NBA commissioner Adam Silver says the 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” drop in its bottom line five years ago and strained relations with the country.

When then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey released a message supporting pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019, China retaliated by taking some preseason games off the air in the populous, basketball-crazed market.

There was an 18-month ban on the NBA by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, which ended in March 2022.

“I think we will bring games back to China at some point,” Silver said 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… Everyone in our league has the right to express themselves on political matters.”

The NBA’s last games were played in China in October 2019, two preseason contests between the Brooklyn Nets and the Los Angeles Lakers. After a brief break from the NBA Global Games series due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the NBA traveled to Saitama, Japan and Abu Dhabi for preseason games and played regular season games in Mexico City and Paris.