Chinese basketball officials are blasting the Rockets.
The once-cozy relationship between the NBA’s Houston Rockets and Chinese hoops officials turned sour over the weekend after Rockets GM Daryl Morey tweeted a shout-out to demonstrators in Hong Kong.
“Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong,” Morey said Friday in the now-deleted tweet.
The Chinese Basketball Association fired back that it expressed “strong opposition” to Morey’s “improper remarks regarding Hong Kong.”
“We want to express our indignation and strong condemnation,” said a statement posted on the Twitter-like Weibo platform. “We have already stopped our cooperation with the Houston Rockets, and continue to urge them to give a clear answer on this matter.”
The Rockets’ relationship with Chinese basketball had been close ever since former NBA star Yao Ming, who is Chinese, became an international sensation while playing with the Texas team.
Ming’s success in Houston helped ignite an NBA following in China.
But Hong Kong is a sensitive topic.
The Chinese city has been besieged by violent protests for months, as demonstrators there have taken to the streets in opposition to what they consider increasing Chinese Communist control of city affairs.
Hong Kong was promised more freedoms than mainland China when the former British colony was turned over to Beijing in 1997.
With Post Wires