Marsha Blackburn targets the NBA after a report says the league has said its “inaccurate” statement on Chinese academies

Senator Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., Is targeting the NBA after a new bomb report claimed that the sports league offered the legislator a “completely inaccurate” statement about his training academies in China.

ESPN released an explosive report on Wednesday stating that the NBA youth program in China has been plagued by human rights abuses.

The report cited a letter received by Blackburn from Mark Tatum, NBA deputy commissioner and chief operating officer, in response to his investigation into reports that the League was continuing operations at its training center in Xinjiang, a place he noted to be “one of the world’s worst humanitarian zones. “

“The NBA has had no involvement with the Xinjiang basketball academy for more than a year and the relationship has been severed,” Tatum told the senator.

However, two sources contested Tatum’s comment to ESPN that the league was planning to leave Xinjiang in spring 2019.

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“A manager said the league is still looking for other coaches who move well in the summer and that the league’s declaration in Blackburn has been” completely inaccurate, “ESPN said.

“They were still trying to get people out,” the coach told ESPN. “It is not over because [Tatum] he said “We will finish this.”

A Blackburn spokesman told Fox News that the senator “intends to follow the NBA promptly to get to the bottom of the league’s presence in Xinjiang.”

“This report is disturbing and the NBA has to voluntarily correct the record of their involvement,” Blackburn reacted to the ESPN show.

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In a statement to Fox News, Tatum said that the league stopped his involvement with the basketball academy in Xinjiang in June 2019 and that he is “reevaluating the NBA academy program in China”, calling the charges “disturbing” of the ESPN report.

“We launched this nonprofit elite player development initiative in 2016 by working to support three existing basketball development centers in China run by local sports authorities. Our role was limited to providing three coaches in each academy, none of whom were accused of making a mistake, “added Tatum.

ESPN reported on Wednesday that young NBA participants were physically beaten by Chinese instructors and did not receive adequate education, despite Commissioner Adam Silver’s previous commitment that education would be “central” to the program.

“A former employee of the league compared the atmosphere when he worked in Xinjiang to” World War II in Germany “,” reported ESPN.

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ESPN’s report described in detail how the NBA training academies, which had been started in 2016, seemed largely under the control of the Chinese government with a coach who worked for the program calling it “a training ground for athletes” .

“We were basically working for the Chinese government,” said a former ESPN coach.

Multiple NBA employees filed complaints at the league about how they assisted Chinese coaches in “hitting teenage players” and the lack of education the young participants were receiving.

A former coach told ESPN that he saw a Chinese coach “shoot a ball in the face of a young player at close range and then” kick it in the gut “.

According to ESPN, NBA officials asked current and previous employees not to speak to the sports network about the show with an email from a public relations officer, “Please don’t mention that you were advised by the NBA to do not answer”.

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“You can’t have both,” said a former employee at ESPN. “You can’t be here in February to promote Black History Month and end up in China, where they are in re-education camps and all the people you are collaborating with are hitting children.”

Tatum told ESPN that the championship is “re-evaluating” and “considering other opportunities” for the program.

Over the past year, the NBA’s intense relationship with China has been scrutinized after league players and coaches have largely refrained from criticizing the country’s human rights violations and expressing support for Hong Kong.

Earlier this month, criticisms of the NBA’s ties to China were renewed after it was discovered that customers were prohibited from ordering custom equipment that read “Free Hong Kong” on its online store.

The store operator, Fanatics, suggested that the sentence was “inadvertently banned” and the ban has been lifted. Days later, however, the NBA picked up all the personalized equipment from its online store.

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ESPN’s eminent NBA reporter Adrian Wojnarowski also raised his eyebrows when he sent Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo. application and criticism of the Chinese Communist Party.

Wojnarowski apologized and was temporarily suspended from the net.