Mavericks, Rockets headed to China in October to play pair of preseason games

The NBA is going back to China next season, as expected, announcing Monday that the Dallas Mavericks and Houston Rockets will play a pair of preseason games at the gambling hub of Macao in October.

The games, like the preseason ones this season between Brooklyn and Phoenix, will be played at Macao’s Venetian Arena, which is owned by the Sands Corp. — a casino operator there as well. Sands president and chief operating officer Patrick Dumont is governor of the Mavericks, which made Dallas a logical pick to play in the China games before too long.

“I could not be prouder of having the Mavericks come to Macao and have the team experience the incredible hospitality that Sands properties provide,” Dumont said in statements released by the NBA.

Houston was another logical pick to play in China. The Rockets have long had enormous popularity in that nation, largely because of Yao Ming — a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, an eight-time NBA All-Star and the best Chinese player ever — spending his NBA career in Houston.

Since drafting Yao in 2002, the Rockets “have received overwhelming love from the passionate basketball fans of China and built several cherished memories playing overseas,” Houston alternate governor Patrick Fertitta said.

The games will be on Oct. 9 and Oct. 11.

The NBA returned to China this season, the official end of a years-long rift between the league and the Chinese government. It was sparked in October 2019 when Daryl Morey, then the general manager of the Rockets and now an executive with the Philadelphia 76ers, tweeted a show of support for anti-government protesters in Hong Kong.

The tweet was deleted quickly, but the fallout lasted years and Beijing was clearly displeased by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver supporting Morey’s right to speak out.

NBA games were even taken off television in China for years, but fences have been mended and several of the league’s biggest names — LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Jimmy Butler among them — have visited China in recent years on promotional tours and drawn massive crowds for events.

Macao is a former Portuguese colony that was returned to Chinese rule in 1999 and is the only place in China where casino gambling is legal.

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