The NBA is closely monitoring the ongoing trade dispute and tariff rift between the United States and China, though the league is not yet worried that it will interfere with any business happening with the world’s most populous nation.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver even went as far on Thursday night to suggest that the sport could provide a reprise of sorts to the phenomenon known as “ping-pong diplomacy” — when table tennis players from the US and China played in the early 1970s and essentially began a major mending of relations between the two countries.

Silver said he’s discussed the issue at length with former NBA star Yao Ming, the biggest name in Chinese basketball.

“I am not concerned at this time,” Silver said during his annual state of the league address prior to Game 1 of the NBA Finals. “Of course, we’re not immune from global politics. It’s something that we’re paying a lot of attention to. 

“I look, though, to sports — and this is something Yao and I have discussed — where we can use basketball maybe in the way ping-pong was used in the days of Richard Nixon. There could be something called ‘basketball diplomacy’.”

The NBA’s ties with China have never been stronger: the Chinese National Team have been invited to play in the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas in July, the league are sending LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers to China for a pair of pre-season games in October, and the Fiba World Cup will be held across China from August 31 to September 15.

But the political ties are severely strained right now. The Trump administration has imposed 25 per cent tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese imports and is planning to tax the $300bn in imports that have so far been spared — with the Chinese responding this week by saying they may be willing to escalate matters into an all-out trade war.

Silver sees these times as a chance for basketball to, again, bring cultures together.

“I think with the World Cup of Basketball coming to China in September, with our continuing to play pre-season games there, with the attention on our finals right now, I see it as an opportunity, again, to demonstrate to people that through sports there’s commonality,” Silver said. “And we can use the values of sports hopefully as a positive force to continue to bring people together.”