The Rockets do not plan to discipline Morey, according to one person with knowledge of the ownership’s thinking who was not authorized to discuss the situation publicly. Yet it remains to be seen how much Morey’s apology will mollify the fans and various entities in China that expressed such loud dismay about Morey’s original Twitter post, in which he shared an image that read, “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong” — referencing the protests that have raged for months. The slogan is commonly chanted at demonstrations and has been spray-painted throughout the city.

In addition to Chinese sponsors such as the shoe company Li Ning and the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Card Center, which both announced that they were pausing their partnerships with the Rockets, team officials faced an immediate backlash from the Chinese Basketball Association and the Chinese consulate in Houston. The basketball association announcement Sunday that it was suspending cooperation with the Rockets was particularly jarring, since the federation president is the Hall of Fame center Yao Ming, who starred from the Rockets from 2002 to 2011. Yao’s N.B.A. success made the Rockets a favorite among Chinese fans.

The timing of the controversy could scarcely be more awkward for the N.B.A., with the Los Angeles Lakers, one of the league’s marquee franchises, set to play two exhibition games in mainland China this week against the Nets, whose new owner, Joseph Tsai, is the billionaire co-founder of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver is scheduled to hold news conferences in both Japan and China later this week.

In a statement late Sunday night, Tsai attempted to bridge the intercontinental divide among fans, but reinforced the chasm that exists in how they perceive the events in Hong Kong. He referred to the protests as a “separatist movement,” a common sentiment in China but a label the demonstrators deny. He framed the movement as a matter of “territorial integrity of China,” though most protesters insist they are uninterested in independence.

“I don’t know Daryl personally. I am sure he’s a fine NBA general manager, and I will take at face value his subsequent apology that he was not as well informed as he should have been,” Tsai wrote. “But the hurt that this incident has caused will take a long time to repair.”

Basketball has long been China’s most popular sport and the N.B.A has made great efforts to cultivate the audience there, with a market that features hundreds of millions of fans.

The league’s biggest stars routinely travel there during the off-seasons to promote their sponsorships and in July the league announced a five-year extension of a partnership with Tencent Holdings, a Chinese tech conglomerate, to stream games and other league services in China. This deal is reported to be around $1.5 billion — although Tencent responded to the controversy Sunday by announcing that it would not broadcast Rockets games.