NBA games return to China screens but Houston Rockets not included

Live broadcasts of the National Basketball Association’s preseason games have resumed in China – except for matches with the Houston Rockets – as Beijing cools its rhetoric on a controversial tweet by the team’s general manager in support of anti-government protesters in Hong Kong.

Tencent, the NBA’s exclusive digital partner in China, streamed two games live with commentators – Chicago Bulls vs Toronto Raptors and Maccabi Haifa vs Minnesota Timberwolves – on Monday morning after skipping live broadcasts of two exhibition games in China last week.

Games featuring the Houston Rockets, who are next on court on Wednesday, have been taken off the schedule. Tencent last week offered subscribers who chose the Houston Rockets as their preferred games to change to another team or be refunded.

Monday’s live broadcast came days after Tencent’s announcement that it would not broadcast two of the exhibition games in China, which took place last Thursday and Saturday, after league commissioner Adam Silver said the NBA supported Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey’s right to exercise free speech.

Morey’s now-deleted tweet – which said: “Fight for freedom. Stand with Hong Kong” – prompted a backlash in Chinese media and online, while Silver’s remarks further offended fans on the mainland, the NBA’s biggest market outside the US.