![]() ![]() In fairness, “Space Jam: A New Legacy” is a children’s film, not built to carry heavy messages, and the compromises of doing business in China aren’t exclusive to the NBA. (As founder of the co-producing SpringHill Company, James also stands to benefit from whatever success it reaches in the global market.) ![]() didn’t respond by time of publication to the question of whether it would be - but it bears the sanded-down, quirk-free character of the global film industry for which the country increasingly sets the terms. Oddly, the “Space Jam” sequel is not currently scheduled for a release in China - Warner Bros. Less than two years later, it’s Hong Kong, rather than the NBA’s revenue stream, that seems to have taken the brunt of the “negative.” The once-vibrant democracy is now largely under Beijing’s boot while the NBA continues to earn billions of dollars in China, its stars picking up lucrative endorsements amid rampant human rights abuses. Spiritually,” saying “we do have freedom of speech, but there can be a lot of negative that comes with that too.” You spend its 115 minutes not recalling the lightweight delights of the 1990s, but of the moment in 2019 when NBA front-office guru Daryl Morey expressed support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests, and a clearly peeved James slapped him down, accusing him of harming NBA players “financially… physically. The film is carefully neutered to appeal to an apolitical global cinematic marketplace dominated by China. So to watch James in 2021, the league’s standard-bearer both as a player and political activist, traipse through the sealed-off virtual landscape of “Space Jam: A New Legacy,” it’s impossible to think of anything but what the league and its players aren’t saying. It has been a dramatic and socially significant evolution from the days of Jordan, the famously apolitical uber-jock who once quipped that “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” Its players have stumped for voting access, put the phrase “Black Lives Matter” on NBA courts, and nearly boycotted last year’s playoffs en masse amid the protests over the murder of George Floyd. Over the past decade, the NBA has become the world’s most aggressively activist major sports organization. ![]()
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