LOS ANGELES (AFP) — The National Basketball Association (NBA) will return to China for the first time since 2019 with two pre-season games in Macau between the Brooklyn Nets and Phoenix Suns next October, ESPN reported Thursday.

No NBA games have been held in China since two 2019 pre-season contests were played there amid controversy following a tweet from then Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey in support of protests in Hong Kong.

Citing unnamed sources, ESPN said the relationship between the NBA and China had improved with the aid of NBA China chief executive Michael Ma, who was hired in 2020.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver said at a sports management conference in October that he thought the league would “bring back games to China at some point.”

“We had a well-known incident there pre-pandemic with a tweet and China’s government took us off the air for a period of time,” Silver said.

“We accepted that. We stood by our values.”

The NBA lost hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of the NBA being taken off Chinese television until 2022.

Since then, the league has grown globally in other nations, playing pre-season games in Abu Dhabi earlier this month with Emirates Airlines sponsoring the NBA Cup, the league’s in-season tournament.

ESPN reported that the games in Macau will be played at the Venetian Arena, part of the Las Vegas Sands conglomerate controlled by the Adelson family — the majority ownership group in the Dallas Mavericks.

China is home to a huge basketball fanbase. From 2004 to 2019, 17 teams played a total of 28 pre-season games in China.

Meanwhile, the Houston Rockets head coach Ime Udoka was fined $50,000, Rockets forward Tari Eason was fined $35,000 and Rockets center Alperen Sengun was fined $15,000 by the NBA, the league announced on Thursday.

The incident which prompted all the punishments took place with 1:52 to play in the fourth quarter of Houston’s 120-111 loss at Sacramento on Tuesday. It led to technical fouls and ejections for Udoka and Turkish big man Sengun.

Udoka’s fine was for confronting an official and directing profane language toward a game referee as well as failing to leave the court in a timely manner after being ejected and public criticism of officiating, which took place in the coach’s post-game news conference.

Eason was fined for throwing a towel and directing “inappropriate language” at a spectator seated in the stands after the conclusion of the contest.

Sengun’s fine was for inappropriate language directed at a game official.

At 15-7, the Rockets are second in the Western Conference, 1.5 games behind leader Oklahoma City, and fourth overall in the NBA.

Sengun has averaged 19.0 points, 10.7 rebounds and 5.3 assists a game for the Rockets this season while Eason has averaged 11.3 points, 6.5 rebounds and 1.1 assists per contest for Houston.