Each year, teams from the National Basketball Association (NBA) play a handful of pre-season games in countries around the world, to broaden the reach of American basketball into other markets. The first of these “Global Games” to be played in China took place in 2004, when the Houston Rockets played the Sacramento Kings in Shanghai. Since then, China – where basketball is among the most popular sports – has become the NBA’s main international focus. From 2015-2018, all of the pre-season exhibition matches took place in China.
But this month’s game in Shanghai, between the LA Lakers and the Brooklyn Nets, took place under a very different atmosphere. The events that normally surround these games, such as press conferences and meetings with fans, were cancelled. Signs advertising the game were taken down. Every single fan in the 18,000-seater stadium was issued with a Chinese flag to wave, and no one wore the jersey of the Houston Rockets.
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