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Why International Basketball Games Capture Jersey Collectors’ Imaginations
As the NBA inspires an increasingly global audience, high-profile international appearances are making an impact on the sports collectibles market.
O n September 7, 1978, the NBA left the United States and Canada for the first time when the defending champion Washington Bullets played an exhibition game against Maccabi Tel Aviv, who had won the 1976-77 FIBA European Champions Cup, in Israel.
The result was a 98-97 victory for the home team. Maccabi Tel Aviv’s surprise win electrified the 10,000 fans in attendance, who had also witnessed their team fell giants CSKA Moscow in 1977. The game was televised to an estimated 1+ million people (at the time Israel’s population was just under 4 million). The Bullets played off the loss as a lack of conditioning and time together, among other things, but the win has become the stuff of legend in Israel and beyond.
That match in Tel Aviv was the first installment of a series of exhibition games that embodied a prescient desire of Bullets owner Abe Pollin: to spread basketball and the NBA around the world. The following year, he brought the Bullets to China, where they became the first NBA team and second major international professional sports team (after the British topflight soccer side West Bromwich Albion) to visit the country. Their trip followed an invitation from Deng Xiaoping and was facilitated by the US State Department as relations with China normalized. They played against the Chinese Army’s Bayi basketball team, as well as the national team, before later visiting the Philippines, where Washington played a PBA Selection team and won handily.
The National Basketball Association Goes International
The NBA quickly picked up on Pollin’s plan to reach fans across the world. On January 18, 1981, the Boston Celtics beat their archrival, the Los Angeles Lakers, in a close contest, 98-96. After the game, the tape was delivered to NBA headquarters and then shipped to Italy, where it became the NBA’s first international TV broadcast.
Three years later, the New Jersey Nets and the Phoenix Suns competed in the 1984 Italian Open, becoming the first two NBA teams to play official games in Europe. Both teams made it to the final round, which was played on September 11, 1984, in Milan. The Suns trounced the Nets 148-121, making them the first two NBA teams to play against each other outside of the US and Canada. Newly minted NBA Commissioner David Stern toured with the Nets and Suns, where he hinted that this was the first of many regular international NBA appearances – both in exhibition games against local leagues as well as regular NBA season games.
It didn’t take long for the NBA to deliver on these hopes, thanks in no small part to the dedication and meticulous planning of Stern and NBA officials. 1987 saw the introduction of the McDonald’s Open, later known as the McDonald’s Championship, which was a collaboration between the NBA, FIBA and several other leagues held between 1987-99. The tournament, scheduled during the NBA’s preseason, saw an NBA representative team face champions from leagues in Europe, South America and Australia, as well as the Yugoslav and Soviet national teams in the early years of the tournament. (After participating in the 1987 installment, the Soviet national team faced the Atlanta Hawks in several exhibitions the following season, marking the NBA’s first foray into the USSR.)
The McDonald’s Open gave international fans the opportunity to see a number of their favorite teams take on elite NBA talent – players like Magic Johnson, Clyde Drexler, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon took part over the years. Before Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls embarked on their Last Dance season, they secured another championship: the 1997 McDonald’s Championship, which saw the Bulls dispatch Greece’s Olympiacos on October 18, 1997. The tournament is also often credited with helping shift FIBA’s attitude regarding professional players participating in its competitions. FIBA lifted its ban on pros in 1989, thus paving the way for the Dream Team powerhouse that took the 1992 Olympics by storm.
The Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz split a pair of regular season games in Tokyo in November 1990, marking the first time regular season NBA contests were hosted outside of North America. With the NBA now having conducted international exhibitions, preseason and regular season games – not to mention poised to send their brightest and best to Barcelona – the NBA and basketball were on the precipice of becoming a global sports and cultural juggernaut. The NBA has taken full advantage of the opportunity and has shown no signs of letting up.
Inspiring a New Generation of International Collectors
Over the subsequent 35 years, the NBA has seen games across the globe, with exhibition, preseason and regular season contests taking place across four continents and against teams from five. The NBA has collaborated again with FIBA to form the Basketball Africa league. Since that first Italian broadcast in 1981, the NBA now enjoys 75% of its TV viewers from outside of the United States.
In 1984, Stern’s first year as commissioner, the NBA boasted 10 players who were born internationally – a number that rose to 108 by the 2019-20 season. International stars like Toni Kukoč, Dikembe Mutombo, Dirk Nowitzki, Yao Ming, Manu Ginobili, Pau Gasol, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Dončić, Nikola Jokić and others have helped shaped the modern NBA. Those early international contests and exhibitions demonstrated the NBA’s commitment to building a truly global game, and the proof of the endeavor’s success is evident in the cosmopolitan makeup of the NBA’s elite roster as well as the monumental impact that the league has had abroad.
In years past, jerseys from international NBA games rarely came to market. Now, however, the auction partnership between Sotheby’s and the NBA is cultivating an emerging interest for collectors. While preseason jerseys generally trade at lower prices than regular season apparel, a 2023-24 double-double preseason jersey worn by Dončić in Abu Dhabi neared the auction price of a similar jersey from the regular season. The same was true of jerseys worn by Jayson Tatum in a preseason Abu Dhabi game and during the regular season.
There are lots of variables that impact any given jersey’s value – including the presence of highly desirable jersey patches, like those worn in many international NBA games. Yet the ever-rising profile of games played beyond the United States and Canada has introduced the jerseys worn in them as items with unique appeal among a growing market of collectors.
Finding Fans in UAE and the Middle East
In 2013, on the eve of David Stern passing the commissioner torch to Adam Silver, the NBA consolidated all of its international tours into one brand: NBA Global Games. Under this brand name, the NBA has continued to send many of its best players and teams around the world to showcase the elite talents of NBA stars under a common logo.
This season, the Abu Dhabi games are set to be played on October 2 and 4. Established between the NBA and Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism, the first games to be held in the United Arab Emirates are the latest iteration within the proud tradition of international NBA basketball. NBA legend and Inside the NBA panelist Shaquille O’Neal described the games as historic. “What the fans get from it is that basketball is a global sport,” he said in 2022, a year after they were announced. “The NBA has players who are talked about worldwide – players like LeBron James – so it’ll definitely be a great moment for the fans to see the players up close.”
Those first games featured Giannis Antetokounmpo and Trae Young as the Bucks faced the Hawks, and the star power has continued throughout each installment. Games in 2023 saw Anthony Edwards, Karl-Anthony Towns and the Minnesota Timberwolves take on Luka Dončić and the Dallas Mavericks, while 2024 saw the defending NBA Champion Boston Celtics take on Nikola Jokić and the Denver Nuggets.
Now the Eastern Conference Finalist New York Knicks along with Clutch Player of the Year Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns are set to take on former MVP Joel Embiid, Paul George and Tyrese Maxey.
As these players take their steps onto center court, furthering the longtime mission of expanding the game of basketball ever further across the globe, Sotheby’s is proud to offer the jerseys they will undertake this historic pursuit in. Sotheby’s has pioneered access to jerseys from the NBA’s global forays – which, between their use in a unique and historically significant series of games as well as the striking Global Games patch sewn onto the back during some seasons, have become unique and highly coveted pieces.
The Abu Dhabi Games jerseys offered in our NBA Auctions: 2025 Abu Dhabi Games sale, open September 26-October 6, are the latest opportunity to own an important piece of NBA history.
