The NBA's Los Angeles Lakers and Brooklyn Nets faced off Thursday before adoring Chinese fans in an exhibition game overshadowed by a free-speech row ignited when an American basketball executive expressed support for Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement. Questions had swirled over whether the game, the first of two planned in China, would proceed after a tweet last Friday by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey thrust the world's top basketball league into the centre of an escalating China-US dispute. The game was not broadcast within China after plans to air it were ditched amid a general revolt by the NBA's Chinese sponsors and partners, who severed ties with the league to protest against Morey's stance and the NBA's support for his freedom of expression.