NBA team owners and legends have welcomed U.S. basketball’s return to China after a six-year hiatus, saying the glitzy gambling hub of Macao is “buzzing like nothing before.”
Two preseason games between the Brooklyn Nets and the Phoenix Suns are scheduled to take place on Friday and Sunday. The teams will play at The Venetian Hotel in Macao, a special administrative region of China.
For Chinese fans of U.S. basketball, it’s been a long wait for a game. That’s because Beijing, the most important overseas market for the NBA, effectively froze out the NBA in 2019 following a fallout over protests in Hong Kong.
In an apparent thawing of political tensions, however, Chinese tech giant Alibaba
on Thursday announced a multi-year partnership with the NBA to provide artificial intelligence and cloud services in China.
