NBA returns to China for two Suns-Nets preseason games in 2025, AP source says
The NBA is returning to China next season, reaching a deal to play preseason games there more than five years after the league was effectively banned because Commissioner Adam Silver failed to punish Daryl Morey for tweeting his support for anti-government protesters in Hong Kong.
A deal will be announced Friday, said a person who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because neither the NBA nor Chinese officials have spoken publicly on the matter.
The Brooklyn Nets and Phoenix Suns will play in Macau, China’s gambling hub, on Oct. 10, 2025, and again two days later, the source said, adding that there are plans to hold two more games preparatory courses in China in 2026.
The teams will play at the Venetian Arena in Macau, which is owned by Las Vegas Sands Corp. – which also operates a casino there. Sands President and Chief Operating Officer Patrick Dumont became governor of the Dallas Mavericks late last year after his family acquired the team.
The Nets are owned by Joe Tsai, chairman of Chinese technology giant Alibaba.
There will be an NBA presence in this Macau arena this weekend: Basketball Hall of Famers Tony Parker, Ray Allen and Tracy McGrady, as well as former NBA stars Stephon Marbury, DeMarcus Cousins and Cuttino Mobley, will headline a celebrity match on Saturday.
This is all part of a long series of developments toward some sort of return to normalcy between China and the league. The NBA, on one level, has been back for a while: Miami’s Jimmy Butler, who has a sponsorship deal with Chinese clothing company Li-Ning, has toured the country and drawn large crowds over the course of each of the last two offseasons, while Golden State’s Stephen Curry and Sacramento’s De’Aaron Fox drew huge crowds when they visited in September.
Then, in October, Silver said he believed the league would “bring the games back to China at some point.”
The geopolitical divide began in October 2019 when Morey, then general manager of the Houston Rockets and now general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers, tweeted his support for anti-government protesters in Hong Kong. The tweet was quickly deleted, but the fallout lasted for years and Beijing was clearly unhappy that Silver supported Morey’s right to speak on the issue.
“If this is the consequence of us adhering to our values, we still think it is extremely important that we adhere to those values,” Silver said at the time.
The timing of the tweet was particularly tricky, given that the Nets and Los Angeles Lakers were in China at the time for two games. The games have been played – largely in silence in the presence of fansmany record NBA logos on the jerseys they wore — and even without the usual pre-game and post-game press conferences.
The NBA has been criticized by Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the United States for playing games and not saying more about China’s human rights record.
Largely because Silver did not sanction Morey to China’s liking, no NBA games were broadcast on CCTV, China’s state television channel, for a year after that tweet. The end of the 2020 NBA Finals was broadcast on CCTV, which began broadcasting the games in earnest again in 2022. NBA games were available to Chinese fans on the streaming service Tencent, another broadcast partner of the league.
The league said the divide cost as much as $400 million in lost revenue over the ensuing year, and that figure surely continued to rise. But there were steps toward reconciliation along the way; The NBA legend and Yao Ming traveled to the United States for Commissioner Emeritus David Stern’s memorial service in January 2020, a move seen at the time as a mutual sign that the league and China wanted to mend fences. This was followed by China publicly thanking the NBA in February 2020 – when what became the COVID-19 pandemic was in its early stages – for sending more than $1 million in medical supplies to support coronavirus relief efforts in this country.
The league has already played a preseason game in Macau once, with Orlando beating Cleveland there in 2007. The Magic, on that same trip, also played a Chinese all-star team in Macau. And in 2008, USA Basketball played exhibitions in Macau before the Beijing Olympics.
“The basketball here, the fans respect it so much,” then-Cavaliers star LeBron James said after playing in Macau in 2007. “It’s great to see that.”
Macau – a former Portuguese colony returned to Chinese rule in 1999 – is the only place in China where casino gambling is legal. Beijing has called on the city to diversify its gaming-based economy, hoping it can develop tourism and serve as a bridge for trade between China and Portuguese-speaking countries.
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