SB Nation • 10 min read

As Brooklyn Nets fly to China, excitement and anxiety rise

The Brooklyn Nets are in the air Monday — for 17 hours — as the team heads to China for the NBA’s fateful return to the people’s republic for the first time in six years, the NBA China Games 2025 vs. the Phoenix

Suns. It will be the fourth trip Brooklyn has made across the Pacific, following visits in 2010, 2014 and 2019. No other team has made even three.

More importantly, the two games the Nets will play on Friday and next Sunday are the first since the Nets-Lakers series in 2019 when a tweet by then Rockets GM Daryl Morey supporting demonstrators in Hong Kong turned things upside down. Morey removed the tweet and apologized, saying he did not intend to offend “our friends in China” but Chinese authorities decided that the NBA hadn’t done enough to rectify things and a cold war between league and country ensued.

For three years, there were no NBA games on Chinese television, only highlight packages. NBA revenue from China, which before the incident rivaled that from North America, fell off. Chinese companies ended sponsorships. Adam Silver estimated that the league lost $400 million as a result of the controversy in the first year alone.

At the time, Joe Tsai predicted it would take a while for things to return to anywhere close to normal.

“The hurt that this incident has caused will take a long time to repair,” Tsai wrote on his Facebook page. “I hope to help the league to move on from this incident. I will continue to be an outspoken NBA Governor on issues that are important to China. I ask that our Chinese fans keep the faith.”

Since then, things have slowly gotten better. Last year, the NBA and TenCent, the big Chinese media company, quietly renewed their agreement to broadcast games and this summer, most of the game’s biggest stars made the trek to China to show the NBA flag … while pumping up their sneaker sales. LeBron James, Steph Curry, Nikola Jokic, Victor Wembanyama, Anthony Edwards, Kawhi Leonard, James Harden, Draymond Green and ex-Net D’Angelo Russell all made appearances. It was easily the most active summer for NBA stars since 2019.

Tsai played a big if largely undisclosed role in the return to normalcy and he is expected to be a big part of the celebrations. He told Brian Lewis he’s already issued a friendly warning to his players.

“I was telling the players, when they go to Macao, when they step into the street, they’re going to be mobbed because the fan base in China has remained loyal,” Tsai told The Post. “They really love the NBA. And they really welcome the NBA to be back after, what, six years? Since we were in Shanghai six years ago.”

Indeed many of the stars who traveled to China this summer were treated to fan adulation and stunning drone shows, Curry’s reception probably the most elaborate…

The Nets reception is likely to top that. Not only is Tsai, executive chairman of e-commerce giant Alibaba, the only owner of Chinese heritage in the league but the Nets are its third most popular team according to Mailman, a company that tracks the popularity of western teams in the country using social media. One reason: of the nine Chinese born players who’ve ever stepped on an NBA court, three have played for the Nets including Fanbo Zeng, the 6’11” 22-year-old currently on an Exhibit 10. It will be as big a deal as any since the NBA first broadcast games in China back in 1987-88.

Zeng told Lewis of his homeland’s love of the game which an estimated 300 million play or follow and which was declared a national pastime, 90 years ago, alongside ping pong. Zeng also spoke of his personal excitement in going home.

“I can imagine that. But that’s pretty good for me, especially enjoying the fans who support you no matter if I made the team or not,” Zeng told The Post. “I’ll get a chance in the preseason, so they’ll be hyped for me. That means a lot for me. I appreciate that.

“And when I was in China when I played the national team games, all the fans go crazy, too. That shows how much we love basketball, how big basketball is in China. … We should bring basketball more importance in the country.”

Whether it played a role in the truce between the NBA and the people’s republic or not, Tsai has unabashedly supported Chinese basketball which has fallen off in international competitions of late. The last two seasons, the Nets have signed a rising Chinese star, Zeng this season, Jacky Cui last. He finances the Joe Tsai Scholarship Fund which sends 10 promising Chinese players — five boys and five girls — to U.S. prep schools every year and is lead investor in the Asian University Basketball League, a six-country, 12-team league that opened play this summer.

He told Lewis that he sees the NBA China Games as more than about just basketball, hoping for a longer term effect.

“It’s going to be really exciting. Despite all that [geopolitics], what’s going on in the world, having an NBA team travel that far, I think the fans really appreciate it,” Tsai said. “And I think it’s just good for the world to have people come, Americans go to China, Chinese people come to America. We have a Chinese player on the team. It’s all going to be good.”