The NBA will stage two pre-season games in Macau next October, its deputy commissioner said on Friday, marking its return to China after being frozen out for more than five years.

No NBA games have been held in China since two pre-season contests in 2019 after a tweet from then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey supporting pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

Morey posted an image bearing a slogan used by demonstrators urging the world to "Stand with Hong Kong".

He later deleted the tweet and apologised, but China effectively cut ties with the league after NBA executives defended Morey's right to freedom of expression.

Basketball is hugely popular in China and in the fallout the NBA lost hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of it being yanked off Chinese television until 2022.

"It's my pleasure to announce that the Brooklyn Nets and the Phoenix Suns will play two pre-season games at Sands' Venetian Arena on October 10 and October 12, 2025," NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum said in Macau.

Macau is a special administrative region under China's "one country, two systems" framework and is known as the country's Las Vegas, being the only city that allows gambling.

Tatum said that "this region was home to some of the most passionate NBA fans" in the world.

The Venetian Arena is part of the Las Vegas Sands conglomerate controlled by the Adelson family, who are the majority ownership group in the Dallas Mavericks.

ESPN, citing unnamed sources, said the relationship between the NBA and China had improved with the aid of NBA China chief executive Michael Ma, who was hired in 2020.

The games will be part of a multimillion-dollar agreement to stage two annual NBA pre-season matches over the next five years in Macau, according to the South China Morning Post.

Las Vegas Sands was "excited...(to be) announcing a multi-year collaboration with one of the most powerful and iconic global sports brands in history", chief executive Patrick Dumont told a Macau press conference.

- 'Only Macau' -

Basketball fans in Beijing welcomed the announcement.

"Since NBA games have been absent from China for quite a while, their return would be very beneficial for amateur basketball fans to experience the highest level of competition," Zhou Dacheng, a 32-year-old fan, told AFP outside an outdoor court in central Beijing.

"As a Guangdong native, I often visit Macau since it's very close. I definitely plan to go watch these games," Zhou added.

Some social media users, however, were pessimistic that NBA games would ever come back to the mainland.

"Can only go to Macau... this relationship (between China and the NBA) has not been repaired at all," a Beijing-based user said.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver forecasted at a sports management conference in October that the league would "bring back games to China at some point".

"We had a well-known incident there pre-pandemic with a tweet and China's government took us off the air for a period of time," Silver said.

"We accepted that. We stood by our values."

The NBA has looked to grow globally, including playing recent pre-season games in Abu Dhabi.

Emirates Airlines sponsors the NBA Cup, the league's in-season tournament.

China is home to a huge basketball fanbase and from 2004 to 2019, 17 teams played a total of 28 pre-season games there.

Macau's multibillion-dollar gambling industry has remained its economic lifeline and main attraction for visitors, although Chinese leader Xi Jinping has urged the city to diversify its portfolio.

bb-isk/dhc