There is an old Soviet tale about Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. At lunchtime, he would retreat into his office and stare at the map of the world. The map was centered on the Soviet Union. The old Bolshevik would just glare at it as if it were a giant chessboard awaiting Moscow’s next move.
A venture capital firm backed by Kobe Bryant – the late National Basketball Association star – has invested in several Chinese Communist Party-linked companies, including those flagged by the U.S. State Department as “tools” of the Chinese government.
A bar in Cincinnati, Ohio, will no longer show NBA games until LeBron James is “expelled” from the league after he tweeted a photograph targeting a police officer who saved a black girl from being stabbed last week, captioning it, “YOU’RE NEXT.”
The National Basketball Association is dealing with a major disaster at the moment. ABC fell 45 percent since the 2011-12 season. TNT is down 40 percent. When it comes to ESPN, is off 20 percent.
