A National Basketball Association (NBA) team will play in Australia for the first time when the New Orleans Pelicans come to Melbourne this year.
The Pelicans said in a social media post they would play two pre-season games against teams from Australia’s National Basketball League (NBL) on Friday 3 and Sunday 5 October.
They will take the court against Melbourne United and South East Melbourne, according to an ABC news report.
“The Pelicans are going down under!” they wrote in a post on X.
The NBA franchise will play at the 14,000-capacity Rod Laver Arena, on the weekend after the Australian Football League grand final and weeks before the NBA season begins in late October.
The NBL said it would join the NBA and the Pelicans in conducting NBA Cares community outreach initiatives and lifestyle events leading up to and during the week of the games, including a Fan Night on Saturday 4 October.
“The NBA and the NBL also plan to expand their grassroots basketball development efforts in Asia-Pacific at the youth and elite levels in the coming years,” the NBL said in a statement.
The announcement comes just over a month after the National Football League (NFL) said Los Angeles Rams would play a regular season game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in 2026 against a still-to-be-announced rival.
National Hockey League (NHL) teams the Arizona Coyotes and the LA Kings played two ice hockey exhibitions in Melbourne in 2023.
NBL owner Larry Kestelman said he wanted it to be the first of many similar visits and it was going to be a “celebration” of Australian basketball.
“I do believe this is the first, but not the last,” Kestelman was quoted in an article in The Guardian as saying.
