MACAU — The NBA returns to the lucrative China market this week with two pre-season games following a six-year absence after a team official tweeted his support for pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.The Brooklyn Nets and the Phoenix Suns will play sell-out games on Friday and Sunday in Macau, a special administrative region of China close to Hong Kong.

China, the world’s second-biggest economy, effectively cut ties with the league in 2019 after NBA executives stood behind then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey.

About 125 million people play basketball in China, according to official statistics, and NBA commissioner Adam Silver has said the league lost “hundreds of millions of dollars” over the split, which included matches initially being pulled from Chinese television.

Deng Weijian, a 24-year-old student, called basketball an indispensable part of his life, saying that “even though the official broadcasters banned the NBA, I found other channels to watch it and so did the people around me”.

“The NBA needs to learn a lesson, which is to avoid sensitive topics and let basketball get back to being a competition of skill,” Deng said.

The league’s return coincides with shaky US-China relations under US President Donald Trump, with American corporations hoping to entice Chinese consumers while fending off political scrutiny at home.

Silver said in 2019 that one of the NBA’s long-held values was to support freedom of expression.

“We rely on the US State Department for guidance everywhere we engage fans around the world, including in China and more than 200 other countries and territories,” NBA deputy commissioner and chief operating officer Mark Tatum told AFP in a written reply this week.

Asked if the NBA still supported members of its community to voice opinions on China, Tatum replied, “Yes.”

‘Spiral of outrage’