It’s less than a month until the regular season opens yet, for the 30 teams, their season officially starts when training camp begins and contracts become effective. There will be interesting preseason games to note with six international teams scheduled to play against NBA teams. Likewise, six NBA teams will separately travel to India, Japan and China to play each other.
For these six teams (Toronto, Indiana, Brooklyn, Houston, Sacramento and LA Lakers), they will have an earlier training camp that starts this coming Sunday before flying overseas. The Rockets get first crack at the visitors on October 1 at the Toyota Center when they host basketball HOFer and former Rocket Yao Ming’s Shanghai Sharks who have Luis Scola and Jimmer Fredette on the roster. Houston will then fly to Tokyo and play 2 games with the Raptors on October 9 and 10.
Indiana and Sacramento will have a 2-game series at Mumbai, India on October 5 and 6. Restructured teams Brooklyn and the LA Lakers will wow their Chinese fans at Shenzen on Oct. 11 and in Shanghai on Oct.13.
Prior to the China games, Brooklyn will host one of Brazil’s winningest teams, SESI/Franca, on Oct. 5. Notable alumni on this squad are Rafael Araujo, Andeson Varejao and Leandro Barbosa.
The 24 other NBA teams will have their training camp starting on Oct. 3 which will all end on Oct. 20 before the 2019-2020 starts on Oct. 24. All dates are local time and our early mornings will again be busy. It would be nice if we can have some kind of network connections on our vehicles to make the most of the situation on the streets as our traffic wise guys are perpetually on training camp as to what and how to solve congestion on major roadways.
Aside from the Shanghai Sharks (who also plays the Clippers on Oct. 7) and SESI/Franca, 4 other international teams will play against the NBA. Another Chinese team, the Guangzhou Long Lions, with 2015 NBA champion Marresse Speights manning the middle, will play Philadelphia on Oct. 9 and Washington on Oct. 10.
Three teams from the land Down Under are scheduled. Adelaide 36ers travels to Utah and play on Oct. 5. Melbourne United at some point in time had Andrew Gaze and Patty Mills on the squad, and they will face the LA Clippers on Oct. 14 and Sacramento on Oct. 17. The only team playing on the Australian pro league from New Zealand, the NZ Breakers, takes on Memphis on Oct. 9 and Oklahoma on Oct. 11.
Maccabi Haifa, one of Israel’s top tiered teams, goes to play in Memphis on Oct. 7 then will travel to Minnesota and play on Oct. 14. San Lorenzo de Almagro of Argentina completes the six-team international cast. They will visit Cleveland and play on Oct 8.
Just maybe in two years, if the big bosses of PH basketball get their acts together and really, finally and miraculously implement “change”, we can have the Gilas be part of the NBA Global Games as part of the preparation for the FIBA Worlds in 2023 which we will co-host with Japan and Indonesia. Just maybe.
The other NBA teams are scheduled to have four to six preseason games until it ends on the 20th and will have the weekend to prepare for the official 2019-2020 tip-off.