The NBA is all about encouraging players to speak out on hot button political issues (see Video: Delusional Ex-NBA Player Accuses Trump of Starting a Race War… and WNBA Players Refuse to Talk Basketball, Only BlackLivesMatter…). Unless of course, politics could cost the NBA money. Not in the United States so much, but in China. Then, asking questions is unfair to the players. Who would suddenly prefer to just shut up and dribble and not talk about politics? Despite what seemed to recently be an incessant chatter of politics coming from sports.

The league is embroiled in a standoff with China after the Houston Rockets' general manager Daryl Morey tweeted his support for the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.

The announcement comes a day after CNN's Christina Macfarlane was shut down by a Houston Rockets' media officer as she tried to ask James Harden and Russell Westbrook a question about the NBA's position with China during a news conference in Tokyo.

"They [the teams] have been placed into a complicated and unprecedented situation while abroad and we believe it would be unfair to ask them to address these matters in real time," said a NBA statement Friday.

The incident in question:

Guns. Police. Donald Trump. Kneeling. Colin Kaepernick. When it's a hot button issue for the left, it's perfectly fine for reporters to ask athletes about those hot button issues instead of the sports game the player just played. Also, those of us who would prefer to just hear about the sports game are considered the weirdos. We're the closed-minded and intolerant ones for thinking the "S" in ESPN should take precedence.

Yet when a general manager tweets support for the people in Hong Kong, when people are having their pro-Hong Kong signs removed from a basketball game IN AMERICA, or when a reporter is removed for asking questions about China's less than stellar human rights record, suddenly asking questions about a hot button issue isn't fair to the players in question. Keep it to sports.

Free speech doesn't work like that. And last I checked, the NBA is still an American company. So...

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