The answer was not long in coming. The NBA will not control the words of the players, its employees or club owners, nor apologize, said Tuesday, October 8, the boss of the North American League of Basketball after a tweet a Houston Rockets official sparked the ire of China.

The message posted last Friday by Houston Rockets' Texas franchise executive director, Daryl Morey, expressed support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong's semi-autonomous region in southern China.

It was subsequently erased. "The NBA will not put itself in a position to regulate what players, its employees and club owners say or do not say about these issues," wrote the NBA boss Adam Silver in a communicated.

"We do not apologize for the fact that Daryl is using his freedom of expression," Silver said shortly afterwards at a press conference held near Tokyo, referring to the message posted on Twitter.

Mr. Morey's tweet did some damage. Beijing on Tuesday officially condemned the remarks of the head of the Houston Rockets via the spokesman of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Geng Shuang. "It is inconceivable to have exchanges and cooperation with Chinese without knowing or understanding Chinese public opinion," he said at a regular press briefing.

China's state-run television announced on Tuesday that it would "suspend" the broadcast this week of NBA exhibition games in China, and that it would open an "investigation into all [its] cooperation and all [its] ] exchanges with the NBA ".

Silver, who toured Japan and China to promote the NBA, noted the effects, but said his organization should "live with these consequences."

First reaction of the NBA criticized

"We did not expect it, it's a shame, but if this is the effect of our respect for our own values, we consider that it remains crucial that we respect these values," he added. .

"Of course, I would like people associated with the NBA to be sensitive to the culture of others, and I think saying that does not mean that we are going to regulate them. [...] As an entity present at the we always remain sensitive to local customs and customs but, again, this has no normative character. "

The NBA is on the defensive after its first reaction has been sharply criticized by the entire spectrum of the American political landscape, reproaching him for bowing to face Beijing. In a statement, the NBA acknowledged that Mr. Morey's point of view had "offended so many of our friends and fans in China, which is unfortunate".

Silver said he was still hoping to travel to Shanghai this week and "meet the relevant officials to see where we are."

"We apologize, we love China, we like to play there," Houston Rockets star James Harden told reporters on Monday at a press conference in Tokyo, trying to calm down.

Behind these excuses, there are considerable financial stakes for the American league and its franchises. In 2017-18, 640 million people in China watched images of the NBA season. By comparison, the final of that season was seen, on average, by 17.7 million Americans.

Hong Kong has gone through four months of its worst political crisis, with almost daily demonstrations denouncing the decline in freedoms and the growing control of the Chinese government on its management.

With AFP