Wednesday 9 October 2019 10:09, UK
The NBA has postponed Wednesday's scheduled media sessions in Shanghai for the Brooklyn Nets and Los Angeles Lakers, and it remains unclear if the teams will play in China this week as scheduled.
The teams were practising in Shanghai on Wednesday, where at least two other NBA events in advance of the start of the China games were called off as part of the ongoing rift that started after Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey posted a tweet last week that showed support for anti-government protesters in Hong Kong.
"Given the fluidity of the situation, today's media availability has been postponed," the league said.
An NBA Cares event that was to benefit Special Olympics was called off, as was a "fan night" celebration which was to be highlighted by the league announcing plans to refurbish some outdoor courts in Shanghai. And workers in multiple spots around the city were tearing down large outdoor promotional advertisements for Thursday's Lakers-Nets game.
The teams are also supposed to play Saturday in Shenzhen.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver said on Tuesday in Tokyo that he supports Morey's right to free speech. Several Chinese companies have suspended their partnership with the NBA in recent days, and Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said it will not broadcast the Lakers-Nets games.
"I'm sympathetic to our interests here and to our partners who are upset," Silver said. "I don't think it's inconsistent on one hand to be sympathetic to them and at the same time stand by our principles."
Silver was arriving in Shanghai on Wednesday. All around China, stores that sell NBA merchandise were removing Rockets-related apparel from shelves and many murals featuring the Rockets - even ones with Yao Ming, the Chinese great who played for Houston during his NBA career - were being painted over.
San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich spoke out Tuesday in Miami in support of how Silver is handling the situation.
"It wasn't easy for him to say," Popovich said. "He said that in an environment fraught with possible economic peril. But he sided with the principles that we all hold dearly, or most of us did until the last three years. So I'm thrilled with what he said."
Other NBA coaches have not been so willing to discuss the situation. Philadelphia's Brett Brown said he did not wish to get into specifics of the China-NBA rift, though said he has been to that country many times and is always blown away by how popular the game is there.
"Just massive amounts of basketball courts and you're looking out and there's no available court," Brown said. "It's just people playing on a court. I took a [lower-level] Australian team to China and the story comes there was 400 million viewers watching [what was] not the true national team. You're just reminded of the popularity of the sport."
