China Basketball in China Going for the rebound Teams from the NBA are set to play in front of Chinese fans once more.
Hoops and Hoopla returned to China on October 10th and 12th.
The Brooklyn Nets and Phoenix Suns will play pre-season games in Macau,
especially administered Chinese territory.
The matches will be the first in China,
involving teams from America's National Basketball Association or NBA,
since the league was in effect banished six years ago.
The excitement and the stakes could hardly be higher for those involved.
LeBron James, an American sporting superstar, is treading carefully.
This month the People's Daily published an article seemingly written by him to the surprise of many back in America.
His team later clarified that it was actually a compilation of various remarks he made during a recent visit to China.
The episode was a reminder of how the tense state of play between America and China challenges the NBA.
The fact that Mr James was on such a tour at all promoting the NBA's return suggests that relations have recovered from their low in 2019.
Back then, Daryl Maury, who managed the Houston Rockets at the time,
infuriated China's leaders by voicing support for Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests on social media.
The backlash was swift and costly.
Chinese state broadcasters stopped showing NBA games and sponsors pulled funding.
The NBA said losses amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars.
It has taken years and kowtowing by the NBA to patch up relations.
Some warming happened in 2022 when games were broadcast again on China's state-run TV.