Bon voyage! French sports site reports Nets will play in NBA’s ‘Paris Game’

With the NBA Draft on Thursday, we missed this bit of news: L’Equipe, the big French sports site, reported that the Nets will play in the NBA’s annual Paris Game which normally takes place in January at the Accor Arena. It would be a regular season game.

L’Equipe’s NBA reporter wrote on the possibility of Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs playing in Paris in 2025, adding this about next year’s game (via Google Translate)

According to several sources familiar with the matter, it will be a 100% Eastern Conference confrontation between the Brooklyn Nets and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Information that Adam Silver did not wish to confirm or deny during the interview he gave us on Thursday.

The Nets also declined comment on Monday morning, saying anything schedule-related would have to come from the league offices. The NBA schedule for 2023-24 is released in early August.

Last year, the game took place January 19 at Accor between the Bulls and Pistons. It was the second game in the series, the first coming in 2020 between the Hornets and Bucks. Adam Silver said last January that he expected the series would continue in 2024 and indeed, NBA Experiences is already marketing high-end packages for the weekend, but noting the date of the game and the teams were still to be determined.

Neither the Nets nor the Cavaliers currently have a Frenchman on their rosters. France, of course, has become a hotbed of NBA talent, with four French players taken in this year’s Draft, two in the top seven, led by Wembanyama who was the first Frenchman chosen at No. 1. Next July, Paris will be the host of the 2024 Olympics. The men’s and women’s basketball medal games will be held at Accor Arena.