The NBA is back in the China business.
And the Nets are the team that helped bring them there.
The Nets will face the Suns in two preseason games in Macao next October, which will mark the league’s first tilts in China since 2019.
The Nets are owned by Joe Tsai, who was born in Taiwan and is the co-founder and chairman of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.
It’s a significant step for the NBA, which was first reported by ESPN and confirmed by The Post.
China had been the league’s biggest and most important international market, but that relationship was frayed after then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey posted on social media in support of the Hong Kong protests in October 2019.
The Nets had actually been en route to China to play preseason games against the Lakers in Shanghai and Shenzhen when Beijing took offense to Morey’s post.
All of the league personnel were essentially muzzled during the international incident, with The Post getting the only on-record comments, coming from Tsai.
The spat cost the NBA numerous lucrative sponsorships and league games getting pulled from Chinese broadcast television.
With the country home to 300 million NBA fans, commissioner Adam Silver estimated in 2021 that the tiff had cost the league $400 million that year alone.
But Tsai — recently at the GBA International Sports Business in Macao — said the league would “love” to resume playing games in China and Macao, which is near Hong Kong.
“I think the NBA is in a very good place with respect to its relationship with China,” Tsai said, according to Reuters. “China is actually the NBA’s biggest fan base. So what happened before, I think it’s water under the bridge.”
Now that bridge has been rebuilt.
Brooklyn will face the Suns, whose owner, Mat Ishbia, has called Tsai a mentor.
Their relationship helped seal the Kevin Durant trade, and they’ll now take their teams to China.
The Nets have long been the league’s globetrotters.
After playing in Paris last season, they’ve had two dozen games outside of the U.S. (and Canada), the most of any team.
From 2004 up to the Morey incident, 17 different teams have logged a total of 28 preseason tilts in China.
The Nets are expected to bring that to 30.