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Macau games kick-start NBA's return to China
The Straits Times
|October 09, 2025
MACAU - The National Basketball Association (NBA) returns to the lucrative China market this week with two preseason games, following a six-year absence after a team official tweeted his support for pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
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The Brooklyn Nets and the Phoenix Suns will play sellout games on Oct 10 and 12 in Macau, a special administrative region of China.
China effectively cut ties with the league in 2019 after NBA executives stood behind then Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey.
About 125 million people play basketball in China, according to official statistics, and NBA commissioner Adam Silver has said the league lost "hundreds of millions of dollars" over the split, which included matches initially being pulled from Chinese television.
Deng Weijian, a 24-year-old student, called basketball an indispensable part of his life, saying that "even though the official broadcasters banned the NBA, I found other channels to watch it and so did the people around me".
This story is from the October 09, 2025 edition of The Straits Times.
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