A Higher Court

In October 2019, a scant few months before the coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan, the Brooklyn Nets and the Los Angeles Lakers were scheduled to play a low-stakes exhibition game in Shanghai before the start of the upcoming season. The game was part of the league’s ongoing courtship of international markets, but it was suddenly overshadowed by a tweet from then–Houston Rockets executive Daryl Morey that seemed to express support for the protests in Hong Kong.