Chinese NBA legend Yao Ming encourages us to better discern what is ‘specific to the game’ and to try ‘at best to avoid politics’.
He said this on Thursday in Beijing during a round table on sport in the context of Sino-American relations.
“As people who have worked in this industry, we should have a better understanding of what is ‘inside’ the game and what is ‘outside it,’ and we will do our best to try to avoid (politics),” he said. exposed the most famous basketball player in China.
Although China has a large number of basketball fans, it has not hosted an NBA game in five years following a political controversy.
The general manager of the Houston Rockets NBA team, Daryl Morey, then expressed his support for Hong Kong on Twitter while the Chinese special administrative region was experiencing several months of pro-democracy protests.
Recently, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced that he expected the league to play games in China again, according to multiple media outlets.
Yao said what happened in 2019 was an “accident” and that Morey had ventured “into a minefield he didn’t really know about.”
The NBA subsequently lost hundreds of millions of dollars due to the NBA being removed from Chinese television until 2022.
The former player, aged 44, resigned from his post as president of the National Basketball Federation (CBA) at the end of October, deploring the level of performance of the selection.
/ATS
