The NBA’s Chinese sponsors cut ties in a fierce mainland backlash following Morey’s tweet in October, just before two NBA teams played pre-season exhibition matches in China.

State broadcaster CCTV also stopped airing NBA games for the country’s millions of ardent basketball fans and has not resumed.

“The magnitude of the loss will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” Silver told a press conference on the sidelines of the All-Star Weekend in Chicago.

“Probably less than US$400 million, maybe even less than that,” he said. However, “it’s substantial”, he added.

“I don’t want to run from that … But I don’t have any sense that there’s any permanent damage to our business there.”

The commissioner said he expected CCTV to resume broadcasts of NBA games but did not give a timeframe.