NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is stuck between a rock and a hard place.
On the one side, he has US politicians urging him to suspend league business in China*. On the other side, Chinese state TV has said that Silver “will receive retribution sooner or later” for his disputed comment that the NBA was asked to fire Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey.
At stake is not just the league’s political identity/standing, but an estimated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for the NBA. For example, just the NBA’s deal with Chinese telecomm Tencent was responsible for up to $2.