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,"........

© International Business Times