NBA games are airing on Chinese TV again for the first time since 2019
For the first time since 2019, NBA games are once again airing regularly in China.
The Global Times, a Chinese state-run media outlet, reported the news on Wednesday, and the NBA released a statement to the New York Times confirming the report.
“N.B.A. games have aired in China continuously for nearly 35 years, including this season on a number of other services,” Mike Bass, an NBA spokesman, said in a statement on Thursday via the New York Times. “We believe broadcasting games to our fans in China and more than 200 other countries and territories is consistent with our mission to inspire and connect people everywhere through the game of basketball.”
While some games have been available to watch on two China-based streaming services since the games were yanked from state-run TV, this is the first time games will be regularly broadcast on China Central Television since the NBA ran afoul of the Chinese government in 2019. China Central Television did broadcast Game 5 of the NBA Finals back in 2020, but that did not lead to the broadcasting of the 2020-21 season.
The first game that China Central Television showed was Tuesday night's contest between the Los Angeles Clippers and Utah Jazz, in which the Jazz blew a 25-point lead and lost 121-115.
The NBA's rift with China
All this started in October 2019 with a single tweet sent by then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey. In the tweet, Morey posted an image that was supportive of the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. That immediately set off a firestorm in China, which led the government to pull all NBA games from TV, while multiple Chinese companies ended their sponsorships with the NBA.
Morey deleted the tweet and apologized, but the damage was done. And it wasn't metaphorical damage; Morey's single tweet almost certainly cost the NBA hundreds of millions of dollars in sponsorships and revenue from basketball-obsessed China.
And that was just in China. In the U.S., the NBA was criticized for appearing to kowtow to China and not standing strong behind Morey. The NBA released two statements shortly after Morey's tweet, one in English and one in Chinese. The English statement said that they know the views expressed by Morey “deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China, which is regrettable.”
However, the Chinese statement used different language and wasn't identical to the English statement. The wording in the Chinese statement was more apologetic, saying that they were "extremely disappointed" by Morey's "inappropriate remarks."
Despite that, the NBA-China relationship was in a deep freeze, and wasn't truly thawed until recently. As for why China has chosen now, when there are less than than two weeks of regular season NBA games left on the calendar, isn't clear. Kristen Looney, an assistant professor of Chinese politics at Georgetown, told the New York Times that it could be related to the current situation between Ukraine and Russia, with China signaling that it wants to "maintain good economic relations with the United States."
While NBA games are back on China Central Television's schedule, not all teams may get broadcast time. Since the games were pulled off Chinese TV, the streaming services that broadcast NBA games in China haven't shown any games that involved the Philadelphia 76ers or Boston Celtics. Those teams weren't randomly chosen, as Morey is now the general manager of the Sixers, and Enes Kanter Freedom, who has publicly criticized China, played for the Celtics in recent years.
