On Oct. 5, NBA Houston Rockets general manager Tony Murray sent one of the most expensive "tweets" in history, openly expending the slogans of the Hong Kong protesters, which caused an uproar in China for a while.

The issue of territorial sovereignty, which is China's most important issue, was a stupid move by Murray. Less than a day after Murray's tweet, CCTV Sports announced it was suspending its broadcasts of NBA preseason games, as well as lining up all related partnerships. China, the NBA's largest overseas market, pays more than billions annually in broadcast rights and advertising. Randomly, many of the artists who have had a relationship with the NBA have announced that they are discontinuing their cooperation with the NBA.

Dozens of companies that are official partners of the NBA have also announced that they are suspending all cooperation with the NBA, with the most notable one being Tencent Sports, which just spent $1.5 billion on broadcasting rights last year. Many netizens have quipped that the NBA's market value is not even one-fifth that of Tencent.

After Murray's statement, NBA President Xiao Huawei's defense was met with a unanimous protest from Chinese fans. According to incomplete statistics, the Murray incident led to the suspension of various cooperation for the NBA's loss of up to $400 million a year. China is home to 400 million NBA fans, and the loss of such a large number of viewers will have a huge impact on the NBA's ratings.

On top of that, the annual loss would translate into revenue for every NBA team, with more than three dozen teams seeing their salary caps lowered, and top players earning $20 million less as a direct result.