As the NBA Mexico City Games commence for the third straight season, and rumors are swirling that the city may receive a franchise in the near future, we take a look at back at 11 global NBA games that were notable in one way or another.
Editor's note: this list only includes games played between two NBA teams. It does not include games between an NBA team and a non-NBA team.
1) Rockets vs. Mavericks, Mexico, 1992
2) Rockets vs. Mavericks, Mexico, 1997
Basketball has seen a steady rise in popular in Mexico over the last two decades, to the point that the nation's capital, Mexico City, is now considered one of the top options alongside Seattle and Louisville for future NBA expansion. It's easy to see why, as Mexico City's metro population of 21 million exceeds any American city, it's only about a three-hour flight from Dallas, and no professional sport outside of soccer is vying for fan's attention. But the NBA got off to a rocky start in our neighbor to the south, in a 1992 exhibition game between the Rockets and Mavericks. Played in October of that year, just a few months after the Dream Team had won gold at the Olympics and exponentially exploded the worldwide popularity of the NBA, the game (which was the first ever NBA game in Latin America) drew a record crowd of over 19,000, but technical and logistical difficulties tempered the excitement. A scoreboard malfunction left both teams unaware of the score during the game, while faulty sideline chairs led to Rockets star Hakeem Olajuwon tumbling awkwardly to the floor when the seat underneath him crumpled. One year later, an exhibition game between the Knicks and Rockets was overshadowed by a major earthquake that hit the city just 24 hours prior. But the NBA persevered in Mexico, expanding to a four-team preseason tournament starting in 1994, then finally staging a regular season game there in 1997. Featuring the same Rockets and Mavericks that had played in the initial exhibition game five years earlier, a sellout crowd at the Palacio de los Deportes watched Charles Barkley and Clyde Drexler lead Houston to a 108-106 victory. It took the NBA 16 years to return to Mexico City for a regular season game, and things went poorly again in 2013 when a generator flooded in the newly opened Mexico City Arena and filled the arena with smoke, forcing the Spurs and Timberwolves to reschedule the game for later in the season in Minneapolis. Regardless of all these hiccups, Adam Silver and the NBA league office still consider Mexico City a viable future franchise home, and regular season games in the city have become a staple of the league schedule over the last few years.
3) Huskies vs. Knicks, Canada, 1946
One of our favorite pieces of trivia on this site is that the first NBA game wasn't played in the United States. The inaugural NBA (then called the Basketball Association of America, or BAA) season in '46-'47 featured 11 teams, only three of which would survive for more than five seasons. While those three surviving franchises - the Knicks, Celtics, and (then Philadelphia) Warriors - are still active to this day and amongst the league's most popular, the other eight original teams are mostly forgotten. One of them was the Toronto Huskies, who hosted the league's opening game against the Knicks at Maple Leafs Garden on November 1st, 1946. Native New Yorker Ossie Schectman scored the first basket in NBA history for the Knicks, and while the Huskies got 18 points from player-coach Ed Sadowski to lead all scorers, New York prevailed, 68-66. Sadowski wound up as one of four coaches for Toronto that season, as the team slumped to a 22-38 record, tying them for last in the Eastern Division. Attendance was terrible for the Huskies despite some clever marketing, like the opening night promotion where any fan taller than the team's center, 6'8" George Nostrand, received free admission. They were one of four franchises to fold after just one season, and it took 48 years for Canada to receive a new NBA team. On the 50th anniversary of its inaugural game, the NBA commemorated the event by having the Raptors host the Knicks to open the '96-'97 season. New York was once again the victors, this time by a score of 107-99.
4) Suns vs. Nets, Italy, 1984
It typically doesn't get mentioned in the same breath as China, Argentina, Croatia, or Spain, but Italy has arguably the deepest basketball history of any country besides the United States. Its pro league, the Lega Basket Serie A, actually predates the NBA by 26 years, having first awarded a championship in 1920. The first non-American in NBA history was an Italian, Henry Biasatti, who played in the inaugural NBA games in 1946. Their national team has participated in 12 Olympics, winning silver in 1980 and 2004. It was the main stopping point for years for players looking to play professionally outside the U.S., including Mike D'Antoni, Jelly Bean Bryant, and Danny Ferry. And in the late summer of 1984, Italy became the first country to host an exhibition game between two NBA teams. Teams from the NBA had played against international opponents in exhibitions before, including earlier that summer in Italy when the SuperSonics matched up against Benneton Treviso. But the league was attempting something new here, creating a series of games that were dubbed the Italian Open. The Nets and Suns took on several Lega Basket teams in exhibitions staged across the country, before facing off against each other in Milan on September 11th. Though the contests were still just exhibitions, the league office took them seriously, with commissioner David Stern traveling to Italy to attend several games and field questions about potential NBA expansion into Europe. Italy has hosted numerous NBA preseason games since, including as recently as 2015, but still not a regular season game.
5) Suns vs. Jazz, Japan, 1990
Considering how popular baseball is in the country, it's surprising that the NBA actually beat the MLB to the punch in staging a regular season game in Japan. A full decade before the MLB kicked off its 2000 season in Tokyo, the NBA opened the '90-'91 campaign with a pair of games in the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium. It was the first-ever Global Games that actually counted in the standings, and Japanese fans were treated to a premium match-up, featuring Karl Malone, John Stockton and the Jazz in a 1990 playoffs rematch against Kevin Johnson, Tom Chambers, and the Suns. (Was it a coincidence that both franchises were about to receive new arenas funded in large part by Japanese corporations? Ehhh, probably). The Japanese company that sponsored the two games wound up spending upwards of two million dollars, while David Stern and the NBA ensured authenticity by importing an official NBA court, shot clocks, and even the mascots. Phoenix won the opening game in a blowout, behind 38 points and 10 rebounds from Chambers, while Utah squeaked out the second game, thanks to 29 points from Malone. The jet lag did seem to affect the Jazz, who lost four of their next five games upon returning to the states, though they eventually righted the ship and finished the season 54-28. The Suns won their first three games after returning in America and finished the season 55-27. The teams met again in the first round of the 1991 playoffs, with the Jazz prevailing. The NBA hosted its season openers in Tokyo again in '92-'93, '94-'95, '96-'97, '99-'00, and '03-'04. Though the games were so popular that they eventually had to be relocated to the much larger Tokyo Dome, the NBA has recently concentrated Asian outreach efforts more on China and Philippines than Japan.
6) Magic vs. Hawks, United Kingdom, 1993
7) Nets vs. Raptors, United Kingdom, 2011
More than 20 years after the NBA made its regular season debut in Asia, it finally landed in Europe. The continent has been increasingly basketball obsessed since the late '80s, especially in the emerging former Soviet and Yugoslav republics. It was a little slower to take hold in Western Europe, where soccer is king and regional fare like bullfighting, cricket, and handball steal secondary attention. But countries like Spain, Italy, Greece, and France built up their national programs in the '90s and started regularly producing NBA level talent. One last bastion of basketball resistance is England. The sport was introduced there soon after it was invented in the 1890s, by a YMCA president who learned the rules while visiting Canada. Great Britain participated in basketball as a demonstration sport at the 1924 Olympics, and the first official basketball association in the country was founded in 1936. The popularity of basketball waned as professional soccer rose in prestige after World War II, but waxed again in the '80s as immigration spiked, and many African refugees brought a love of the sport with them. The NBA began staging annual exhibition games in Europe starting in Italy and Germany in 1987, but the first official preseason game between two NBA teams took place in London in 1993. It was staged at the historic Wembley Arena, which had been built in 1934 as a competitive swimming venue, but eventually was mostly used for concerts (though London hosted the 1948 Olympics, basketball was actually played at the nearby Harringay Arena, while Wembley hosted the aquatics and boxing events). The game featured the Hawks, who were still a contender behind the aging Dominique Wilkins, and the Magic, a rising power with a young Shaquille O'Neal and a rookie Penny Hardaway. Just like the Olympics in Barcelona in the summer prior, for most people in attendance in London this was their first live look at NBA superstars. Almost two decades later, with the 2012 London Olympics looming, the NBA decided to return to the Emerald Isle in 2011, this time for a pair of regular season games between the Nets and Raptors. It marked the first regular season games played in Europe. The second contest was a thriller, with Brook Lopez scoring 34 points as the Nets eked out a 137-136 triple-overtime victory. The game took place in the brand new O2 Arena, which soon played host to the 2012 Olympics basketball tournament, and has since hosted eight more NBA regular season games.
8) Heat vs. Bullets, Bahamas, 1991
After staging an exhibition game in Italy in 1987 and a pair of regular season games in Japan in 1990, the NBA chose the Bahamas to host its first official international preseason game in 1991. It seemed like a curious decision, as the tiny island nation with a population under half a million had no real connection to basketball beyond being the birthplace of NBA All-Star Mychal Thompson, who moved to Miami during high school. But it was the pet project of Heat owner Ted Arison, who had made his fortune founding Carnival Cruise Lines and had many business ties to the tropical locale. The game between his Heat and the Bullets was played at the Carnival Crystal Palace Resort (owned by Arison's titular cruise line company), in what was not a traditional arena, but instead described as "the biggest tent in the world." If this was a money-making scheme by Arison then it was an unsuccessful one, as the magnate had to shell out millions of dollars to import the giant tent, bleachers, backboards, the floor, the scoreboard, and even the balls to the Bahamas. It was a logistical nightmare and after Miami won the game 109-98 in front of just 4,500 fans, the NBA has not since returned to the Bahamas, though nearby Puerto Rico has hosted a series of preseason games. Though basketball is still only nominally popular in the Bahamas, the archipelago has continued to produce NBA-level talent. Just a couple months before the Heat-Bullets game, Rick Fox, who was born in Canada but raised in the Bahamas and has duel citizenship, was drafted by the Celtics, kicking off a 13-year NBA career. And more recently, Buddy Hield, who was born and raised in the Bahamas before moving to the U.S. during high school, led his home nation to an upset victory in the 2014 FIBA Caribbean Basketball Championship, then was Naismith Player of the Year in '15-'16 before getting drafted in the first round by the Pelicans.
9) Rockets vs. Kings, China, 2004
It's an emerging economy in a country of 1.3 billion, with no sport possessing a previous foothold on the populace, not even soccer. This is the perfect storm for NBA expansion and David Stern and Adam Silver have summarily made China a centerpiece of their global marketing and branding. It all came together brilliantly in 2002, when Yao Ming, born in Shanghai to two former pro basketball players, was the first pick of the NBA draft and an instant superstar. Two years later, Yao returned to his hometown as his Rockets played the first regulation NBA game in China, a preseason tilt against the Kings. Another hometown hero and friend of Yao, Liu Wei also took the floor for the Kings, though he was eventually unable to make the final roster heading into the regular season (he returned to Shanghai and carved out a successful career with the Chinese Basketball Association's Sharks, former employer of Yao). Yao led all scorers with 14 points as the Rockets won, then starred again two days later when they played a second game in Beijing. Stern and the league office threw the full might of NBA marketing behind the event, including securing sponsorship rights from Disney, who cross-promoted with its nearby Hong Kong theme park. Sure enough, Chinese fans turned out in droves to see their conquering hero in a foreign uniform, and the game was an unqualified success. China had actually been the sight of the NBA's second ever international exhibition game, when the Washington Bullets took on a Chinese military all-star team in Beijing in the summer of 1979, right after president Jimmy Carter had normalized relations with the country. Though the country has failed to produce a solid NBA level talent since Yao, popularity of the sport continues to expand, and 23 preseason games have been played in China since 2004 (though not yet a regular season one).
10) Pacers vs. Rockets, Philippines, 2013
11) Bulls vs. Wizards, Brazil, 2013
When Indiana and Houston played in a preseason game at Mall of Asia Arena in Manila in October of 2013, the Philippines became the 20th country to host a preseason or regular season NBA game. Two days later, Brazil became the 21st, as the Bulls and Wizards squared off in Rio de Janeiro. Those locations were easily hand-picked by the NBA league office, as Brazil is the fifth most populous country in the world with 209 million citizens, while Philippines is 13th, with 106 million. Both countries are also basketball crazy. The Philippines was actually one of the first nations to embrace basketball, as the then newly created sport was introduced to locals by American troops stationed there during the Spanish-American War in the late 1890s. The Philippines won the bronze medal at the 1954 FIBA World Championships, and started their first pro league in 1975. Though the national team hasn't qualified for the Olympics since 1972, the sport has only grown in popularity. An NBA team first stepped on Philippines soil in 1979, when the defending champion Washington Bullets played a friendly against a team of Philippine Basketball Association All-Stars. That same year Ricardo Brown become the first Filipino drafted by an NBA team, taken by the Rockets in the third round. Kobe Bryant and Derrick Rose have been amongst the stars recently visiting the Philippines to play in exhibition games and conduct training camps. It may be only country in the world where basketball is officially the most popular sport, so it was only a matter of time before the NBA reached out with a preseason game. Brazil was also an early adapter of basketball, with the sport propagating across the country before the close of the 19th century. Its national team made its debut in 1922, and won bronze medals in the 1948, 1960, and 1964 Olympics, while winning the 1959 and 1963 FIBA World Championships. One year after the Bulls and Wizards played the first ever NBA game in Brazil, the NBA struck a deal with the country's top pro league, providing marketing, licensing, and other resources to help grow the sport in the populous nation.