New York (AFP)

The political controversy between US basketball and China is very expensive: the NBA has spoken Thursday "substantial" losses, a few days after the tweet of a Houston Rockets boss in support of Hong Kong protesters.

The case seemed in appeasement phase. The declarations of one and the other tended to become rarer. But the fire is clearly not under control.

"The financial consequences are quite dramatic and may continue to be so," North American head Adam Silver said at a Time-based health conference in New York City, with no comment. figures.

Chinese companies have suspended their sponsorship as well as the negotiations of the rights of diffusion with the NBA since the tweet of the general manager of Houston Rockets, Daryl Morey, in favor of the demonstrators of Hong Kong. Remarks that took place during the Asian NBA tour and at the heart of complex trade negotiations between China and the United States.

"The losses are already substantial," said Silver. "Our matches are still not broadcast in China as we speak and we will see what happens."

The league boss also said that Chinese government officials and business leaders had called for the dismissal of Daryl Morey. "We said there was no chance that this would happen, there is no chance that he would even be punished," he insisted, brandishing the principle of freedom. expression.

Beijing immediately responded by denying these accusations. "The Chinese government has never transmitted this kind of requirement," a spokesman for Chinese diplomacy Geng Shuang told reporters on Friday.

In 2017-18, 640 million people in China watched images of the season. The NBA has recently renewed for 5 years, and until 2025, a streaming deal with the Chinese giant Tencent, which would involve $ 1.5 billion in total, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Hong Kong, a former British colony returned to China in 1997 and now an autonomous territory, has been rocked since June by increasingly violent protests that demand, among other things, more civil liberties and autonomy in the face of Beijing's growing control.

The government and many Chinese netizens expressed dissatisfaction after Daryl Morey's tweet was quickly withdrawn and for which the author later apologized as a challenge to China's territorial integrity.

- "Maybe too diplomatic" -

At the beginning of the crisis, the NBA said it was "deeply disappointed by the inappropriate remarks" of the Rockets leader. But the institution, lambasted by US officials for these words seeming to give reason in Beijing, had backtracked. Adam Silver said the NBA would not apologize and continue to support "freedom of expression".

"We said we regret having upset our fans (but) at the same time that we support Daryl Morey's freedom of speech, his right to tweet, maybe I tried to be too diplomatic." he added on Thursday. "These regrets were not addressed to the Chinese government but to our fans, to our hundreds of millions of fans in China."

But he did not leave this acrobatic diplomacy, caught between multiple fires. "There is an opinion that we should not even do business in China and I would say that from an individual point of view it is consistent," he said.

"But if people think we should not trade with China or other places in the world whose practices they do not approve (...), this is the responsibility of the US government."

The controversy sparked many reactions, including NBA superstar Lebron James. The Los Angeles Lakers player said on Monday that the general manager of the Houston Rockets "did not know enough" and "was misinformed" when he published the tweet at the origin of the crisis.

"So many people could have been hurt not only financially, but also physically, emotionally and spiritually," said the player.

Consequences shared globally by Silver. "We have made tremendous progress in terms of cultural exchanges with the Chinese people," he said. "I regret that a lot of all this is lost."

© 2019 AFP