NBA Commissioner Adam Silver says league could return to China for games

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 — 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.