Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr made some absurd comments Thursday night about the Chinese dictatorship and gun violence in America.
The NBA and China have been in the news nonstop ever since the Houston Rockets GM tweeted support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. You’d think expressing support for democracy instead of communism would be a winning idea. However, the NBA has been dealing with the fallout ever since, and not everybody seems to be on the same page.
Kerr isn’t just not on the same page, but he seems to be under the impression that gun violence in America is comparable to a government that has killed tens of millions of people.
Kerr said the following when asked if he’d been asked about China’s horrific record on human rights:
No. Nor has our record of human rights abuses come up either. You know, things that our country needs to look at and resolve. That hasn’t come up either. None of us are perfect, and we all have different issues that we have to get to. And, saying that is my right as an American. It doesn’t mean I hate my country. It means I want to address things, right? But, people in China didn’t ask me about, you know, people owning AR-15s and mowing each other down in a mall. I wasn’t asked that question. So, we can play this game all we want and go all over the map. There’s this issue and that issue. The world is a complex place and there’s more gray than black and white.
I want to be crystal clear here because I don’t want there to be any gray area at all. Kerr might be okay with the gray areas on this topic but I’m not. (SOURCE: ESPN Not Interested In Getting Involved In NBA/China Feud, Deadspin Memo Was ‘Misreported’)
Steve Kerr is a coward. Let me repeat that so there’s no confusion at all. Steve Kerr is a coward, and he’s the worst kind of coward.
Instead of just keeping his mouth shut, he chose to open it and prove to the world he’s a fool. The communist dictatorship is responsible for millions of deaths. Millions of people have been killed over the decades thanks to the policies and actions of the Chinese leadership. As we speak, they’re rounding up Muslims in camps and cracking down on protests in Hong Kong.
In 2017, a total of 403 people were killed in America by rifles, according to the FBI. Steve Kerr is trying to compare the deaths of millions at the hands of a brutal dictatorship to a few hundred deaths by rifles, as of the latest FBI data for 2017.
In what fantasyland are those two things even close to being the same? How much money is Steve Kerr making from the Chinese that he’ll throw his own country under the bus instead of shining a light on the atrocities of the dictatorship in China?
While I’ve always disagreed with Steve Kerr politically, I always thought he was a very smart guy. I no longer feel that way.
Anybody dumb enough to compare the deaths of a few hundred people, which is still incredibly tragic, to the massacre of millions is not a smart man. It’s that simple.
When given the opportunity to shine a light on the millions killed in China, Kerr dropped the ball and instead embarrassed himself.
Shame on Kerr and shame on everybody who has enabled this shameful situation. He’s a coward and the world should know it.