ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Six hours before a frustrated Michael Malone boarded the team plane to stew over Denver’s sloppy preseason performance for the next 17 hours of flight time, a calmer Malone reflected on the sum of his experiences traveling internationally for NBA games.
And more pertinently, he pondered whether his 2024 experience would leave him open to the idea of the Nuggets scheduling more international games in the future.
“For me, being around the league as long as I have been, I enjoy these trips in the preseason,” Malone told The Denver Post and Altitude Sports. “We went to London a few years ago. That’s a regular-season game. That’s a little bit different. Obviously, it was a good game for us. (Denver defeated Indiana in 2017.) But I think any time you can travel the world and spend time together as a team and bond and experience and learn about a new culture, spread the NBA and teach some young kids, boys and girls — I love these experiences. I really do.
“It’s been a lot. I think guys are tired because you get pulled in a lot of different directions. But we have plenty of days to get rest when we get back (to Denver) before our next preseason game. And I think hopefully everybody else feels like I do: that this was a productive and positive trip.”
This is a particularly fascinating snapshot in time for the Nuggets. They’ve just spent five days in Abu Dhabi alongside the Boston Celtics — one of the biggest brand names in American sports — headlining what the NBA considers one of its premier international events. In addition to their status as championship contenders, their roster has adopted an increasingly global profile this offseason. They’re up to six former Olympians on the payroll, with five countries represented (USA, Canada, Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia).
And then there’s Nikola Jokic, obviously — basketball royalty from a basketball country. The three-time MVP will enter his 30s this season. As with all the greats, the unthinkable but inevitable question that’ll start to emerge in NBA debates is: How much longer? Even Nuggets general manager Calvin Booth has placed a rough deadline on their title window: the next five years. For peak Jokic, that’s how much longer.
In spite of all that context, the Nuggets haven’t played a game in Europe during Jokic’s peak. Their win in London occurred less than a month after Malone first inserted Jokic into the starting lineup. Abu Dhabi is the closest they’ve been to Serbia as a team since Jokic started collecting trophies.
But don’t rule out a European trip before the end of his prime. NBA executive George Aivazoglou told The Post that the league has communicated about the Nuggets being an option for future editions of the NBA Paris Games or other potential European ventures.
“I think it’s one of the teams that are very open to traveling,” Aivazoglou said, noting that when the league plans international trips, “we know which teams want to travel. We know probably where they want to travel. We take that into account with our planning.”
This weekend Jokic denied commissioner Adam Silver’s recent assertion that Jokic has approached Silver personally to ask for games in Serbia. Whatever the truth is, it might not be relevant, because Silver has pointed out that it doesn’t make sense for the league to hold actual NBA games in one-off locations.
“The way we look at markets for NBA games, they need to have arenas that can host two NBA teams; there needs to be a mature ecosystem around it to support what is a very expensive undertaking,” said Aivazoglou, who oversees fan engagement in Europe and the Middle East. “And then we can look at other types of activations with those funds. Sometimes those are single games between an NBA team and a local team. Sometimes it’s grassroots programming — fun events, viewing parties. There’s a broad portfolio of ways where you can bring the NBA experience (to a new place) that doesn’t just (entail) games.”
What options does that leave? The league’s only current multiyear enterprise in Europe is Paris, where Jokic is two months removed from leading the Olympics in total points, rebounds, assists and steals. Serbia came closer than any other team in the tournament to upsetting Team USA. Not to mention proximity: Paris is a 2 ½-hour flight from Belgrade, the capital of Serbia.
It might not be home, but Jokic would still likely resonate there more than in Abu Dhabi.
“Basketball fandom as an affinity in France is much higher (than in the UAE),” Aivazoglou said. “It’s a more mature basketball market, as evidenced by No. 1 draft picks and all that, right? So for sure, although I would say that Nikola is at that level and that size of a star, that he resonates globally.”
The Spurs (including Victor Wembanyama) and Pacers are scheduled to play two games at Accor Arena in Paris in January 2025. Last season, it was the Nets and Cavaliers, also in January. Therein could lie an obstacle: Malone differentiated between preseason and regular season in his answer about international games Sunday. The inconvenience of traveling and acclimating to jet lag is no joke, and athletes who prefer a consistent routine during their season might view an overseas trip as an exhausting disruption rather than an exciting wrinkle. On the other hand, Paris is a compelling destination.
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Another option is what the Mavericks did in 2023, traveling to Spain for a preseason game against Real Madrid — Luka Doncic’s former EuroLeague team. That was the first matchup between an NBA team and a EuroLeague team since 2016, and the last three such occasions have each been in Spain.
The Nuggets boarded their long flight home to Denver late Sunday night feeling satisfied by their trip from a team chemistry standpoint, if dissatisfied by the quality of their play. The NBA’s ever-growing international footprint lends a feeling of inevitability that they’ll be back on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, eventually. But will their destination be more tailored to their greatest talent, and more urgently, will it be too late for Jokic?