Report: Nets to play Hapoel Jerusalem during 2025-26 NBA preseason
According to Basketball News Australia, the Nets will be facing Israel's Hapoel Jerusalem, a professional basketball club based in the City of Jerusalem that competes in the Israeli Basketball Premier League, as part of their preseason slate for the 2025-26 campaign. Basketball News Australia's post on X says that this matchup will happen on Oct. 4 and according to NetsDaily, "The reports are likely accurate, per a league source."
As Brian Lewis of the New York Post pointed out, this won't be the first time that Brooklyn has faced a professional basketball team from Israel as they played against Maccabi Ra'anana during the 2023-24 preseason. What makes this preseason game, assuming that it happens, more interesting is due to the fact that the Nets drafted two players with ties to Israel, guard Ben Saraf and forward Danny Wolf.
Much of the NBA schedule for the 2025-26 season is still unknown, but it seems like the one international team that the Nets will be playing during their preseason slate will be from Israel. In addition to the reported matchup against Hapoel Jerusalem, it should be noted that the NBA announced that the Nets and Phoenix Suns would play two of their preseason games at the Venetian Arena in Macau, China.
Those games would mark the first ones played in China for both the Nets and the NBA since the 2019 preseason, when the Nets met the Los Angeles Lakers. With that being the backdrop, it seems that the Nets will be getting a lot of international experience before the 2025-26 NBA regular season begins with all of the matchups that they have ahead of them.
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