Apologies for the title, it's not worded that well but I don't know how to word it better. In addition to the CBA cutting ties with the Rockets, Tencent will no longer report on the team or show their games. The Rockets have been China's favorite NBA team ever since Yao Ming was drafted by them in 2002. He is now president of the CBA, but that doesn't say anything about what input he had into these decisions. The Rockets are also one of the main contenders for the championship going into this year since Russell Westbrook was traded to them over the summer. They also have the storyline of Westbrook and former teammate and longtime friend James Harden being reunited after three seasons together on the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Here are a few articles/references about the subject:

ESPN article

Yahoo Sports

Tweets by Tencent's former Rockets reporter

ESPN article about team owner Tillman Fertitta tweeting disagreement with Morey

Edit to add another article: Chinese consulate in Houston statement

NYT article

Nike pulled all Rockets gear from their Chinese web store

An open letter in support of China from Joe Tsai, owner of the Brooklyn Nets, posted on r/nba. Original on Facebook linked at the bottom

Rockets star James Harden says 'sorry' to China over Morey's tweet

NBA reporter Shams Charania says the league is not punishing Morey

Slate article about the incident

~sports has been a bit empty lately. With the end of the NBA regular season I thought we could open this up to discussion of how the season went for your team, notable moments, what you didn't expect etc...

I'll start off, as an Orlando Magic fan I'm so incredibly psyched we finally made the playoffs, it's been too damn long. Speaking of the playoffs, how wild is it that Lebron's streak of finals appearances ends with him completely missing the playoffs? Is there even any point in the playoffs this season because the Golden State Monstars could just steamroll everyone in their way.

For those of you not following the NBA too closely you might not be aware but tonight the Magic play the Heat. For about the past month or so the two teams have been battling out for the final seed in the Eastern Conference Playoffs. I'll re-cap why this is so important for the Magic since they're the team I support and maybe some Heat fans can hit back with a reply for why it's so important to them.

1. In the 2011-2012 season the Magic entered a dark period called the "Dwightmare" where their best player who had led them to an NBA final Dwight Howard began stirring up drama within the organisation. Dwight was traded in the offseason to the Lakers giving serious deja vu of Shaq's time in Orlando. Since 2012 the Magic have consistently been cursed to mediocrity and missing the playoffs.

2. Magic star Nikola Vucevic (a player acquired from the Dwight trade) has been constantly underrated and disrespected by people around the NBA. After 7 seasons Vuc has finally made the All Star team and has led this team to exceed the expectations set at the beginning of the season. It is also important to note that Vuc has not made the playoffs either since 2012 when he was playing with the 76ers.

3. The Magic are 0.5 games behind the Heat, whoever wins this match will take the 8th seed from the other and likely bring a lot of motivation and momentum into their next games therefore being more likely to make the playoffs.

There's many more storylines to this match than I've put in here but I feel that this gets the main gist of why it's so important to fans of the Magic.