The N.B.A. Returns to China After Six Years

I’m in Macau, the gambling capital of the world. I’m here for the NBA’s return to China for the last six years, there haven’t been any NBA games here. looking at these big banners that are draped over buildings. Reminds me of being back here in 2019. the players were sitting in their hotel and they could see workers tearing those same types of banners down, peeling their faces off the building. A few days before, the Houston Rockets general manager, Daryl Morey, had sent a tweet in support of protesters in Hong Kong. Well, this made the Chinese government very upset. The NBA backed him. We are not apologizing for Daryl exercising his freedom of expression. And then chaos enveloped. That whole week. Sponsors pulled out. And a lot of the players were worried about if they would even be allowed to go home if things got worse. It was it was that surreal. they lost about $400 million. Just from that one situation The Chinese market is huge for the NBA. There are a lot of basketball fans here…. and the league has been working on cultivating them for decades. And so coming here to Macao and playing a game in China again is a very big deal for the league. when you ask anybody with the league how did these games come together? The name that they mentioned is Patrick Dumont. He’s a top executive with the Sands Casino. And owner of the Dallas Mavericks. in 2021, the Chinese government was renegotiating what’s called concessions with the casinos here in Macau. In those concession agreements, the government required that the casinos spend a certain amount on non-gaming activities like entertainment, like sports. And Sands had this arena at the Venetian, so Dumont saw bringing the NBA here as an opportunity to satisfy that requirement. One of the other main players here was Joe Sy, the owner of the Brooklyn Nets. Joe tsai is the chairman of Alibaba Group, which is a Chinese tech giant. he has a lot of deep ties to the Chinese government, the nets, and spent a lot of time over the last few years meeting with Chinese officials, having events that celebrate Chinese culture. they have spoken to Chinese media outlets and said, this market is so important to us. We care about this market more than any other NBA team. They even launched a reality show. That’s a dance team competition to choose dancers for their games here in Macao Sound up: “The brooklyn nets will find the best dancers in china” There’s a tremendous amount at stake for these teams because. The league saw what happened when something went wrong and they lost this market even briefly. there is a feeling that this has to go right, and that this is a big opportunity to get back something that they lost.