NBA Commissioner Adam Silver believes his league could host games in China again after the league suffered a ¡°dramatic¡± hit to its bottom line and strained relations with the country five years ago.
When then-general manager of the Houston Rockets Daryl Morey posted a message supporting pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019, China retaliated by taking some preseason games off the air in the highly populous, basketball-loving market.
It turned into an 18-month blackout of the NBA by China¡¯s state broadcaster CCTV, which ended in March 2022.
¡°I think we will bring games back to China at some point,¡± Silver said on Thursday at the Columbia University Sports Management Conference in New York.
¡°China¡¯s government took us off the air for a period of time ¡ª we accepted that, we stood by our values ... anybody in our league has the right to speak out on political matters.¡±
The NBA last staged games in China in October 2019, a pair of preseason contests between the Brooklyn Nets and Los Angeles Lakers. Following a brief break from the ¡°NBA Global Games¡± series due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the NBA headed to Saitama, Japan and Abu Dhabi for preseason games along with playing regular-season games in Mexico City and Paris.
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