China denies it pressured NBA to sack Houston Rockets’ Daryl Morey
- League chief Adam Silver says Chinese government demanded Morey be fired but Beijing says it never made the request
Beijing denied on Friday that Chinese officials demanded that Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey be sacked for posting a tweet in support of protesters in Hong Kong.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver said on Thursday that Chinese parties dealing with the league, both in government and business, had asked for Morey to be sacked over the tweet.
“We were being asked to fire him by the Chinese government,” he said at a conference in New York. “We said, there’s no chance that’s happening – there’s no chance we’ll even discipline him.”
However, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the Chinese government “has never made this kind of request”.
“We especially went to the relevant departments to check on this claim,” Geng said.
The NBA row comes after more than four months of anti-government protests in Hong Kong, sparked by a now-shelved extradition bill. The protests have since expanded to include calls for universal suffrage and an independent investigation into allegations of police violence.