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The N.B.A.’s players on Thursday night tentatively approved the league’s plan to start the 2020-21 season on Dec. 22, which would require them to report to their teams for training camps in less than a month — barely seven weeks after the end of the pandemic-disrupted previous season.The union announced that it had tentatively accepted the scheduling elements of the league’s proposal to begin a shortened 72-game regular season before Christmas, a plan that only took shape two weeks ago at the strong urging of the N.B.A.’s television partners. The tentative approval came in a vote of the league’s 30 player representatives, one from each team.Negotiations to lock the new schedule in, however, are likely to continue into next week on some outstanding salary-cap and health and safety matters.“Additional details remain to be negotiated, and the N.B.P.A. is confident that the parties will reach agreement on these remaining issues relevant to the upcoming season,” the union — the National Basketball Players Association — said in a statement.The proposed schedule calls for training camps to begin Dec. 1. The regular season, 10 games shorter than usual, would then run through mid-May, with the playoffs lasting into July.The N.B.A.’s goal is to complete the 2020-21 season before the Tokyo Olympics, which are scheduled from July 23 to Aug. 8 in 2021. That would allow the league to avoid direct competition with the Olympics and set up the 2021-22 season to return to the N.B.A.’s usual October-through-June pattern. The plan is strongly preferred by the league’s primary media partners, Disney and Turner, following a summer and fall of dismal N.B.A. ratings in a crowded sports landscape, according to a person briefed on the matter who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.But there were unresolved talks about a new array of coronavirus protocols that will be needed because teams are planning to play in their home markets rather than in a restricted-access bubble, as they did when resuming the interrupted 2019-20 season. The league and the union are also still haggling over how much of the players’ salaries in the next two seasons will be placed into escrow.Each season, the N.B.A.’s 30 teams are required to spend roughly half of the league’s basketball-related income on player salaries. The N.B.A. typically holds 10 percent of each player’s salary in escrow until the income has been tallied. The money in escrow is used to make up the difference for the players, in case the total paid out was too low, or the owners, if the total was too high.The sides have been discussing a plan that would place roughly 18 percent of player salaries over the next two seasons in escrow. Amid fears that the escrow amount would be 30 percent or more, the union was pushing to spread the reductions over multiple seasons so players wouldn’t feel the salary pinch so acutely.Coming off the longest season in N.B.A. history, league officials have spent the past two weeks insisting that the December plan would reduce projected financial losses related to the coronavirus pandemic by at least $500 million in 2020-21. There is still a faction of players that prefers to start in conjunction with the Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday holiday in mid-January, but the N.B.A. has prioritized the needs of its television partners in embracing the December start. The league also expects the season to be played in largely empty arenas because of the ongoing pandemic, which will sharply reduce revenue.The Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat, who contested a six-game N.B.A. finals series through Oct. 11, are facing an off-season of just seven weeks. In a typical year, finals teams have at least three months off, but the league is expected to make financial concessions to counter the pushback from players on those teams and others who wanted a longer break after the rigors of playing out the 2019-20 season in the bubble at Walt Disney World. Opening on Dec. 22 would enable Turner to broadcast its usual Tuesday night doubleheader to start the season, while also preserving Disney’s lucrative five-game slate that has become a staple of Christmas Day’s television offerings. The league, though, has not yet been able to set a date to start free agency — which teams have been expecting to begin shortly after the Nov. 18 draft — or to lift a freeze on trades in effect since the Feb. 6 trade deadline.The N.B.A. and the players’ association faced a Friday deadline to come to terms or allow the parties — presumably the league’s owners, in this case — to terminate the existing labor agreement and send the league into financial chaos. The deadline had been postponed four times since May.The N.B.A. informed teams and the players in recent days that it fell $1.5 billion short of projected revenue for the 2019-20 season, largely as a result of losses tied to the pandemic. The league maintains that the shortfall would have doubled to about $3 billion without the television money that was recouped during the bubble restart from July 30 to Oct. 11. The cost of arranging that bubble was an estimated $190 million. More

The Philadelphia 76ers and Daryl Morey seem like an ideal match.For the Sixers, who introduced Morey on Monday as president of basketball operations, he is an executive who gives their front office instant credibility. And for Morey, the job is a chance to transform a franchise with marquee players into a championship contender.But transformations require institutional buy-in from all corners of a franchise. Morey’s track record as an analytics-driven tinkerer willing to blow up “good” in order to be “great” may not jibe with other parts of the organization — the ones that judge or are judged on straight wins and losses, or that need wins to make money. And Philadelphia has been here before: Sam Hinkie, a Morey acolyte, took the reins of the Sixers in 2013 for an ill-fated partnership. Yet, with Morey, this can and should work. He will give the franchise much needed stability and direction. But it will require something owners always say they have but often don’t: patience.The Morey pursuit began in earnest two years ago, when Philadelphia made a push for him to replace the ousted Bryan Colangelo but was rebuffed. Morey, who helped usher in the analytics movement in the N.B.A., finally made his way to Philadelphia after unexpectedly announcing his intent last month to resign from the Rockets in Houston, where he had been general manager since 2007.But just adding a big name to the front office won’t magically fix the Sixers, who were swept in the first round of the playoffs by the Boston Celtics despite preseason championship aspirations. Afterward, the Sixers’ general manager, Elton Brand, announced that changes needed to be made “top to bottom” — including in the front office.Morey is one of those changes. The Sixers also announced Monday that Brand had signed a multiyear contract extension, but he will most likely answer to Morey, and it is unclear how that dynamic will shake out. In August, Brand said “collaboration days didn’t work too well” with the front office last season.Philadelphia, under Brand’s leadership, doubled down on going big in the frontcourt — with Joel Embiid, a franchise cornerstone, and Al Horford — while the rest of the league trended toward a smaller and faster style of basketball supported by analytics. No team embraced the concept more than Morey’s Rockets, who traded a productive center in Clint Capela in February to play a smaller lineup. While the Rockets often relied on 3-pointers for their offense, Philadelphia’s other franchise player, Ben Simmons, has shot just 24 of them in three seasons.“The best way to win in the N.B.A. is to take your talent and figure out how to utilize them best,” Morey said at a news conference on Monday. “It’s not to take your talent and hammer it into a particular system.”One insight into Morey’s style of thinking comes from before his time in Houston, when he was an executive with the Celtics. In the 2003-4 season, the Celtics were 36-46, made the playoffs as an eighth seed and were swept in the first round.On whether the Celtics should have tanked, Morey told ESPN last year: “We should have. We didn’t. We were trying to win every game. But that would have been a year to not be in the eighth seed.”That’s Morey, at least partly. He would rather start from scratch than languish in mediocrity. (He has also since spoken out against tanking, saying it is bad for the N.B.A.)There is an open question as to how radical the team’s ownership group will allow Morey to be. He made 77 trades in his 13 years in Houston, and his influence has made an impression in Philadelphia. In 2013, the Sixers hired Hinkie as team president and general manager, commencing an era known to Sixers fans as the Process. Hinkie based roster decisions on analytics and eschewed short-term gains for bigger, future ones. (Or, in N.B.A. terms: The Sixers tanked.) He honed that approach working alongside Morey in Houston from 2005 to 2013.Hinkie focused on accumulating higher draft picks and tradable contracts rather than wins. While Hinkie’s supporters argue that the Process was successful because it netted the Sixers Embiid and set up the pick to draft Simmons, his detractors said his strategy was detrimental to the league. In 2016, Hinkie resigned. When he was in charge, the Sixers were among the worst teams in the N.B.A. Two years later, Embiid and Simmons led the Sixers on a surprising run to the second round of the playoffs, which only further entrenched Hinkie as a cult hero among Sixers fans.On a recent podcast with ESPN, Hinkie spoke glowingly of his friend Morey’s willingness to make unpopular moves.“That kind of being willing to do the hard right thing, I think, is the kind of thing Daryl will help with a bunch,” Hinkie said. “He’s proven with patient ownership that he can be successful.”Under Morey, the Rockets never had a losing season. He often opted to rapidly retool rather than wholly rebuild, such as by swapping Chris Paul for Russell Westbrook — “often” being the operative word. Morey kept the team competitive, seamlessly transitioning from the era of Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady to one led by James Harden. To acquire Harden, though, Morey overhauled the roster, trading away several productive veterans and letting others leave in free agency.The Rockets made the playoffs 10 times during Morey’s tenure, including two trips to the Western Conference finals. But Houston never made the N.B.A. finals with Morey, and critics have questioned whether his approach can build a champion, given that other teams rebuilt themselves and won rings in less time.So there may come a time when Morey looks at Philadelphia’s dire salary cap situation and inconsistent superstar production and determines that retooling won’t be good enough, as he did before maneuvering to get Harden. The Sixers have no cap space, and two players, Horford and Tobias Harris, are signed to expensive, long-term deals that do not seem justified by their production last season.“Our championship team probably isn’t going to have the same exact players that we have right now,” Morey said Monday. “Do I think that the players we have right now are very good and we can build around and continue to grow from there? I do believe that, absolutely.”Morey is the kind of executive willing to pull the trigger on deals that would make his competitors squeamish. He is open to grand experiments, provided there is a statistical justification. Owners with egos and billions at stake might not take kindly if the results aren’t there right away.Morey is likely aware of that. Take, for example, when he shared a tongue-in-cheek image of Hinkie on Twitter in May: His caption read, “He never got a chance to build.” More

Gail Miller, whose family has owned the Utah Jazz for 35 years, has agreed to sell a majority interest in the franchise to Ryan Smith, the co-founder of Qualtrics, a Utah-based software company.Miller, 77, who along with her late husband Larry bought a 50 percent stake in the Jazz in May 1985, announced the agreement Wednesday. The sale includes the majority interest in the Jazz, Vivint Smart Home Arena, the Salt Lake City Stars of the N.B.A. G League and management of the Class AAA Salt Lake Bees minor league baseball team. ESPN reported a purchase price of $1.66 billion.“After much soul searching, lengthy discussions and extensive evaluations of our long-term goals, my family and I decided this was the right time to pass our responsibility and cherished stewardship of 35 years to Ryan and Ashley, who share our values and are committed to keeping the team in Utah,” Miller, in a statement, said of Smith and his wife.Smith, 42, is a Utah native and longtime Jazz fan. Qualtrics, which SAP bought for $8 billion in January 2019, became the team’s jersey sponsor in the 2017-18 season but opted to put a patch for the cancer research campaign “5 For The Fight” on the jersey rather than the company’s logo.Larry Miller, a successful car dealer in Utah, purchased the first 50 percent stake for $8 million in 1985 and the remaining 50 percent of the Jazz for $14 million in 1986, quelling fears that the team would relocate to Miami or Minnesota. Led by Coach Jerry Sloan and the ultra-durable star duo of Karl Malone and John Stockton, Utah quickly established itself under Miller’s stewardship as one of the league’s steadiest franchises.Under the Millers, Utah accumulated nine division titles and made two trips to the N.B.A. finals, in 1996-97 and 1997-98, losing both to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls. The Jazz have won only four playoff series since their trip to the Western Conference finals in 2006-7, but they continue to be regarded as one of the league’s well-run franchises, led by the team president Dennis Lindsey and Coach Quin Snyder.Smith, though, will have some significant decisions to make early in his ownership tenure, once approved. Both of Utah’s All-Stars — guard Donovan Mitchell and center Rudy Gobert — are eligible for lucrative contract extensions heading into the new season.The Jazz endured a tumultuous 2019-20 season after Gobert’s positive coronavirus test on March 11 before a game in Oklahoma City led to the N.B.A.’s shutdown. Mitchell subsequently tested positive as well, leading to tension within Utah’s locker room about Gobert’s self-described “careless” behavior in the days preceding the positive tests. Utah appeared to recover during the N.B.A. restart at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla., and took a 3-1 series lead over Denver in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs, only to suffer an agonizing defeat.Another challenge for Smith will be ensuring that there are no repeats of the March 2019 incident in which Russell Westbrook, then playing for Oklahoma City, was racially abused by a fan courtside. The Jazz banned the fan for life in response and another fan for a separate incident involving Westbrook during the 2018 playoffs, but Utah’s fans remain under scrutiny after Mitchell was met with some hostility in June in the wake of an Instagram post in recognition of Juneteenth.“There’s a certain stigma — there’s no secret about that in Utah — and obviously the comments didn’t help,” Mitchell said in July. “But us as athletes want it to be known that we won’t stand for any of the racism and whatever else comes with it.” More

More Than a Vote, the collective of athletes headlined by the basketball star LeBron James, on Wednesday will introduce its final political push before Election Day, a rapid response and advertisement operation meant to combat the spread of misinformation among younger Black voters.The initiative, which is a collaboration with the political group Win Black and includes some celebrity partners, will seek to educate younger Black voters on how to spot false political statements spreading on social media. The goal is to provide advice that culminates in young people making a plan to vote — either by absentee ballot or in person.Called “Under Review,” the effort will be featured on Snapchat through Election Day, and will include videos from celebrities and activists like Desus and Mero, Jemele Hill and the athletes involved in More Than a Vote.It comes after the group has invested in recruiting more than 40,000 poll workers, helping formerly incarcerated people regain their voting rights and aiding the push for N.B.A. arenas to be converted into polling locations.In a statement, the co-founders of Win Black said the videos would take on political misinformation targeted at suppressing the Black vote, a problem that federal agencies identified in the 2016 presidential election.“Harmful disinformation is being weaponized to block the voices and votes of Black Americans — but we have the power to stop it,” said the co-founders, Andre Banks and Ashley Bryant. “Through this partnership, Under Review will urgently flood the zone with the facts we need to counter the targeted attacks coming from bad actors at home and abroad.”In a phone interview with The New York Times, Mr. James discussed the importance of voting, and how he sees his evolving role as both an athlete and a social activist. Mr. James, who as a member of the Los Angeles Lakers recently won his fourth N.B.A. championship, framed off-the-court activism as a key part of how he views his legacy. More

Finally — finally — the N.B.A. off-season is here. Sure, it’s October, months removed from when the off-season would typically begin if there wasn’t a pandemic. And of course, the Los Angeles Lakers are still trying to figure out if they can throw a Zoom championship parade after conquering the Walt Disney World bubble.(They can. But you just know that J.R. Smith would forget to mute himself during LeBron James’s speech.)This means that 30 N.B.A. teams are about to reload, retool or reset through trades, free agency and the draft, though the league still needs to sort out the financial impact of the pandemic and set the salary cap for next season.The Western Conference is a particularly tough nut to crack. The Lakers won the championship and should be assumed to be the favorites to win again, given their dominant playoff run. But other teams with young stars might have something to say about that.So for all the general managers out there, we have some suggestions for one thing every team in the West needs to do this off-season.The ContendersLos Angeles LakersAnthony Davis has a player option this off-season, and if the Lakers persuade him to sign an extension, that’s a success. With Davis and LeBron James, the team would remain title favorites even with Statler, Waldorf and me rounding out the starting lineup.Los Angeles ClippersThe Clippers were an expensive Hollywood production with A-list stars meant to win it all during awards season. But instead, they were upstaged by less established talent. In other words, they were Netflix’s “The Irishman.”Their path forward is not ideal: They probably won’t have much cap space. Montrezl Harrell, the sixth man of the year, and Marcus Morris are unrestricted free agents. They don’t have a first-round draft pick, and their two stars, Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, can leave after the 2020-21 season.The Clippers have to bank on one thing: fixing their chemistry. It was an issue all season, so in theory, a new coach could come along and mend that, given Leonard and George’s talent.Denver NuggetsThe Nuggets are in one of the better positions in the league: Their franchise cornerstone, Nikola Jokic, is locked up through 2022-23. He has a solid, if inconsistent, secondary player in Jamal Murray, signed through 2023-24. They have some big contracts coming off the books, freeing cap space.But their most crucial move might be right under their noses. Jerami Grant was a solid contributor on both ends and can test the free-agent market. The Nuggets would do well to keep him.Golden State WarriorsAll the Warriors have to do this off-season is wrap Stephen Curry in cellophane. If the Warriors are healthy next season — this means a rested Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green — Golden State will be a solid title contender.The MaybesHouston RocketsThe Rockets need to surround James Harden and Russell Westbrook with shooting. They showed that their miniball style can work, but Westbrook’s jump shooting woes became an issue in the postseason, and Houston needs someone to take the pressure off Harden.The Rockets, with no cap space, will have to solve this either through trade or free agency on the cheap. Kyle Korver and Isaiah Thomas might fit the bill here offensively, but defensively — yikes.Oklahoma City ThunderThis is an attractive franchise: a bevy of future draft picks, compelling young talent like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a head coach opening. And Chris Paul, at 35, showed he was still one of the best point guards in the game.There is not much for the Thunder to do, other than try to hit home runs with their two late-first-round draft picks. Relax and enjoy the ride. See the light at the end of the tunnel. They do not have enough cap space to attract a top-tier free agent to play alongside Paul. The team’s most tradable asset is Steven Adams, who has a roughly $27.5 million expiring contract. But the team is best off letting it expire rather than taking on other contracts. Be as competitive as you can until 2021-22, when you will have cap space, draft picks and maybe Paul to make a legitimate run.Utah JazzThe Jazz are capped out, both in salary and their talent ceiling. They’re not good enough to play with the Lakers, but they’re not bad enough to get lottery picks. Rudy Gobert has a $27.5 million expiring contract, and given his pandemic-related tensions with Donovan Mitchell, it’s worth asking whether the team would be better off with a center who can space the floor.Dallas MavericksUpgrade defensively. They’ll have their midlevel exception and a first-round draft pick to do so. They have two franchise blue chips in Luka Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis, but the team was 18th defensively last season. (A caveat: Porzingis just had surgery to repair a meniscus injury in his right knee. He has had trouble staying healthy for most of his career, but he really showed his potential in the playoffs.)Bonus: Give Boban Marjanovic more playing time. Because the world is suffering and we need a smile.Portland Trail BlazersThis team barely got to an eighth seed, an underwhelming campaign. But if Jusuf Nurkic and Zach Collins can be healthy for a full season, the Blazers will be formidable. Maybe. Or Portland can hope that an opposing star insults Damian Lillard’s rap talents, fueling an aggrieved run for the ages.Memphis GrizzliesPoke the bear. Constantly remind Ja Morant that one basketball writer out of 100 did not choose him to win the Rookie of the Year Award. Text him every morning. Mention it at every practice. Send him an accidental email with the subject line: “Man, I wish we had Zion Williamson. He might’ve had a better rookie year.”Phoenix SunsMove the team’s home arena to Walt Disney World, where the Suns went 8-0 in the bubble. Aside from that, the Suns are one of the few teams with lots of cap space and a lottery pick. It’s a less top-heavy draft class than usual, but Danilo Gallinari and Montrezl Harrell are legitimate free-agent targets for them.The Maybe-NotsSan Antonio SpursPromise Coach Gregg Popovich that he won’t have to do any more sideline interviews, and the Spurs will go 82-0. Aside from that, much of their off-season will hinge on whether DeMar DeRozan will opt in for the final year of his contract. The Spurs should hope he stays. Under the radar, DeRozan has played some of the best basketball of his career in San Antonio.Sacramento KingsTrade Buddy Hield, who has not so subtly suggested he wants out of Sacramento, and hand the keys over to Bogdan Bogdanovic, a restricted free agent. Hield is a young, talented guard on a reasonable contract who can net the Kings some assets. If this drags on, the Kings will lose leverage.New Orleans PelicansFind the right coach for Zion Williamson. Players are more likely than ever to force their way off teams, even when locked into contracts. Any year of Williamson’s prime squandered with a coach who doesn’t mesh with him is an invitation for Williamson to try to leave when he can, as LeBron James did in Cleveland.Minnesota TimberwolvesMinnesota has the No. 1 pick in the draft, as well as a Nets first-rounder. The Timberwolves have one of the best young players in the league, with Karl-Anthony Towns, and a talented guard beside him, D’Angelo Russell. Minnesota cannot whiff on the first pick. Go get James Wiseman. His athleticism will allow him to play three positions on the floor and Minnesota needs both wing and frontcourt help. More

The Los Angeles Clippers are hiring Tyronn Lue as their new head coach, according to two people with knowledge of the deal.The Clippers on Wednesday were finalizing a five-year contract with Lue to install him as the successor to Doc Rivers, according to the people, who were not authorized to discuss the deal publicly. Lue was en route to Los Angeles, one of the people said, after spending the past three days in Houston interviewing for the Rockets’ coaching vacancy.Lue spent the past season as the top assistant on Rivers’s staff after negotiations for him to become the Los Angeles Lakers’ head coach collapsed in May 2019.The Lakers and Lue were closing in on a three-year deal worth about $20 million when Lue walked away from the negotiations, dismayed both by the relatively short term that the Lakers had offered and their insistence on choosing the assistant coaches for Lue’s staff.Lue thought that, after winning a championship in Cleveland in 2016, he should have received a longer deal and the latitude to choose his own staff. The Lakers turned to Frank Vogel after the negotiations with Lue dissolved and, under Vogel, the team won its first championship since 2010.With the Clippers, Lue will become the league’s eighth active coach with at least one championship ring, joining Dallas’s Rick Carlisle, Golden State’s Steve Kerr, Miami’s Erik Spoelstra, San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich, Toronto’s Nick Nurse, Vogel and Rivers, who was recently hired by the Philadelphia 76ers.Rivers is one of the league’s most respected coaches — and leaders — but lost his job with the Clippers last month after their second-round playoff collapse against the Denver Nuggets. That was the third time in Rivers’s coaching career that his team had lost a best-of-seven playoff series after taking a lead of three games to one. It happened twice with the Clippers.Steve Ballmer, the Clippers’ free-spending and title-hungry owner, decided that a new voice was needed despite Rivers’s stature, according to a person familiar with the Clippers’ thinking who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. In Lue, Ballmer has secured a replacement who is accustomed to coaching with the burden of expectations: Lue replaced the ousted David Blatt in Cleveland when the Cavaliers were leading the Eastern Conference with a record of 30-11 in January 2016.Lue and the Cavaliers, led by LeBron James, then won the first major championship in Cleveland in 52 years with a comeback from a three-games-to-one deficit against the Golden State Warriors, who had a league-record 73 wins in the regular season.The Clippers have never reached the conference finals as a franchise, and their two stars, Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, are under contract for only one more guaranteed season before both can return to free agency.The arrivals of Leonard and George in July 2019 seemingly made the latest incarnation of the Clippers the franchise’s most viable title threat, but they could not build on the early promise of victories over the Lakers in marquee television games on opening night and on Christmas Day.Lue will be tasked with establishing the chemistry that Rivers couldn’t produce and with helping George bounce back from the considerable criticism he received for a number of subpar playoff performances.Lue, 43, won two championships as a lightly used reserve guard with the Lakers in 2000 and 2001 and posted a 128-77 record in two and a half seasons as James’s coach with the Cavaliers. After James joined the Lakers through free agency in July, Cleveland started the 2018-19 season with an 0-6 record and dismissed Lue. More

Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, is stepping down from his post on Nov. 1, he announced Thursday.Morey said managing the Rockets was “the most gratifying experience of my professional life” and that he was confident Houston would “continue to perform at the highest level.”The move came after the Rockets were knocked out of the N.B.A. playoffs in the second round and more than a year after Morey shared an image on Twitter in support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. The tweet upended relations between the N.B.A. and the Chinese government. China’s state-run television network did not broadcast any N.B.A. games from then until Game 5 of the N.B.A. finals last Friday night.Morey’s tweet, on Oct. 4, 2019, got an immediate rebuke from Tilman Fertitta, the owner of the Rockets, who said in a post on Twitter: “Listen….@dmorey does NOT speak for the @HoustonRockets.”Shortly after the tweet, Commissioner Adam Silver said the Chinese government demanded that Morey lose his job, a request he said he denied. Several Chinese sponsors, including the shoe company Li-Ning and the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Credit Card Center, suspended their partnerships with the Rockets. In the wake of the controversy, Fertitta referred to Morey as “the best general manager in the league.”In an interview, Morey and Fertitta declined to answer questions about the China uproar and abruptly ended the interview after receiving questions about it. Morey did say the decision to leave Houston was his own. Fertitta said their relationship was not affected by the Hong Kong tweet. “We’ve never had a cross word over it,” he said.Morey said their relationship had “been great the whole time” and that he was not leaving because of a disagreement over the team’s strategy or direction.Morey was an aggressive dealmaker who made 77 trades during his 13-plus years in charge, and he had been at the forefront of the rising use of advanced statistics in N.B.A. front offices over the past decade.In September, shortly after Houston’s elimination from the playoffs, Fertitta said that Morey’s job was “safe” and that he was sure Morey would “pick the right head coach” after Coach Mike D’Antoni’s contract expired.In a statement on Thursday, Fertitta praised Morey as a “brilliant innovator who helped the Rockets become a perennial contender.”Morey was named the league’s executive of the year in the 2017-18 season and has been the general manager of the franchise since May 2007. His rise in the basketball world was considered unusual at the time. He had been a front office executive for the Boston Celtics, but had never played or coached professional basketball, nor had he been a scout. His background was in consulting.Morey is credited with bringing to the N.B.A. the basketball equivalent of “Moneyball,” a way of building team rosters based on advanced statistics. He co-founded the M.I.T. Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, which is held yearly and has grown into a large event attracting those connected to basketball far beyond statistics. In 2018, former President Barack Obama was a speaker.The Rockets have made the playoffs 10 times during Morey’s tenure as general manager. They made the Western Conference finals twice — in 2015 and 2018, each time being foiled by the Golden State Warriors. Morey developed a penchant for making unconventional moves, such as trading away a young, talented center in Clint Capela in February in an effort to play an entirely small lineup. The 2017-18 Rockets put a scare into the Warriors, taking a 3-2 series lead in the conference finals before succumbing to one of the most talented rosters in N.B.A. history in seven games.Morey was also able to acquire superstars, often for a bargain, such as James Harden and Chris Paul, in addition to finding undervalued talent. He gained a reputation as one of the best front office executives in the league, despite the Rockets never getting to the N.B.A. finals. In 2018, Morey was heavily pursued to take over the Philadelphia 76ers, but he ultimately declined their offer.His resignation comes at an awkward time for the franchise: The team is in the process of hiring a new coach and has begun interviews. Houston has not yet announced Morey’s successor, but the strong expectation is that Rafael Stone, the team’s executive vice president for basketball operations and longtime general counsel, will take over, according to the person briefed on the decision. More

China Central Television, the state-run TV network, announced Friday that it would televise an N.B.A. game for the first time since a dispute with the league began last fall after a team executive expressed support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.The move suggested a softening of tensions between the N.B.A. and China that the league estimated had cost it hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and that elicited criticism from fans and politicians.The change was to begin with Game 5 of the N.B.A. finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat on Friday night.“On the morning of October 10, the channel of CCTV Sports will broadcast the fifth game of the N.B.A. finals,” the network said in a post in Chinese on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform. “Welcome everyone to watch at the time!”In a separate statement in Chinese, a spokesperson for the China Media Group, which oversees CCTV, said: “In the Chinese National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival that just passed, the N.B.A. expressed holiday blessings to Chinese fans. We have also noticed the good will continuously expressed by the N.B.A. for some time. Especially since the beginning of this year, the N.B.A. has made active efforts in supporting the Chinese people in fighting against the novel coronavirus epidemic.”It was unclear whether the network would resume broadcasting regular-season games next season.A spokesman for the N.B.A. did not respond to a request for comment.The N.B.A. had not been completely off the air in China, and there had been signs that the icy relationship was thawing. Tencent, a streaming network in China, had been airing up to three games a night during the regular season. After the death of Kobe Bryant in January, the Chinese ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, posted a Twitter tribute to Bryant, who was one of the most popular athletes in the country. In February, Huang Ping, the Chinese consul general, publicly thanked the N.B.A. at a news conference in New York for donating $1.4 million to help fight the spread of the coronavirus in China.Even so, CCTV’s airing of a finals game indicated a formal normalizing of relationships between the two entities. Joe Tsai, the owner of the Nets and co-founder of Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, told Bloomberg Businessweek in January, “Once you are on the air, everything will come back.”The conflict began on Oct. 4, 2019, when Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, shared an image on Twitter that said “FIGHT FOR FREEDOM STAND WITH HONG KONG,” just days before the Nets and Los Angeles Lakers were to play preseason games in mainland China.The backlash was immediate.N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver later said that he had rejected a demand from the Chinese government to fire Morey. But criticism came domestically as well, after the league issued a statement calling it “regrettable” that Morey’s views “deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China.” Several prominent American politicians, like Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, have criticized the N.B.A.’s continued business relationship with the authoritarian country.In September, Silver told CNN during a live event: “At the end of the day, I think those are decisions for our government, in terms of where American businesses should operate. I continue to believe that the people-to-people exchanges we’re seeing by playing in China are positive.”Protesters began to appear at N.B.A. games when the regular season began. The league’s relationship with China came under more scrutiny in July, when ESPN reported about abuse at N.B.A.-sponsored basketball academies there, a partnership that the league announced it would be “re-evaluating.”The N.B.A. has long made global expansion — particularly into China, where it now has more fans than in the U.S. — a core part of its mission. In 1979, the Washington Bullets became the first N.B.A. team to travel there, playing exhibition games against the Chinese national team. The scoreboard referred to the team as the “American Bullets.”In the late 1980s, David Stern, the former league commissioner who died in January, negotiated a deal with CCTV to begin airing games in China. In 1994, the N.B.A. finals were broadcast there live for the first time. A decade later, the league held a preseason game in Beijing for the first time. By then, Yao Ming had entered the N.B.A. and become a dominant figure both on the court and culturally in the U.S. and China, his home country.Stern, in a 2006 interview with Sports Illustrated, acknowledged that China’s repressive human rights record concerned him, but he added: “At the end of the day I have a responsibility to my owners to make money. I can never forget that, no matter what my personal feelings might be.”David Chen and Claire Fu contributed reporting. More