Oh! My coffee spilled on your shirt? I won’t say sorry, because I was unintended. — Daryl Morey

In the earlier of this month, the National Basketball Association and one of its franchises, the Houston Rockets, were dealing with the repercussions of a single tweet from Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey. The original tweet, an image that read “Fight for Freedom, Stand with Hong Kong,” has caused Chinese businesses to suspend ties with the Rockets, including internet giant Tencent and Chinese state television, which have said they won’t be showing Rockets games.

However, Morey refused to apologize for what he posted, and posted a new tweet to address that “My tweets are my own and in no way represent the Rockets or the NBA.” Then the commissioner Adam Silver said that “The financial consequences may go on and be fairly dramatic, but the league is willing to take on the costs to support free expression.”

Although Morey addressed his actions on Twitter, saying he didn’t intend his tweet “to cause any offense to Rockets fans and friends of mine in China.” He noted that what’s happening between China and Hong Kong is “complicated,” adding, “I would hope that those who are upset will know that offending or misunderstanding them was not my intention. What confused me most is that maybe it was understandable that a manager did it without knowing that it would offend others, but it was nonsense that there was still no apology after many days of great controversy, and they didn’t even take any measures to resolve the conflict.

To be honest, as a Chinese I’m very upset about what Morey and Silver said and furious about the way they deal with this crisis. But we don’t want to be too political. So despite all the political controversies, the controversy and those huge economic losses could have saved with timely measures. An official apologize will be much better, it’s okay not to apologize for their political opinion but for the unintended offense caused to others.

So when these sorts of crisis happened in the digital world, PR should take the most responsible role to handle the case. However, when dealing with a brand like Nike maybe the market department can take the role when they face such a social media crisis, as we can tell from the case “Believe in something, even it means to sacrifice everything.” The marketers successfully used this crisis to create more sales than before due to the brand slogan fits the issue very well.