On October 4, 2019, then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey sent a simple tweet that changed the global trajectory of the NBA.

Morey sparked one of the last big sports stories of the 2010s, urging his supporters to “fight for freedom” and “stand with Hong Kong” amid the country’s pro-democracy unrest. That brought the NBA significant opposition from China — which governs Hong Kong as a special administrative region — and cost the league hundreds of millions of dollars.

However, the world has changed since 1919 — just enough, commissioner Adam Silver said Thursday at a conference in New York, to open the door for the NBA’s return to the world’s most populous country.

“I think we’ll bring games back to China at some point,” Silver said, via ESPN. “The Chinese government took us off the air for a period of time. We accepted that. We stood by our values. … Everyone in our league has the right to speak out on political issues.”

The Rockets were in Japan at the time to play two exhibition games against the Toronto Raptors. Morey and the NBA later expressed regret over the tweet – which in turn earned the league significant bipartisan opposition in the United States.

Morey is currently president of basketball operations for the Philadelphia 76ers, a position he has held since November 2020.