The NBA will likely play games in China again in the future. On the sidelines of a conference at Columbia University, Commissioner Adam Silver confirmed on Thursday that he expects this to happen “at some point” again.
In 2019, the best basketball league in the world had last played in China before the then general manager of the Houston Rockets, Daryl Morey, sent a controversial tweet in support of freedom for Hong Kong.
As a result, no more games were played in the country. The NBA lost hundreds of millions of dollars because, in addition, it was no longer shown on Chinese television until 2022.
“We had a well-known incident there with a tweet before the pandemic, and the Chinese government banned us from broadcasting for a period of time,” Silver explained. “We accepted that. We stood by our values.”
The NBA has been growing globally for years; it held preseason games in Abu Dhabi in early October. There will also be a game in Paris again in the 2024/25 season. The organization has decided “that it is positive for us to expand our game internationally,” said the 62-year-old. This now also applies to China again.