'They are dream investors': Inside the billion-dollar Middle East race to control the future of basketball

ABU DHABI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES -- It's a fewer minutes earlier tipoff successful the archetypal NBA crippled of immoderate benignant successful the 2025-26 play and the hoops tribunal wrong Etihad Arena is overflowing with grooming camp-sized rosters of Knicks and 76ers players and officials.

On the sideline, Patrick Ewing is shaking hands with a antheral from Beirut who is wearing a vintage No. 33 Knicks jersey. Derrick Rose, who was flown successful for the event, is posing for photos with a radical of Filipino fans.

Steve Harvey and Patrick Schwarzenegger, among different invited celebrities, are being escorted to courtside seats.

Throughout the crowd, galore Emirati men are wearing kanduras, accepted ankle-length achromatic robes, but they are vastly outnumbered by ex-pats from dozens of different countries, including a teen from Riyadh a fewer rows down the 76ers bench, wearing an Anthony Edwards Team USA jersey and a brace of the newest mentation of Edwards' Adidas signature shoes, which technically hadn't adjacent been released yet.

But possibly the astir absorbing enactment taking spot is betwixt 2 Americans.

Next to the squad benches are 2 of the astir almighty men successful the NBA, Knicks proprietor James Dolan and commissioner Adam Silver, laughing and chatting, warmly embracing the evening unneurotic contempt years of frosty relations.

Standing betwixt Dolan and Silver is the antheral who brought them together: His Excellency Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, who has spent the past decennary processing relationships and directing increasing concern dollars to bring apical stakeholders successful the athletics to Abu Dhabi.

That Silver and Dolan are aligned connected their partnerships with Al Mubarak is 1 of the signs that the aboriginal of planetary hoops is being brokered present amid the elephantine cranes and rising cities successful the Middle East.

Despite their differences astatine home, Dolan and Silver are agreed successful knowing this is simply a vitally important narration to nurture.

International hoops is connected the cusp of a new, richer and expansive epoch that is aiming to present much of the athletics to underserved fans and -- possibly much importantly -- seizure immense sovereign wealthiness money superior that is seeking a spot to put successful the sport.

Some bequest leagues are successful information of being near behind. Some caller leagues are trying to emergence up. The NBA is focused connected defending and strengthening its presumption arsenic the biggest dog.

And, despite the scrutiny it mightiness create, that means deepening relations with Abu Dhabi and its affluent neighbors.

"WHEN I CLOSE my eyes, I tin spot an NBA crippled being played successful beforehand of 22,500 radical astatine the Sphere," Al Mubarak says arsenic helium leans backmost successful a seat successful a glittering gathering connected the expansive NYU Abu Dhabi campus.

He's not talking astir Las Vegas.

"We volition person the world's top exertion wherever we tin immerse the fans successful the acquisition and they tin consciousness the crippled connected a caller level."

Al Mubarak, oregon "the chairman" arsenic helium is often referred to by colleagues successful his assorted taste and enactment positions successful Abu Dhabi, has engineered partnerships with the likes of Pope Francis, renowned designer Frank Gehry and UFC CEO Dana White. But helium loves American sports and is an progressive NBA fan.

"I person immoderate mixed feelings connected the [Luka] Doncic trade," Al Mubarak says, referencing his favourite team, the Lakers. "I americium a believer successful the value of the accepted large antheral and Anthony Davis was specified a portion of the [2020] championship. But I cognize that Luka is motivated and helium is 1 of the astir talented players successful the game."

Over the summer, the Department of Culture and Tourism (DCT) Abu Dhabi, of which Al Mubarak is the chairman, finalized a monolithic woody with Dolan's Sphere Entertainment to conception and run a caller venue successful the UAE, with rights to physique much successful the Middle East and North Africa implicit the adjacent 10 years.

The archetypal Sphere, which opened successful Las Vegas successful 2023, outgo Dolan's institution $2.3 cardinal to conception and has since mislaid much than $1 billion, according to its publi...