(Adds details throughout) BEIJING, Oct 9 (Reuters) – The National Basketball Association (NBA) and Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba announced on Thursday a multi-year partnership, as the league returns to the Chinese market for the first time since 2019, with two games in Macau. The NBA is due to play two pre-season games in the Chinese special administrative region on Friday and Sunday, part of a five-year contract with Las Vegas Sands' Macau unit Sands China. It marks the first time the NBA is playing in Macau, the world's largest gambling hub, and follows a years-long absence amid controversy over the 2019 Hong Kong protests. The Macau games aim to bolster the NBA's profile in China, where around 300 million play basketball, at a time of rising political tensions between the United St

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