Firestorm over Hong Kong tweet shows perils of NBA's meteoric rise in China

For decades, China has been crucial to the NBA's rise as a global brand. This weekend, the risks of that success became clear.expressing support for pro-democracy protests

The league distanced itself from Morey, saying his"regrettable" tweet had"deeply offended" many of the league's fans in the world's most populous country, where more than 300 million people play basketball and hundreds of millions more watch games every season. "Here we have a case of the NBA putting its financial interests ahead of its supposed values," said Harvey Araton, a veteran sports journalist and author of"Elevated: The Global Rise of the NBA."support for players who felt compelled to speak out on domestic issues

"Stern realized that China was an explosive market," Araton said."When you have a country of that magnitude, where basketball is the most popular sport, you have tremendous marketing value for an organization with a global strategy." Maybe most crucially of all for the NBA, the league recently announced a five-year extension of its pact with Tencent Holdings, a Chinese technology behemoth, to stream games in China in a deal"When I have 76ers gear on and I walk through Shanghai, walk through Shenzhen, if I had a nickel for every time somebody said 'Trust the process' in perfect English, I wouldn't be standing here working," Philadelphia 76ers CEO Scott O'Neil told the Associated Press this fall,...

Gotta have that bribe money from China! Without Chinas money the NBA would never be a global entertainment venue! The NBA needs to be China’s bitch to get the money though. Is it worth it?

Hypocrisy is showing Merchandise probably is all made in China

This rocket imbecile plunges sport into politics that makes texans look dumb like the cattles. Soon he might pull out his dirty hole to pump his manures into the nba games by using his manured rockets.

It was all fun and games until someone had the gall to mention human rights 🙄

The NBA agree's that China is right about Muslims.

GROW UP BOYS DO GOOD TO HELP PLANET

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