{"id":15034,"date":"2025-10-17T03:55:40","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T09:55:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/2025\/10\/17\/patrick-dumont-confirms-mavericks-will-play-rockets-in-china-next-preseason\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T03:55:40","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T09:55:40","slug":"patrick-dumont-confirms-mavericks-will-play-rockets-in-china-next-preseason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/2025\/10\/17\/patrick-dumont-confirms-mavericks-will-play-rockets-in-china-next-preseason\/","title":{"rendered":"Patrick Dumont confirms Mavericks will play Rockets in China next preseason"},"content":{"rendered":"

Patrick Dumont’s Impact on the NBA and Global Basketball<\/h1>\n

During Patrick Dumont\u2019s 22 months as team governor, the Dallas Mavericks have surprisingly rolled to an NBA Finals, shockingly traded Luka Doncic and lucked into drafting Cooper Flagg.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s safe to say the roller-coaster has left Mavericks fans feeling alternately euphoric, queasy and confused, but what\u2019s abundantly clear is that 51-year-old Dumont is fast making his mark on the NBA and global basketball.<\/p>\n

The NBA’s Return to China<\/h2>\n

The evidence occurred over the weekend when Phoenix and Brooklyn played a pair of preseason games in Macao, China, ending what in essence had been a six-year cold war between the NBA and the Chinese government.<\/p>\n

And it was evident following Sunday\u2019s second game, when Dumont confirmed to the South China Morning Post: \u201cYes, the [Dallas] Mavericks and the [Houston] Rockets, here in Macau next year. Are you ready?\u201d<\/p>\n

Dumont’s Role in Mending Relations<\/h3>\n

This past weekend\u2019s games were played in the Las Vegas Sands-owned Venetian Arena, within a Sands Macao Resort. Dumont, COO of Sands, played a major role in mending relations between the NBA and Chinese government that became frayed if not broken when then-Houston general manager Daryl Morey in 2019 tweeted support of Hong Kong protestors against China.<\/p>\n

Morey has been president of the Sixers since 2020, but Houston\u2019s inclusion in next October\u2019s not-officially-announced NBA China games certainly is significant. It\u2019s also significant that during Sunday\u2019s Suns-Nets game Dumont sat next to Chinese basketball icon and former Rocket Yao Ming.<\/p>\n

Interview with Dumont<\/h4>\n

Though Dumont was not available for comment to The Dallas Morning News over the weekend, last December we spoke to Dumont about his and Sands\u2019 role in the NBA\u2019s return to China, with their efforts beginning well before the Adelson-Dumont family purchased the Mavericks\u2019 controlling interest from Mark Cuban in December of 2023.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what Dumont told The News last December, two weeks after his return from Macao, after jointly announcing the NBA China games\u2019 return with NBA commissioner Adam Silver. Questions and answers lightly edited for clarity:<\/p>\n

Q: What is your excitement level about the NBA China games?<\/p>\n

Dumont: \u201cWe think this is a great thing and very exciting to get back. And again, I\u2019m sort of thinking this from a standpoint of Las Vegas Sands, because this was, this had nothing to do with the Dallas Mavericks. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is something that Las Vegas Sands, the company, in partnership with the NBA, using our facilities in Macau, brought the NBA Games back to China for \u201825 and beyond. We\u2019re beyond excited about it. China is a very big market for the NBA. A lot of very excited fans, and they haven\u2019t seen a game live in years. And so this enables fans to actually see the greatest athletes in the world playing the most exciting sport in the world, up close.\u201d<\/p>\n

Negotiations and Role<\/h5>\n

Q: How long were negotiations and what was your role?<\/p>\n

Dumont: \u201cIt took a couple years to work on. It wasn\u2019t a quick thing. We\u2019ve been working on it with the NBA for a long time, making sure the situation was right. We had a renovated arena. There was just a lot of things we had to do to make it possible. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut after a lot of hard work on both sides, we\u2019re there. I think it\u2019s very exciting. And I think it\u2019s great for (our) business to be able to trade internationally. I think it\u2019s great for the two largest economies to have an open dialog and have trade between them. And I think this is a U.S. business and we\u2019re having a great time presenting a very exciting sport in this market, which was not happening for a while.<\/p>\n

Connecting People Through Sports<\/h6>\n

Q: I hope you didn\u2019t mind that when I wrote about your role, I invoked Richard Nixon and the United States table tennis team in comparison.<\/p>\n

Dumont (laughing): \u201cI gotta tell you something, when I read that man, I laughed. I thought that was an amazing reference. Thank you. That was really cool. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think people necessarily appreciated just how much this means for fans there. You know, I think there are huge NBA fans. There are people who follow the NBA on social media, and I think it\u2019s great to be able to go back there and sort of make that connection again.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think mutual understanding and dialog is very important, and so that\u2019s why the Olympics work. Connecting people in different cultures through sport is a great thing, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re trying to do here. I think it\u2019s very positive.<\/p>\n

2025-26 NBA betting odds: What are the Dallas Mavericks\u2019 championship, awards odds? <\/span><\/p>\n

Across most season-long odds, the Mavericks come in around the middle of the pack in the NBA.<\/p>\n

\"Dallas
\nWhat could propel Mavericks back to the NBA Finals? A trio of veteran coaches, perhaps <\/span><\/p>\n

Dallas has two former head coaches on the bench and a cadre of assistants with NBA championship experience.<\/p>\n

\"Mavericks
\nNew Balance announces exclusive Cooper Flagg shoe honoring Mavericks rookie\u2019s home state<\/span><\/p>\n

The colorway will officially be available for retail on Wednesday, the same day Flagg\u2019s NBA career will begin.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Patrick Dumont’s Impact on the NBA and Global Basketball During Patrick Dumont\u2019s 22 months as team governor, the Dallas Mavericks have surprisingly rolled to an NBA Finals, shockingly traded Luka Doncic and lucked into drafting Cooper Flagg. It\u2019s safe to say the roller-coaster has left Mavericks fans feeling alternately euphoric, queasy and confused, but what\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":15036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15034","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/dmn-dallas-news-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com\/resizer\/v2\/MK3DHBL5DBGH7I7C4PROES7QGU.jpg?auth=db72e1a62bd186abc0382eda07462903c4c7a67a532f6f032f3c889d0ae1795e&quality=80&width=1200&height=630&focal=2419,248","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15034"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15034"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15037,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15034\/revisions\/15037"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}