The NBA has terminated its relationship with a Chinese-based basketball academy located in Xinjiang.
Xinjiang is known as one of the world’s worst humanitarian zones.
Sports Illustrated has obtained a copy of the letter, sent on Tuesday to Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). The note was a response to a June 30th letter Blackburn penned to NBA commissioner Adam Silver over her concerns regarding the league’s relationship with the communist country.
“The NBA has had no involvement with the Xinjiang basketball academy for more than a year, and the relationship has been terminated,” Mark Tatum wrote in a one-sentence response to the senator’s question.
Tatum answered two other questions posed by the senator, one about a Chinese television station’s ban on NBA games and a second on the NBA’s relationship with Chinese state-owned enterprise Alibaba. Tatum says that China Central Television’s ban on airing its games has been a “significant” financial blow to the league, estimated in the “hundreds of millions.”