The National Basketball Association (NBA) is infamous for pushing woke virtue. It has been the loudest on issues ranging from Black Lives Matter to defunding the police to LGBTQ+ activism. In 2016, the NBA, as you may recall, pulled its All-Star Game out of Charlotte, North Carolina, for the state’s “crime” of passing legislation that the NBA perceived as harmful to the oppressed Rainbow Mafia.

The bill merely stated that bathrooms were to be designated by biological sex for government buildings. Businesses, private schools, and restaurants were free to do what they wanted. The legislation was rather tame, but the NBA, by its actions, declared that it couldn’t support a state with such “bigoted” views.

Fast-forward to 2022.

The NBA has just announced that it is going to have pre-season games played in the United Arab Emirates. Islam is the official religion of the UAE, and according to the teaching of Islam, practicing the gay lifestyle is illegal, culminating in execution.

It begs the question: Is the NBA “homophobic” or simply hypocritical? The answer is that it’s cold-blooded capitalist. It will go where the money is and will be the mouthpiece for whomever pays it.

This has been amply demonstrated through the NBA’s unholy union with China. Business owners turn a blind eye to the human right abuses committed by the ChiComs, who have placed thousands of prisoners in concentration camps, where they are sterilized, raped, tortured, killed, and have their organs harvested. These prisoners range from religious ones (Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists) to cultural ones (Mongolians, Han Chinese, etc). And yet players like LeBron James will shill for Beijing, and players like Enes Kanter Freedom get blacklisted and removed from the roster for opposing China’s human rights abuses.

The NBA’s woke hypocrisy is hardly different from other big businesses that have bowed to the will of the mighty dollar. Hollywood is constantly cutting out parts of films to make them more amenable to Chinese censors. This was most recently demonstrated by Warner Brothers, which cut out a character in “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” talking about his same-sex relationship. Disney is so in bed with China that it actually filmed scenes from the 2020 live action remake of “Mulan” in the Xinjiang province, where genocide against Uyghurs is being committed.

The attitude of “I don’t care what other countries are doing; I’m just going to ‘fix’ mine” is inherently hypocritical and antithetical to woke preaching. As OutKick’s Sam Amico writes, “The NBA either supports LGBTQ rights, or it doesn’t.” Furthermore, you’re either for equal human rights, or you’re not. It shouldn’t change depending on which country pays you the most.

This chink in the woke armor should be encouraging, though. Americans who don’t hold to the radical push from these big corporations have the power to say “No.” By not watching or paying for their products, consumers will teach companies like the NBA, Warner Brothers, and Disney not to bite the hands that feed them.