Silver wants to turn NBA into gold in China

Former NBA star Michael Jordan, owner and chairman of the Charlotte Hornets, waves in a match during the 2015 NBA China Games in Shenzhen city, South China's Guangdong province, October 11, 2015. [Photo/IC]

"In this case, the main interest is to give fans the ability to watch games in prime time during the evening here. I think we will experiment with it at some point to get a sense of how much it will increase viewership.

"I will say I am a little concerned about our players' performance levels because their body clocks are used to playing in the evening or afternoon. But as viewership continues to grow here, it's something inevitably that we will take a stronger look at," he said.

The league's increasing presence on all media platforms in China seems to provide a compelling argument for such an adjustment.

The 2014-15 NBA season was watched by more than 690 million television viewers in China, while the average number of viewers per game during the playoffs reached 2.3 million on Tencent across all platforms - a 160 percent increase over the previous season.