When it comes to international games, the NFL mostly dominates the sports conversation with its various ventures to Europe, Brazil, and elsewhere.
But the NBA actually preceded the NFL in playing regular-season games overseas, and that tradition will continue during the 2024–25 season. The NBA Paris Games take place this week with the San Antonio Spurs, who feature French superstar Victor Wembanyama, having a pair of matchups against the Indiana Pacers on Thursday and Saturday.
Wembanyama, who was born in Le Chesnay, a western suburb of Paris, is undoubtedly the star attraction. His professional career also began in the region with Nanterre 92 of the LNB Elite, the top basketball league in France, so this is a homecoming for the 7-foot-3 sophomore center. The top overall pick in the 2023 draft, Wembanyama has increased his numbers almost across the board this year. He’s averaging 24.4 points, 10.8 rebounds, 3.7 assists, and a league high of 4.0 blocks per game.
He talked about his return home after a Monday practice, which took place on a court he was familiar with at Nanterre.
The matchup pits a 19–22 Spurs team hoping to stay in the play-in tournament picture versus a 24–19 Pacers squad looking to top last year’s trip to the Eastern Conference Finals. Wemby has another Frenchman on his side in fellow second-year Spur Sidy Cissoko, while Indiana has no Frenchmen but features an international roster with players from Canada, Australia, and Cameroon.
These games will match Indiana’s strength of attacking the rim on offense against San Antonio’s strength of defending in the lane. The Pacers love to drive into the lane for high-percentage shots and rank sixth in the NBA in points in the paint per game. However, a looming 7-foot-3 Frenchman would figure to deter Indiana from attacking the paint, and that’s evident by San Antonio’s defensive rankings for the season. Teams simply don’t even try attacking the lane with Wemby on the court, which means they settle for outside jumpers and avoid contact in the lane. As a result, the Spurs allow the fewest free throws per game in the league.
The two teams split their pair of regular-season matchups a season ago, with each winning on its home court. San Antonio won the last meeting, 117–105, in March, but the Pacers were victorious, 152–111, in November 2023. That matchup clearly saw Indiana dictate its style of play as the 152 points were the fifth-most by any NBA team last season in a non-overtime game.
While the 2025 NBA Paris Games will have the Pacers as the designated home team on Thursday, with the Spurs then hosting on Saturday, everyone knows Wemby’s presence will make both crowds heavily in favor of San Antonio. Not only does the team have a relationship with the French people through Wembanyama, but one of the greatest players in franchise history, Hall of Famer Tony Parker, is a fellow Frenchman.
“It’s going to be a big crowd against us, honestly,” Pacers guard Andrew Nembhard said, with both games selling out in one day.
But Indiana has one extra day of rest as it last played on Saturday, while the Spurs played on Sunday. After the Paris games, neither team will play again until next Wednesday.
The first regular-season NBA game outside the United States or Canada took place in 1990 in Tokyo. The Suns and Jazz played a back-to-back set in the Japanese capital, and the league would make several more visits to Japan for regular-season games over the next few years. It found a new destination with Mexico City in 1997, then made its first trip to Europe in 2011. The league visited the O2 Arena that year in London and held nine games there before trying Paris in 2020.
The Paris Games will be the 39th and 40th regular-season games outside the United States or Canada. Mexico City has hosted the most games (14), followed by Japan (12), London (nine) and Paris (five).
