Cooper Flagg, Kevin Durant Open NBA’s Earliest Camp for China Games in Macao

DALLAS — Cooper Flagg and Kevin Durant are among the players beginning training-camp preparations on September 21, eight days before the NBA’s league-wide opening date, as the Dallas Mavericks and Houston Rockets get ready for the 2026 NBA China Games.

The teams will meet on October 9 and October 11 at The Venetian Arena in Macao. Dallas’ trip marks the franchise’s first visit to China since Luka Dončić played there as a rookie in October 2018.

League-wide training camps are scheduled to open on September 29, preseason games begin October 3, and the regular season starts October 20. The early start gives the two teams extra preparation time—but also means the basketball world will begin examining Flagg’s expected sophomore-season progress before the rest of the league has even opened camp.

But for the Dallas Mavericks and Houston Rockets, the basketball year started Monday.

Players on both rosters were permitted to report as early as this morning, a full eight days ahead of the league-wide camp opening date. Yahoo Sports confirmed the early reporting timeline as part of the NBA’s requirement for teams traveling overseas for preseason play. The Mavericks and Rockets head to Macao next month, and the logistics of international basketball require both franchises to mobilize first.

The occasion carries particular weight in Dallas. The last time the Mavericks played basketball in China, it was October 2018, in Shanghai and Shenzhen, with a 19-year-old Luka Doncic still learning what an NBA road trip felt like. This time, a different forward carries the franchise into a foreign arena. Flagg, who turned 20 in December and just completed a Rookie of the Year campaign that averaged 21 points, 6.7 rebounds and 4.5 assists, will make his first international appearance as an NBA professional. Not in the postseason, not at the All-Star Game, but in a Venetian Arena in Macao against Kevin Durant.

For the Dallas roster that enters 2026-27 under first-year head coach Dusty May, this China trip is the first opportunity to test what Flagg looks like with a full summer’s growth behind him. His sophomore development, specifically in half-court situations and sustained pick-and-roll coverage, the area where his precocious defensive instincts showed limits as a 19-year-old, is one of the genuine basketball questions the Mavericks want answered before the broader American sports calendar accelerates into October. Kyrie Irving, returning from injury after a second season derailed before it started, and Morez Johnson Jr., the No. 9 overall pick in June’s draft, will also be working through their introductions to the camp’s rhythm.

Durant, for his part, is not treating preseason games in China as tourism. The Houston forward turns 38 this season, entering his second year with the Rockets carrying the clearest win-now mandate in the Western Conference. His personal trainer told Yahoo Sports last week that Durant has been concentrating on specific areas of his game this summer, the detail unspoken, but the meaning unmistakable from a player of his precision. Alperen Sengun and Amen Thompson, on whom the Rockets are counting to absorb more offensive burden alongside Durant in the half-court this season, will get their first structured looks in camp starting Tuesday.

Houston enters the 2026-27 season with Fred VanVleet also returning after a torn ACL erased his entire 2025-26 contribution before it began. VanVleet, projected to resume his starting point-guard role, will need real game repetitions against live competition to rebuild his conditioning and on-court timing. The Macao games, announced by the NBA in January, presented by Taobao 88VIP and staged at The Venetian Arena, offer the only meaningful competitive tuneup available before regular-season stakes arrive.

The two games, on October 9 and October 11, will be broadcast across more than 200 countries and territories. The NBA and Sands Resorts Macao are planning an NBA House fan experience, youth basketball clinics through NBA Cares, and a Community Impact Week through Sands Cares focused on health, wellness and sustainability. For both franchises, the trip functions as international promotion, preseason preparation, and a compressed version of the same calculus every other team handles over a longer runway.

As CBS Sports noted in its schedule breakdown, the 2026-27 NBA season carries more compelling opening storylines than any in recent memory: LeBron James returning to the Eastern Conference for the first time since 2018 with the Philadelphia 76ers, Giannis Antetokounmpo’s first season with the Miami Heat, and the Celtics defending their championship while integrating Paul George. For the Mavericks and Rockets, those stories will begin to matter. But they begin first, before anyone else, in Macao.

What happens at The Venetian Arena on October 9 will not count in the standings. It will count for Cooper Flagg, who has never played a professional game outside North America and will do so now opposite one of the twelve best players the sport has ever produced. Kevin Durant has played in China before. He knows what the crowd sounds like, what the travel does to a body, and what it means to perform in a context where the franchise’s largest global platform comes packaged as a preseason warm-up.

Flagg does not know that yet. The Venetian Arena is about to teach him something about it. Whether Durant enjoys that lesson is another question the NBA’s earliest camp opening is designed to begin answering.

The Mavericks and other North American sports franchises pushing into new seasons understand the compressed timeline they have chosen. Training camp opened today. The Pacific Ocean is already booked.