One of the richest and most popular sports on the planet has gone into an unprecedented public relations crisis.
The NBA has spent the last week trying and quite miserably failing to contain the fallout from a single tweet.
It all started on Sunday, when the general manager of the Houston Rockets, Daryl Morey, published a tweet voicing his support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.
The tweet included an image bearing the words: "Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong."
Morey's fit of moral clarity quickly passed, and he deleted the post, but it was already too late. China was angry.
Anti-government demonstrators have flooded the streets of Hong Kong for months, first in response to a controversial extradition bill, and then in a broader convulsion of fury at the Chinese Communist Party.
Basketball is China's most watched sport, with a viewership in the hundreds of millions.
In an interview last year, the league's Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum revealed NBA China — which manages everything NBA-related in the country — was worth more than $4 billion.
The Chinese government didn't like it and the Chinese companies who partner with the NBA didn't like it either. Every last one of them responded by suspending their ties to the league.
The timing was particularly bad because some NBA teams, including the Rockets, were in Asia to play pre-season games.
China's state broadcaster immediately cancelled its plans to broadcast those games, as did Tencent Sports, the company that streams them online.
[Source:NZHerald]
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