U.S. officials say is a genocidal campaign against Uyghur Muslims.
The international, coordinated sanctions, first reported by POLITICO, drew condemnation and some immediate retaliatory sanctions from Beijing. The moves offered a glimpse into the growing divide between China and the United States and its trans-Atlantic allies, which, like Washington, are increasingly wary of China’s global ambitions and internal repression.
The sanctions are an opportunity for the Biden administration to justify its emphasis on working with allies, one major aspect of its foreign policy that it says distinguishes it from the administration of former President Donald Trump. The sanctions also come after a tense high-level meeting between U.S. and Chinese officials in Alaska.
“Amid growing international condemnation, the [People’s Republic of China] continues to commit genocide and crimes against humanity” in the Xinjiang region, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. “The United States reiterates its calls on the PRC to bring an end to the repression of Uyghurs, who are predominantly Muslim, and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang, including by releasing all those arbitrarily held in internment camps and detention facilities.“
Blinken, who is in Europe this week visiting counterparts, noted that the U.K., Canada and the EU were also imposing various sanctions. “These actions demonstrate our ongoing commitment to working multilaterally to advance respect for human rights and shining a light on those in the PRC government and [Chinese Communist Party] responsible for these atrocities,“ Blinken said.
The U.S. sanctions targeted two individuals: Wang Junzheng, the secretary of the Party Committee of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, and Chen Mingguo, director of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau.
According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the XPCC is a paramilitary organization that “enhances internal control over the region by advancing China’s vision of economic development in [Xinjiang] that emphasizes subordination to central planning and resource extraction.“
Treasury also added that “Since at least late 2016, repressive tactics have been used by the XPSB against the Uyghurs and members of other ethnic minorities in the region, including mass detentions and surveillance.“
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In the aftermath of last week’s mass shooting in Georgia that killed eight people, political leaders and the Asian American community are grieving and calling for justice.
Both the XPSB and the XPCC have already been sanctioned by the United States. Wang and Chen are being sanctioned under the Global Magnitsky Act, which means assets they may have in the U.S. are frozen and Americans cannot do business with them.
It’s hard to say exactly how much financial damage the new sanctions will do, but given the coordination with Europe, Britain and Canada, it packs a symbolic punch.
The EU on Monday morning approved sanctions against four Chinese officials involved in the internment of hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs. In response, the Chinese government sanctioned 10 individuals and four entities in Europe that it argues “severely harm China’s sovereignty and interests and maliciously spread lies and disinformation.”
The EU sanctions were believed to be the first from the bloc to target China on human rights since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
The U.K. imposed sanctions on four individuals and one entity, including the two individuals sanctions by the United States.
Canada, meanwhile, announced it is imposing sanctions on the same four individuals and one entity. The Canadian sanctions come at an unusually sensitive time: China has put on trial two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, on espionage charges. The men‘s supporters say they have been detained in retaliation for Canada’s arrest of a Chinese telecom executive.
Based on the various statements issued, it appeared that the United States had earlier sanctioned some of the people and entities its allies were targeting Monday.
Blinken was among the U.S. officials who met with top Chinese officials in Anchorage last week. The meeting began with harsh words from both sides, with Blinken warning the Chinese that the U.S. did not see its human rights abuses in places like Xinjiang as merely internal matters but rather as threats to the rules-based international order.
Shortly before the Alaska meeting, the United States announced a series of sanctions on 24 officialsit linked to China’s crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong. Chinese officials pointed to those sanctions as setting a bad tone for the Alaska meeting, which was the first high-level gathering between Chinese diplomats and aides to U.S. President Joe Biden.
Hammer “Rap-The-Vote Concert Series” Secured Re-Election of Russian President Boris Yeltsin
“As long as there are reformers in the Russian Federation and the other states leading the journey toward democracy’s horizon, our strategy must be to support them. And our place must be at their side.” -President Bill Clinton on the re-election of Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1995- Our HISTORIC Hammer “Rap-The-Vote Concert Series” Secured Re-Election …
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Josephine Baker becomes First Black Woman Honored at the Pantheon in Paris, France
Black, American-born, a woman, and arguably best known for her exotic dancing: Josephine Baker hardly fits the profile of France’s historical heroes. But today, the performer from Saint Louis, Missouri, was granted one of France’s highest honors: A tomb in the Pantheon in Paris, the country’s monument to its heroes. There have been only 80 people granted …
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ABDUL-JALIL RECEIVES “Certificate of Recognition” from CALIFORNIA SATE ASSEMBLY for 2021-22 HUMANITARIAN, CIVIL AND HUMAN RIGHTS ACHIEVEMENTS!
I pray to God you and your Families are well, your health is robust, business is thriving, everything is perfect and stay in God’s Love, Grace, Guidance and Mercy. “In another religion they honor people who serve like you with Sainthood!” – Economics Professor Adeel Malik,Oxford University, England and World Renowned News Expert Commentator, speaking …
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