China has reacted with fury after the general manager of basketball team Houston Rockets tweeted his support for the protests in Hong Kong.

Basketball is hugely popular in China, and highly profitable for the US sport’s governing body, the National Basketball Association (NBA). Furthermore, the Chinese Basketball Association president is currently Yao Ming, who played with the Rockets from 2002 to 2011. Yao’s NBA success made the Rockets a favourite among Chinese fans.

Rockets' manager Daryl Morey ignited controversy on Friday by re-tweeting an image which was captioned: “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong.”

He deleted the tweet, and the team’s owner, Tillman Fertitta, quickly distanced the team from Mr Morey’s tweet.

Mr Morey - one of the league’s most visible officials on social media, with over 200,000 followers – then backtracked, stating: “I was merely voicing one thought, based on one interpretation, of one complicated event” and emphasising that his words were “my own and in no way represent the Rockets or the NBA.”