The New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers met for two preseason games in 2025 in Abu Dhabi. Photo by Ali Haider\/EPA<\/p>\n
July 30 (UPI) — The NBA will not play preseason games this year in the Middle East due to war in the region, a source familiar with the matter told UPI on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Preseason games were held in Abu Dhabi<\/a> each of the last four years, including two 2025 matchups between the Philadelphia 76ers and New York Knicks<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n The decision to halt the series came amid ongoing conflict between the United States and Iran.<\/p>\n In January, the NBA and Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism announced an extension for their long-term global games agreement. The NBA has held games in the region since 1987-88, with eight NBA teams featured in the preseason since 2022.<\/p>\n NBA preseason games will start in early October. The regular-season schedule is expected to be released in August.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers met for two preseason games in 2025 in Abu Dhabi. Photo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":833913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[944,64,63,590,1666,85],"class_list":["post-833912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-abu-dhabi","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/833913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}