After his All-Star Weekend address in Chicago last month, Adam Silver was asked whether fallout stemming from Rockets GM Daryl Morey's tweet in support of Hong Kong, and the subsequent strained business ties with the Chinese government and sponsors, might cost the NBA $1 billion in revenue. The commissioner quickly objected.
"Certainly, [billion-dollar estimates] were never numbers that were coming from league sources," Silver said. "I think that the magnitude of the loss will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, certainly. Probably less than $400 million, maybe even less than that."
But the spread of the novel coronavirus, which forced the NBA to suspend its season on March 11, now presents an even greater financial challenge to the league.