The NBA will return to China for the first time in five years with two preseason games between the Brooklyn Nets and Phoenix Suns scheduled for Macau in October 2025, the league announced on Friday.
A tweet from then Houston Rockets manager Daryl Morey supporting protests in Hong Kong stirred up some controversies, leading to no NBA games being held in China since two preseason games in 2019.
Reports, however, suggest that the relationship between the NBA and China have improved in recent times, thanks to the intervention of NBA China Chief Executive Michael Ma, who was appointed in 2020.
The NBA reportedly lost hundreds of millions of dollars due to its inability to air games on Chinese television until 2022, and while speaking at a sports management conference in October, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said that he thought the league would “bring back games to China at some point.”
“We had a well-known incident there pre-pandemic with a tweet and China’s government took us off the air for a period of time,” Silver said. “We accepted that. We stood by our values.”
NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum, who was in Macao, said that the agreement is “a significant milestone in the continued global growth of basketball.”
“We’re incredibly excited to be partnering with Sands to bring NBA games back to Macao beginning next year,” Tatum said.
The NBA has seen expansions across other countries, with preseason games played in Abu Dhabi, Mexico and France.
The two preseason games in Macau will be played at the Venetian Arena, part of the Las Vegas Sands conglomerate controlled by the Adelson family — the majority ownership group in the Dallas Mavericks.
The first game between the Nets, owned by Joe Tsai, the chairman of Chinese tech giant Alibaba, and the Mavericks, will be played on 10 October 2025, with the second game set for two days later.
The NBA has also signed off on a celebrity game in Macau on Saturday to rubber-stamp the return of its games to China. Hall of Famers Tony Parker, Ray Allen and Tracy McGrady, along with former NBA stars Stephon Marbury, DeMarcus Cousins and Cuttino Mobley, are all expected to partake in the exhibition.
