I posted recently about the international incident that was stirred up when the General Manager of the Houston Rockets, of the NBA, dared to tweet that the Chinese people should be supported in their efforts to criticize their government. As a result the two teams that went to China to play an exhibition game were pretty much confined to quarters for much of a week while the public appearances that were scheduled were cancelled by the Chinese government. This is a big deal in that basketball is a very popular sport in China — especially NBA basketball. This may be the result of the fact that one of their players was a star in the NBA for years — Yao Ming by name.

In any event, upon their return to the United States the media in this country were eager to hear all about the kerfuffle in China and finally, after a day’s rest, LeBron James, who  plays for the Los Angles Lakers basketball team, spoke about the matter and in a rather long comment he said that in general we should not tweet about things without first being “educated” (his word, he should have said “well informed”) about the subject, and thinking about the consequences of those tweets in the international arena.

He was severely criticized on many fronts for siding with capitalism as over against “caring,” which is to say, worrying more about the profits that might come to the NBA as a result of good relations with China than he was about free speech which is much prized on this side of the Ocean — though not in China. We regard freedom of speech as a right, of course, though we fail to consider that rights are not absolute; on the contrary, they are always (even the right to bear arms) carefully circumscribed by restraints. We do not have the right to shout fire in a crowded theater, for example. Or, I would add, a right to bear automatic weapons designed for the military.

Now I am not a big fan of LeBron James. On the contrary I find his personality off-putting and I don’t particularly like his style of basketball, relying  much on his size and strength rather than the finesse I always associated with basketball. Moreover, I don’t see why he should regard himself as a qualified spokesperson for the NBA. But in this case I would like to defend him: I think he’s right. This was not a case of freedom of speech, it was a matter of common sense and awareness of the repercussions of the things we say and do. As he noted (and I really thought when he spoke that he was talking here to our President!) we need to think about the consequences of our words and actions. We, as a rule, tend not to do that, especially in this electronic age when buttons are pushed and we realize later what problems arose because of poor judgment and a too-quick thumb. I found that to be the case with at least one of my blogs. James is right: we need to think about the consequences of our words.

In and of itself, the incident is a tempest in a teapot as I noted in my previous post. But as a general trend and given the international repercussions of this seemingly insignificant  incident, we would do well to pause and think about the way we rush into things without taking the time to think about the consequences of our words and actions. That is good advice and in this case it was well intended; James was not denying our right to freedom of speech. He was simply urging us all (including those at the very top) to think before we tweet.