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08 October 2019Cctv Chinese state television announced the suspension of the broadcast of NBA games after the storm triggered by the tweet supporting the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong of the number one of the Rockets of Houston, the team in which the Chinese star played Yao Ming. This is a blow not just considering the avalanche of criticisms raised in China, the fastest growing market for the business of the popular American basketball league.

All this while the American basketball professional league canceled an event in the Brooklyn Nets' Shanghai a few hours before the scheduled start, without giving an explanation, after the political controversy born from a tweet by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey, in support of four-month Hong Kong anti-government protests. The cancellation of the event is confirmed by the South China Morning Post which mentions an e-mail communication of the NBA. The Nets should have made an appearance at the New World Experimental Primary School in Shanghai within the "Nba care Brooklin Nets" initiative, which also includes other events with the Los Angeles Lakers currently still scheduled for Thursday and next Saturday, always in the Chinese metropolis. No confirmation has come about the decision to cancel the event, according to some US media, under pressure from the Chinese authorities, even if the last-minute choice appears to be connected to the controversy that arose from a message on Twitter from the Rockets executive, then deleted, that had triggered a storm in China: state-run China Central Television had decided to suspend broadcasts of the team's games, and Chinese sponsors Li Ning and the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank and the Chinese professional basketball league had decided to withdraw the their collaborations with the Rockets. Morey's apology did not help to calm the controversy in China, and NBA itself, in a note, called the episode "deeply offended" Chinese basketball fans, where this sport is very popular, "unpleasant" . The NBA's apologies did not please several US politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, who criticized the position of the professional basketball league as a move that sacrificed the values ​​of democracy in favor of economic return.