NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said that the fallout following a tweet from a Houston Rockets official who backed the Hong Kong democracy protests has already cost the league substantial financial losses in China. "I felt we had made enormous progress in terms of building cultural exchanges with the Chinese people. And, again, I have regret that much of that was lost," Silver said at the Time 100 Health Summit in New York.
"And I'm not even sure where we'll go from here, but the direct answer to your question is the financial consequences have been and may continue to be fairly dramatic."The issue hit fever pitch last week in China when the Brooklyn Nets and the Los Angeles Lakers were in Shanghai for a scheduled preseason game and various league activities.
The Chinese government cancelled a number of events and in turn the NBA shut down media access to its players, which extended to a game on Saturday in Shenzhen. Lakers superstar LeBron James further inflamed the row after returning home to the US when he called Morey’s initial tweet “uneducated”.