The NBA is set to return to China next season, signing a deal to play preseason games in the country more than five years after commissioner Adam Silver failed to punish Daryl Morey for tweeting support for anti-government protesters in Hong Kong, effectively banning the league. .
Neither the NBA nor Chinese officials have commented publicly on the matter, according to The Associated Press, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the agreement would be announced Friday.
The Brooklyn Nets and Phoenix Suns are scheduled to play in Macau, China’s gambling capital, on Oct. 10, 2025, and then again two days later, he said, adding that there are plans to hold two more preseason games in China in 2026.
The two teams competed with casino operator Las Vegas Sands Corp. The match will be played at Soyou’s Venetian Arena in Macau. Patrick Dumont, Sands’ president and chief operating officer, became governor of the Dallas Mavericks late last year after his family purchased the team.
Nets is owned by Joe Tsai, chairman of Chinese tech giant Alibaba.
NBA players will be in attendance at the Macau Stadium this weekend. Basketball Hall of Famers Tony Parker, Ray Allen and Tracy McGrady are scheduled to headline Saturday’s celebrity game, along with former NBA standouts Stephon Marbury, DeMarcus Cousins and Cuttino Mobley.
This is all part of a long series of moves towards some sort of return to normalcy between China and the league. In some ways, it was a welcome return to the NBA. Miami’s Jimmy Butler, who has an sponsorship deal with Chinese clothing company Li-Ning, has toured the country the past two offseasons and drawn huge crowds. State’s Stephen Curry and Sacramento’s De’Aaron Fox drew huge crowds when they visited in September.
Then in October, Silver said he thought the league would “resume games in China at some point.”
The geopolitical rift began in October 2019 when Morey, then the general manager of the Houston Rockets and current general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers, posted a tweet supporting anti-government protesters in Hong Kong. The tweet was quickly deleted, but the repercussions lingered for years, with Beijing clearly unhappy with Silver’s support of Morey’s right to speak on the matter.
“If this is the result of us sticking to our values, we still think it’s very important that we stick to those values,” Silver said at the time.
The timing of the tweet was especially awkward considering the Nets and Los Angeles Lakers were in China for two games at the time. The game was played quietly with most fans in attendance, many of whom had NBA logos taped to their jerseys. There weren’t even customary pre-game and post-game press conferences.
The NBA has been criticized by both Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. for playing the game and failing to do more to address China’s human rights record.
For a year after that tweet, no NBA games were aired on China’s state broadcaster CCTV, largely because Silver did not approve Morey the way China wanted. The final scene of the 2020 NBA Finals was broadcast through CCTV, and game broadcasting began in earnest again in 2022. NBA games were broadcast to Chinese fans through streaming service Tencent, another broadcast partner of the league.
The league said the rift cost it up to $400 million in lost revenue in the following years, and that number has apparently continued to rise. But along the way there were steps toward reconciliation. The NBA legend and Yao Ming traveled to the United States for Commissioner Emeritus David Stern’s memorial service in January 2020, which was seen at the time as a mutual signal that the league and China wanted to mend fences. China then publicly thanked the NBA for sending more than $1 million worth of medical supplies to support coronavirus relief efforts in February 2020 (during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic).
The league has played preseason games in Macau once before, with Orlando beating Cleveland there in 2007. On the same trip, the Magic also played the Chinese All-Star team in Macau. And in 2008, the U.S. basketball team played an exhibition game in Macau ahead of the Beijing Olympics.
“The fans respect the game of basketball here so much,” then Cavaliers star LeBron James said after playing in Macau in 2007. “I’m really glad 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 urged the city to diversify its gambling-reliant economy, hoping it could grow tourism and become a bridge for trade between China and Portuguese-speaking countries.
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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA
